Language is always changing. At one point 'an apron' was 'a napron' while words like 'literally' are no longer literally literal. What are some language battles that have been lost in living memory and what are some others you predict will soon occur?

Edit: Non-english examples very welcome!

"begging the question". it's not the same as "bringing up a question", it means assuming your conclusion is true in the course of an argument

Loose and lose might as well be the same word these days. Drives me up a damn wall.

That and "POV" doesn't mean what it used to mean anymore. Also drives me up a wall.

“Decimating” no longer means killing ten percent as the Romans did; now it is used to mean the killing of a majority, so it’s close to the opposite of its original meaning.

Presently used to mean "soon" or "in a bit" but now means "happening right now"

The meaning of bemused is similar to "befuddled", but it's more often used as if it means "amused"

It used to be a firm rule that you mustn't end a sentence in a proposition.

I thought decimating meant reducing to a tenth, as in removing 90%?

Literally is still understood, it just gets misused.

Going in a bit of a different direction, emojis and things like /s are well understood now, which is an addition.

I wonder if some day in the future emojis will make their way from casual conversation into business? I guess I already use things like 👍 in semi formal work chats - it's especially useful as a way of ensuring a message isn't read sarcastically or passive aggressively. LLMs seem more than happy to plop an emoji or two into a document.

Speaking of AI I'm already noticing that poor spelling, slang and the like are almost signifiers of a human. I wonder if ways of talking that distinguish us from AI will become more common or more valuable?

To be fair, that original meaning is illogical (as in, the meaning doesn't follow from the literal words used), so it's not surprising that people misused it to have a more logical meaning.

I suppose the word "boomer" has changed meaning very quickly. It rarely gets used anymore to refer to actual boomers (people born just after WW2) and instead now can refer either vaguely to anyone older than 30, or anyone with an antiquated/problematic notion of social norms.

I miss double spaces after periods.

We…don’t do this anymore? I can’t even recall what I’ve been doing for this for the last 20 years.

What…what does POV mean now??

LUXURY!BACKINMYDAYWEDIDNTHAVESPACES.DONTGETMESTARTEDONTHISLOWERCASENONSENSE

We were always supposed to put punctuation inside quotation marks; however, now it seems to be the user's choice of inside or outside. And I have to admit that most of the time when I’m using quotes, it seems more logical to me to place the punctuation outside of them.

In my country, a lot of my peers (me too) use stickers (the cute ones) in in-company-chats usually with people we know like colleagues and managers

So I assume emojis are also done?

Actually, when I think about it. I rarely see people complaining about emojis at work. Ironically if there's one place that people hate emojis it's Reddit or Lemmy 😅.

Do you speak another language than English? I'd be fascinated to know if similar language battles are happening in other languages.

Is it not "point of view"?

Autocorrect on Microsoft products turns double-space into single space by default. Gotta turn that shit of every time, it’s very frustrating.

POV: I am confused

The meaning is derived from the brutality of the act, not the proportion of people killed.

Our browser is going to fingerprint us through this habit and we're going to get served knee replacement ads because of it.

(wiki says) it comes from Greek to Latin to English in the 16th century, so I'm sure it suffers a bit in modern transfusion.

wait what is that supposed to mean? (i'm not a native english speaker, might be why i don't get it)

"This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put." - attributed to Churchill

also i fear that "comfort" is losing the battle to "comfortability"

Yeah but it used to mean "piss over vulvas". Pornhub changed the meaning to "point of view" and everyone just went with it.

That makes me very uncomfortabilityable

"Demonstrating my point of view: I am confused"

thanks

People using then instead of than. I never saw that 30 years ago.

From my perspective, literally being used for emphasis does not actually change its meaning, it’s simply hyperbole.

If you complain that you’ve been “waiting for hours”, even though it’s been 45 minutes, that doesn’t change the meaning of “hours”, you’re just exaggerating.

