Paper 3, Question 1 - Andrew M.

 Throughout time, not only the English language, but many languages have changed and evolved. This text is a very good example of the change throughout the years. At face value, older text might seem identical to something that would be written in modern day English literature, but there are a lot of discerning factors that play into the variation between this text and modern English.

First of all, the structure in text A is very unique from the currently used English structure. The sentence structure is very long and descriptive. For example, “You will, I am sure, my dear nephew, take it in good part, if I point out a few of the conversational faults, of which young men are apt to be guilty.” A noticeable characteristic of the sentence is the overuse of commas that turn the sentence into a run on sentence. Another thing that these commas accomplish is breaking up the speaking pattern. While modern day English speakers may break up their speech while speaking, the majority of writing from modern day does not contain visual breaks when the reader reads it. Another structure difference is that the sentences found in text A are very long, which does not line up with newer sentence structure. For example, many of the sentences are at least 30 words long or even longer in some cases. A big reason for this expanding of sentence length is the use of the aforementioned punctuation like commas found in many sentences throughout text A and semicolons that are found in the last paragraph.

Another apparent example of language evolution is the actual linguistic use. For example, in the first paragraph of Text A, the author uses the phrase “apt to be”. According to text C, this phrase is similar to the phrases “are likely to be” and “tend to be”. According to the chart in text C it is apparent that “apt to be” has been decommissioned and the new phrases that have been previously listed have taken over as the main way to articulate this phrase in modern day. Another example of language that is being used in text A that is out of date is the author’s use of the word “coxcomb”. Most individuals will most likely have never heard this word but the definition of it is “a vain and conceited man; a dandy.”. Basically this means that anyone that is a “coxcomb” is an over confident person. In the 1800’s this word was used very commonly but overtime, it has become almost non-existent in the modern era of the English language. Another word that this text contains that is not commonly used nowadays is the word “anecdote”. It means a real short story about something or someone. While students are still taught about the word and have to write anecdotes in class, the word isn’t commonly used in everyday life. 

A big reason that the English language has changed drastically from 1832 (the year text A was written) to 2022 is the world events that were going on at the time. A big reason why older texts contain poorly written sentence structures (at least in modern vision) is because of the education system. Many kids were raised on farms, plantations, and other places so education was never put first. Also, money was a problem for a lot of families so they could never send their children to school to learn how to write properly. If a kid managed to get to school, they were usually put in a one room schoolhouse and placed with other children that differed in grades from kindergarten to high school. This blend of students was unbeneficial to the learning process of children because of the lack of one-on-one time between teacher and student.

Overall, the English language has changed a lot while the world around it has also changed unequivocally. This parallel development of literature and societal norms has undoubtedly changed the course of the English language maturation for generations to come.