Hay Aqua
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Random responses in no particular order:
- Cool to see it plotted out like that.
- Hell, you can see the trend today: look at magazine ads from the 50s and compare them to today.
- I think these days, the trend continues because there's a massive unspoken shift in literacy going on. Writing skills are eroding rapidly, but visual and cinematic literacy in America is skyrocketing, thanks to our smartphones. It's a shift in priorities. Visuals immediately grab attention, so that's the focus. And with every family video we try to make awesome for the Faceyspace, we get a little closer to learning the language of cinema. Whereas unless you're funny (with brevity being a base requirement), good writing don't get you no likes or shares.
- Middle English is interesting, but Anglo-Saxon is even more fun. King says there is a central grammatical core to English, but it's a very greasy one. He was I think referring to the influence of latin and French, but it would have been true anyway thanks to Anglo-Saxon and Frisian.
- Speaking of, I bet the trend would reverse the further back in time you went, simply because of what in Anglo-Saxon was written down. (Not very much.) What was spoken... eh, I dunno. I don't know how the poetry would have been performed. Could have gone either way.
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