语言演变

Anne Curzan shows how new words like “hangry” or “adorkable” get sealed in dictionaries. Some might lament these types of words as the death of a language, but Curzan says they reveal that a language is living, breathing, and growing.

莎士比亚在需要或想要时便随意创造新词，arouse、swagger、hoodwink等常用词皆出自他手。文艺复兴时期的英语正处于蓬勃生长的混乱状态，普通人也热衷于用前缀后缀造词，詹姆斯王钦定《圣经》译本更使这门混血语言成为英格兰民族认同的象征。

TED社区成员Keith W. Henline回应了John McWhorter关于短信文化的演讲，分享了他对新兴沟通方式的个人看法，肯定了短信作为现代语言的价值，同时也警示了边开车边发短信所带来的致命危险。

“Words over time have a way of just oozing around,” says linguist John McWhorter. He traces the evolution of five words that have spent millennia drifting from one meaning into another.