John McWhorter

But words' meanings are always kind of morphing. Obnoxious used to mean vulnerable to harm. And so don't render yourself obnoxious by wearing too few clothes to the jousting tournament. You take my point. So it only came to mean noxious because it sounded like noxious. And so we now use it to mean that. If you look in a grammar guide in about 1900,

There's always some person, the kind of person who says one and has that mustache, who is complaining. People are using obnoxious to mean annoying when really it's supposed to mean subject to harm. Sniff, sniff. We're going to have to deal with this. This is a sign of the lack of education. And so that is what happens to all words, and that's true in Japanese, Hungarian, Tahitian.

There's always some person, the kind of person who says one and has that mustache, who is complaining. People are using obnoxious to mean annoying when really it's supposed to mean subject to harm. Sniff, sniff. We're going to have to deal with this. This is a sign of the lack of education. And so that is what happens to all words, and that's true in Japanese, Hungarian, Tahitian.

There's no language where that's not happening.

There's no language where that's not happening.

That's a very good question. And the answer to it is that Parisian French is one thing. The French of Quebec, and it's actually very similar to Cajun French, is a different grouping of dialects. And so you can say that these things are older. But the thing is that those dialects have changed a great deal since they were moved over to Quebec.

That's a very good question. And the answer to it is that Parisian French is one thing. The French of Quebec, and it's actually very similar to Cajun French, is a different grouping of dialects. And so you can say that these things are older. But the thing is that those dialects have changed a great deal since they were moved over to Quebec.

And the Quebec dialect is very different than what it would have been in, say, the late 1600s and the 1700s. It's just that you can still see the likenesses. It's not that Quebec stayed the way this was. And so all languages move along. And the truth is, I have not done a study of the joual spoken in, for example, Montreal.

And the Quebec dialect is very different than what it would have been in, say, the late 1600s and the 1700s. It's just that you can still see the likenesses. It's not that Quebec stayed the way this was. And so all languages move along. And the truth is, I have not done a study of the joual spoken in, for example, Montreal.

I'm sure that that variety has changed more in the past 300 years than French, standard French in Paris, because written languages change more slowly.

I'm sure that that variety has changed more in the past 300 years than French, standard French in Paris, because written languages change more slowly.

So if a language is just allowed to do what it wants to do, like some language in a rainforest spoken by indigenous people, it's never written down, that language moves along considerably, such that you might even have a little bit of a problem understanding your great, great grandparents.

So if a language is just allowed to do what it wants to do, like some language in a rainforest spoken by indigenous people, it's never written down, that language moves along considerably, such that you might even have a little bit of a problem understanding your great, great grandparents.

Once it's on the page and your brain is kind of on writing, as I put it, and you think that the real language is written, then it tends to slow language change down. So what we know is how language changes, where when the new they comes in, we're thinking, good Lord, what happened? That would not shock people as much if this were an unwritten language.

Once it's on the page and your brain is kind of on writing, as I put it, and you think that the real language is written, then it tends to slow language change down. So what we know is how language changes, where when the new they comes in, we're thinking, good Lord, what happened? That would not shock people as much if this were an unwritten language.

Language changes very quickly until it's yoked to the page, which is true of only about 200 languages. of the 7,000 languages that there are. The idea that you think of the language in writing and then you think of speaking as just a sloppy way of how it's done on the page, that's only a very few languages, and we happen to be speaking one. Normal human language gets to mind its own business.

Language changes very quickly until it's yoked to the page, which is true of only about 200 languages. of the 7,000 languages that there are. The idea that you think of the language in writing and then you think of speaking as just a sloppy way of how it's done on the page, that's only a very few languages, and we happen to be speaking one. Normal human language gets to mind its own business.

And so it's faster for them.

And so it's faster for them.

I think it's great. And I know that there is a strain of thought that says that non-black people are stealing black English features and appropriating them and that there should be a line. But for one, there could never be that line. That line couldn't happen, especially with the mainstreaming of hip hop.