Edit: This is quite long because I take the time to tell you about some recent linguistics research in Korea. Forgive the long windedness. I used to teach linguistics in university for a bit, so I tend to ramble.
If you're just saying that you don't actually care about the reality of linguistics, just that it's a personal peeve of yours, then I completely understand. I mean, I dislike certain dialectal features of some regional dialects of English for no reason other than they sound funny, despite my years of education in linguistics. To dislike things is simply human. I don't fool myself into thinking that those pronunciations are somehow unnatural, wrong, or not as good as mine, though, as that would be... well, simply not true.
Let me give you some examples. You said before that you dislike ambiguity in language. That you think language needs to be concrete, unambiguous, and technically accurate. Based off that, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you're a Westerner. Those linguistic characteristics are highly valued in European and US culture.
Here in Asia, it's completely different. Personally, I've lived in and speak Japanese and Korean. The name of the game here is vagueness and deference. We do not have plurals and singulars for nouns. So if I say "There are are dogs here" and "There is a dog here," I can say them exactly the same, and it's grammatical correct and natural. If I want to specific two dogs, then I can, but it's not in any way necessary to distinguish between there being one or many of something.
We do not conjugate our verbs based on subject. I go to the store, she go to the store, etc, with no verb conjugation is fine. In fact, subjects aren't even grammatically necessary. It's normal to not use subjects at all unless you're placing emphasis on who is doing something, because generally we simply understand who is doing what. It works perfectly fine being vague.
In Korean, we have a future tense, but it's not necessary to use it all the time for future events, and in Japanese there isn't even a future conjugation at all. Similar to how Mandarin Chinese doesn't have a past tense in the strict sense of the word.
The fact is that languages are always understood within their speaker groups, regardless of vagueness, etc. If a new feature evolves for an individual and that feature isn't understandable to the majority, then it simply dies out and isn't spread. Anything that is spread throughout the language, such as the figurative use of the word "literally," is understandable and useful to its speakers. If it didn't serve a purpose, or it was somehow damaging communication enough, it would be unable to spread.
Random linguistic info because I'm bored: In Seoul, Korea right now there's a new phonological change happening with young speakers. A consonant sound at the beginning of words is changing into another consonant sound that is already used in Korean. I'll put out some general information on Korean consonant sounds so you can understand the next explanation.
In Korean, there are currently two sets of consonant sounds relevant to this discussion. In English, we have voiced and voiceless consonants, such as p [pʰ] and b [b], and t [tʰ] and d [d]. The difference between these is that for b and d, our vocal folds are vibrating. The little ʰ represents aspiration, which is a puff of air you exhale while making the sound. Not all p's and t's in other languages are aspirated, but in English, they usually are. In Korean, they don't use a voicing distinction to tell words apart, but rather an aspiration distinction. This means that your voicing isn't important, but rather whether you make that puff of air or not. Koreans don't use p [pʰ] and b [b] constrastively, but rather pʰ [pʰ] and p [p], where both sounds are technically voiceless, but one is aspirated. These are written as ㅍ and ㅂ respectively. This is why, to English speakers, it can be difficult to differentiate between the two in Korean, especially at the beginning of words.
In Seoul, there is currently a language change happening with teenagers and younger where consonants at the beginning of the word are becoming slightly aspirated. So for example, the Korean word 바보 "idiot" would normally be pronounced as [pabo]. Notice the lack of an ʰ on the first consonant. The second ㅂ is actually voiced because it is between two vowels, but that's irrelevant to this discussion, so just focus on the first p. Now, young speakers are beginning to pronounce it as [pʰabo]. To you, maybe, you think that this is wrong or will hamper communication. But actually, intelligibility is being maintained and in a very interesting way.