Hyperbole is a stylistic element; style is a completely different level of language than grammar/spelling/semantics (word meanings). As another example of style, ending a sentence with a preposition is grammatically correct but stylistically not recommended.

“I’ve told you a million times, don’t exaggerate”

Yeah, I remember an exchange I had, where someone asked what POV means I answered with Point of View and some spoiled Z started laughing, saying I outed myself, but as table top gamer... that was always the abbreviation we used.

“Casted”

The past-tense of cast is cast.
“The fisherman cast their line into the river.”
“The actor was cast in the leading role.”

Casted makes you sound like a child.

We were taught single space in the mid 90s, so that can't be too recent.

Breathe and breath too...

“Drives me up the wall” becoming “drives me up a wall”.

I still feel like that one is a flavour-of-the-month adjustment - “literally” as an intensifier is already being replaced by “lowkey”, “deadass” etc..

And what does it mean for those people?

No. It meant killing every tenth soldier in a line

While not totally gone, German's genitive case (which is used to show ownership) is becoming less and less common. They have both the genetive case as well as their equivalent of " 's " - which is just "s," if you're wondering. Example:

Der Herr der Ringe.

The Lord of the Rings. It would normally be "die Ringe," but it becomes "der" in the genetive case.

Another transition in German is that the "formal you" is being used less and less frequently. I understand this is the case for a few other European languages as well.

Interesting! Thanks for a non english perspective. Is German language development Influenced by widespread english competency? Are Germans becoming less fussy about certain rules in favour of some of English's simpler or more flexible constructs? (Not to suggest that English isn't a Byzantine mess of a language itself!)

I think any word sounds more childish with ed on the end! "I wented fishinged at the beached and casteded"

Australian English language is now largely Americanised, a process that started in the post-war era is now mostly complete.

• Terms such as 'gaol' have been widely replaced by 'jail'.
• 'Programme' is mostly replaced by 'program'.
• A 'car bonnet' is likely to be called a 'hood'.
• 'Play lunch' is mostly replaced with 'recess'.
• 'Pusher' is mostly called a 'pram'
• 'Lacker band' is now mostly just 'rubber band'.
• 'Boomer' no longer means kangaroo, but instead 'Old person.'

I'm not really bothered by it or anything, but it's been interesting to see it shift even over my lifetime.

The preposition one is what I came to say.

Unfortunately, I'm not a native German speaker. So, take this with a grain of salt.

I will say that the German language has always been open to loan words from other languages. And, according to my German teacher (who is native), the biggest change recently in that regard is NOT how loan words are accepted BUT how quickly they are accepted these days. New loan words are being added all the time, especially by young people. He said that generally the word will be accepted as it is at first, and then over time it well become more "germanified" and used more like native words. He said this process used to take decades but now it can happen in less than a year. An example of a germanified English loan word is "chatten" which means "to chat," just like English. Ich chatte, du chattest, wir chatten. (I chat, you chat, we chat.)

I believe the simplification of grammatical structures (like the abandonment of genetive) has been going on slowly over centuries and is mostly unrelated to contact with English speakers. But, there is likely some influence there.

i've never learnt to use tildes in spanish lol i mean i know some rules for that but i just never cared, most people dont use them while texting unless the corrector adds it.

Really interesting stuff! It just goes to show that even without 'authorities' such as the French Language Academy, loan words end up becoming modified and molded by their adoptive language. I'm learning Japanese and it has so many loan words going all the way back to the dutch. Some are barely recognisable for example computer is パソコン = pasokon = personal computer.

Pronouns getting weird, especially when and is added, like "for him and I" or "her and I's house".

Also excetera for etcetera and mischievious for mischievous

I don't know if this fits the question, but in Brazil the "Portuguese-Language Orthographic Agreement of 1990" only started to take effect in 2009 (after I was born), in a transition state, and in 2015 it became official and obligatory.

The changes that I still fumble with are diacritics (e.g. "Idéia" -> "Ideia") and hyphens (e.g. "contra-regra" -> "contrarregra").