Is Language more corrupted or expressions ?
Expressions corrupt language, but languages are organic in nature and always changing. Are you comfortable with Shakespearean English? I’m not. We wouldn’t be able to understand English if we were alive 200 years in the future.
Language belongs to the people who speak it. Not pseudo-academics who live in plastic-ivory towers.
Since your question is posed in English, the bastard lingua franca of the world, I would have to say that the English language is a corruption of many languages including itself. English adopts/steals words and expressions from all other languages as it sees fit and is in a constant state of change, that's why Shakespeare would have a very hard time understanding anything by Andrew Lloyd Webber if he should somehow be transported into our present era.
Words like Kamikaze, Aloha, Weiner, Vino, Tsunami, Wallaby, Skol, Poutine, Amigo, Geshundeit, etc. etc. are readily recognized by English speakers as English words even though they originated in other languages. Little wonder that English is one of the hardest languages to master, everything about it is butchered, from the words themselves and their spelling (there, their, they're or your, you're and yore- don't worry just memorizes them) to how the sentences are structured. It's a bitch of a language although tonal Mandarin is supposed to be a bit harder to master, that's what my oldest son says and he's a translator for businesses in China.
As long as we're communicating and exchanging ideas, who cares?
@Donotbelieve your spot on
@Donotbelieve I worked as an editor when I was in university so I used to be very, very picky about spelling and grammar. The red pen was always in my hand or mind. Then I joined a network on disabilities and began to learn about learning disabilities. I'm much more accepting now although some things still make me feel itchy. (Typos in my own writing horrify me.)
@Donotbelieve Thank you. I enjoy reading your comments and posts, too. I like the company of people who think and question. Have an amazing weekend!
@Donotbelieve I had to do that
@Donotbelieve yore ok!
Language is a virus from outer space.
And hearing your name is better than seeing your face. -Laurie Anderson coopting willims S Burroughs
Love her!
I am sure you speak more languages than most of us on this site, but you need to make sure that what you are saying in any language is clear to your listeners. Language and expressions both evolve and change. Idiomatic expressions perhaps lose their currency faster than basic language, but English is a particularly flexible and interesting language.
Neither. Language changes. Writing was a novelty once.
Only a few knew how to write. Now that almost everyone can, languages change faster.
@AstralSmoke I would debate that. Languages show very rapid change when they interact or when technology disrupts established living patterns.
If anything writing has stabilised our language. The change between Chaucer's English in 1400 and Shakespeare in 1590 is far greater than that between Shakespeare and ourselves. This in spite of the industrial and computer revolutions and twice the intervening time. The only factors mitigating AGAINST language change is Dr Johnson's dictionary first and later the rapidly increasing literacy which allowed said dictionary to be of use.
@RobAnybody I was trying to paraphrase to the readers below what you had earlier stated. Guess I got it wrong.