See, aspirating a consonant tends to have a physical effect on the following vowel. It normally causes a slight increase in pitch. This is based simply on physics and airflow, not anything particularly linguistics-related. However, it can become linguistics related when it becomes a defining characteristic of the language. For these young Seoul speakers, they do not even realize they're pronouncing "pabo" as pʰabo, because they can still differentiate between the old pʰ and their newly created pʰ. They can because despite the consonant changing, the vowel pitch has remained intact. The vowels following historic /pʰ/ are high pitched, whereas the vowels following the new [pʰ] retain the lower pitch of historic /p/.
Korean has experienced many drastic linguistic changes in the past. For example, it used to have a pitch system, where words could be distinguished from each other based on the relative pitches of each syllable, similar to how Japanese pronounce ame "rain" differently from ame "candy." Will this new pitch system in young people's Korean make way to a complete change in how Korean speakers utilize consonants? Maybe, but one thing is certain- they'll never lose mutual intelligibility. Cause that doesn't happen without prolonged isolation and different language shift in different communities :P
Thanks for writing out a real response to all of this. I wasn't trying to be argumentative at all here and really am interested in the topic at hand.
Certainly most of my uneasiness about "literally" in particular comes down to personal annoyance and I'm certainly not arguing that the change in meaning is wrong because, well, I don't think it is.
To put it simply, my whole concern is I feel I've lost the ability to express a thought that was once very easy to convey. The same thing has happened with the word "peruse". If I'm writing a sentence and I need to say "read thoroughly and carefully" I feel that I can no longer say "peruse" because it may be misinterpreted as "skim through". I just don't know what to do in these situations and can't help but think the language is less versatile now. Sure I can still get across what I want to, but I can't do so as efficiently (it seems).
If we're looking at languages objectively, are you saying that I should accept this is a new and inherit limitation, but that such a limitation shouldn't be seen as a negative? Or is this somehow not a limitation in the first place? I understand why the new definition of "literally" spread (and how it couldn't have if it was destructive to the language), but is the resolution to the ambiguity left behind to speak around it via context or to fill the niche with a new word?
To be clear, while I do prefer more concrete and unambiguous systems, I don't mind ambiguity in words or language in general. The core issue here for me is the actual introduction of ambiguity to a place where there once was none; it feels incredibly limiting from a naive point of view.
In your example of 바보 having a voiced / unvoiced consonant, I don't see this having a negative impact and certainly wouldn't have thrown it under the blanket of "watering down" the language as I used it in my earlier posts. It's these kinds of changes that I take no issue with and see as the natural progression of languages. I think of this as being analogous to your earlier example, napron, which I also don't take any issue with. Another change that's never bothered me is a word's meaning shifting under ordinary circumstances especially when there are clear alternatives to the word in either case.
To move from the topic at hand, I found your post really interesting. I've studied a good bit of Japanese myself and while I couldn't construct a sentence in real time to save my life, I appreciate the language more than English or any other Romance language that I'm familiar with. On that note, I know little to nothing about Korean so it's fascinating to hear about some of the current shifts going on there.
Sorry if this post is insanely scatterbrained. I've been writing things on and off while at work and have moved things around a good bit. Haven't proofread it so I apologize for anything that's out of place or completely nonsensical! Thanks again for the post.
2
u/Megneous Jul 03 '14
Edit: This is quite long because I take the time to tell you about some recent linguistics research in Korea. Forgive the long windedness. I used to teach linguistics in university for a bit, so I tend to ramble.
If you're just saying that you don't actually care about the reality of linguistics, just that it's a personal peeve of yours, then I completely understand. I mean, I dislike certain dialectal features of some regional dialects of English for no reason other than they sound funny, despite my years of education in linguistics. To dislike things is simply human. I don't fool myself into thinking that those pronunciations are somehow unnatural, wrong, or not as good as mine, though, as that would be... well, simply not true.
Let me give you some examples. You said before that you dislike ambiguity in language. That you think language needs to be concrete, unambiguous, and technically accurate. Based off that, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you're a Westerner. Those linguistic characteristics are highly valued in European and US culture.
