About the degradation of language

[Superbia]

I'm posting this to ask if there is this same phenomenon in other countries as well. In Germany, the decline of the written but first and foremost spoken language is reaching astonishing levels. Of course we all notice old people use some outfashioned terms and somehow more complicated phrases and such. I don't mean that. I'm referring to the fact that young people (15-25) have very much lost the skill to develop more or less complex sentences, express a thought with rigour, or justify a conclusion. This is to be seen even at University, where students when they rise to speak at a lecture etc, rely all the time to fillers ("halt", "quasi", "eben"), depriving these words of their actual meaning and most of the times giving empty statements. This is, of course, also noticeable when young people appear in television.
The culmination of this process is the abusive and non-stoppable use of English terms. I don't mean taking a foreign term for something which has no own word in a given language, which can be acceptable: I'm talking about constantly using English words or phrases instead of the alread existing German ones. Like saying "whatever", "workshop", "sorry", "comeback", "train", just to name a couple of them I heard the last days. Needless to say, there's a perfectly normal German word for all of those examples, but for some reason people won't use them. I bet this is an attempt to gain coolness, seeing it is also widespread among students, pretending intellectuals (often found in trendy bars drinking wine etc). But this is losing the essence of a language and degrading it to some kind of soulless trendy mix. I find it disgusting.
And in the case of German, it's not like it is a very modern and not developed language who doesn't have enough cultural tradition, writers etc so that they need to borrow from outside
So, do you see something similar in your countries? What do you think about it?

[Corvus]

Indeed it is quite alarming, if this trend continous German and English will melt together soon. The problem is that both languages are so tightly related that many people do often not even realize if the vocabulary they use is of German or English origin.

It may occor in other languages too because of the Anglication of our globalised, connected world and the establishment of English as lingua franca, but I think Germany is a special case because of the beformentioned proximity of both languages in grammar and vocabulary.

[Superbia]

Indeed it is quite alarming, if this trend continous German and English will melt together soon. The problem is that both languages are so tightly related that many people do often not even realize if the vocabulary they use is of German or English origin.

It may occor in other languages too because of the Anglication of our globalised, connected world and the establishment of English as lingua franca, but I think Germany is a special case because of the beformentioned proximity of both languages in grammar and vocabulary.

I'm not sure about the proximity of both languages playing such an important role, I think it has a lot more to do with the globalisation and Anglication you mentioned. The proof for it is that German people pronounce the English words with a different accent, so they do realise they are using a different language. They just prefer it because it's "cooler", in my opinion.

[Corvus]

I'm not sure about the proximity of both languages playing such an important role, I think it has a lot more to do with the globalisation and Anglication you mentioned. The proof for it is that German people pronounce the English words with a different accent, so they do realise they are using a different language. They just prefer it because it's "cooler", in my opinion.

This might play be a significant role. The US Hip Hop culture has succesfully infiltrated the German territory which is not only reflected by clothes but also by language and attidute.

Nevertheless bear in mind that 60% of the German and English words are almost identical and just spelled and pronounced in a different way.

It is in my humble opinion a combination of both factors.

[Fortis in Arduis]

I am against it, yet, even I succumb to it because the media is now saturated and, to use a neologism, "dumbed-down", to appeal to the people who prefer this degraded language.

Sympathetic circularities such as 'like', 'kinda', 'sort of', and most famously, 'do you know what I mean?' have become almost ubiquitous, constituting a loss of thought and meaning.

I actually have an agreement with my partner that these words and phrases are not to be spoken in our mutual company.

English speakers very rarely utilise, 'one', as the impersonal pronoun, yet, it is meaningful, and a terrible loss to the language.

[Sikeliot]

Here is what is degrading language in the US: hip hop culture and rap. And now we're supposed to view urban speech as an equally valid way of speaking English because if we don't, it's "culturally insensitive". How is sounding like you're uneducated and can't string a sentence together "culture"?

[Peyrol]

Same is happening also there.

Too bad because italian was used to be one fo the most complex and articulated language in Europe.

[superhorn]

People have been complaining about the decline of whatever language they happen to speak for centuries . It's nothing new .
Languages do not "decline". They evolve. Ask any linguist .

[Fortis in Arduis]

People have been complaining about the decline of whatever language they happen to speak for centuries . It's nothing new .
Languages do not "decline". They evolve. Ask any linguist .

I read Steven Pinker a long time ago, and decided that the Jew was wrong in the light of recent changes.

The English language is degrading in its common use, and even in broadsheet publications, and the media is being 'dumbed-down' accordingly.

'The Times' newspaper used to be a broadsheet full of well-written articles. Slowly the celebrity gossip and left commentary crept in and it became a thinner broadsheet and then a tabloid newspaper with broadsheet pretensions.

Ask any Englishman with a brain, and over thirty years' old and they will say the same thing. It shrank in size and became a left-wing tabloid, and that was part of a general trend in newspaper publication.

The loss of the impersonal pronoun constitutes a loss of meaning, even by Steven Pinker's standards.

In a recent documentary the Prince of Wales was positively straining not to use it, and this is across the board.

It is called 'dumbing-down', and I, for one, am sick of it.

[Superbia]

People have been complaining about the decline of whatever language they happen to speak for centuries . It's nothing new .
Languages do not "decline". They evolve. Ask any linguist .

Therefore I warned I didn't mean the natural evolution of language. I was talking about importing foreign terms due to influence of mass dominating culture, loss of accuracy, content and expression richness, etc. One could add the decline of the written press as Fortis in Arduis mentioned, the imposing trend of best-sellers (garbage literature), or actually the fact that no one reads books anymore. Yeah television, "evolution" if you will.