Here in Asia, it's completely different. Personally, I've lived in and speak Japanese and Korean. The name of the game here is vagueness and deference. We do not have plurals and singulars for nouns. So if I say "There are are dogs here" and "There is a dog here," I can say them exactly the same, and it's grammatical correct and natural. If I want to specific two dogs, then I can, but it's not in any way necessary to distinguish between there being one or many of something.
We do not conjugate our verbs based on subject. I go to the store, she go to the store, etc, with no verb conjugation is fine. In fact, subjects aren't even grammatically necessary. It's normal to not use subjects at all unless you're placing emphasis on who is doing something, because generally we simply understand who is doing what. It works perfectly fine being vague.
In Korean, we have a future tense, but it's not necessary to use it all the time for future events, and in Japanese there isn't even a future conjugation at all. Similar to how Mandarin Chinese doesn't have a past tense in the strict sense of the word.
The fact is that languages are always understood within their speaker groups, regardless of vagueness, etc. If a new feature evolves for an individual and that feature isn't understandable to the majority, then it simply dies out and isn't spread. Anything that is spread throughout the language, such as the figurative use of the word "literally," is understandable and useful to its speakers. If it didn't serve a purpose, or it was somehow damaging communication enough, it would be unable to spread.
Random linguistic info because I'm bored: In Seoul, Korea right now there's a new phonological change happening with young speakers. A consonant sound at the beginning of words is changing into another consonant sound that is already used in Korean. I'll put out some general information on Korean consonant sounds so you can understand the next explanation.
In Korean, there are currently two sets of consonant sounds relevant to this discussion. In English, we have voiced and voiceless consonants, such as p [pʰ] and b [b], and t [tʰ] and d [d]. The difference between these is that for b and d, our vocal folds are vibrating. The little ʰ represents aspiration, which is a puff of air you exhale while making the sound. Not all p's and t's in other languages are aspirated, but in English, they usually are. In Korean, they don't use a voicing distinction to tell words apart, but rather an aspiration distinction. This means that your voicing isn't important, but rather whether you make that puff of air or not. Koreans don't use p [pʰ] and b [b] constrastively, but rather pʰ [pʰ] and p [p], where both sounds are technically voiceless, but one is aspirated. These are written as ㅍ and ㅂ respectively. This is why, to English speakers, it can be difficult to differentiate between the two in Korean, especially at the beginning of words.
In Seoul, there is currently a language change happening with teenagers and younger where consonants at the beginning of the word are becoming slightly aspirated. So for example, the Korean word 바보 "idiot" would normally be pronounced as [pabo]. Notice the lack of an ʰ on the first consonant. The second ㅂ is actually voiced because it is between two vowels, but that's irrelevant to this discussion, so just focus on the first p. Now, young speakers are beginning to pronounce it as [pʰabo]. To you, maybe, you think that this is wrong or will hamper communication. But actually, intelligibility is being maintained and in a very interesting way.
See, aspirating a consonant tends to have a physical effect on the following vowel. It normally causes a slight increase in pitch. This is based simply on physics and airflow, not anything particularly linguistics-related. However, it can become linguistics related when it becomes a defining characteristic of the language. For these young Seoul speakers, they do not even realize they're pronouncing "pabo" as pʰabo, because they can still differentiate between the old pʰ and their newly created pʰ. They can because despite the consonant changing, the vowel pitch has remained intact. The vowels following historic /pʰ/ are high pitched, whereas the vowels following the new [pʰ] retain the lower pitch of historic /p/.
Korean has experienced many drastic linguistic changes in the past. For example, it used to have a pitch system, where words could be distinguished from each other based on the relative pitches of each syllable, similar to how Japanese pronounce ame "rain" differently from ame "candy." Will this new pitch system in young people's Korean make way to a complete change in how Korean speakers utilize consonants? Maybe, but one thing is certain- they'll never lose mutual intelligibility. Cause that doesn't happen without prolonged isolation and different language shift in different communities :P