YP Letters: If English didn't change we'd still be talking Chaucer

The birthplace of William Shakespeare but is the Bard's legacy being undermined by the misuse of the English language?

I AM afraid that Father Neil McNicholas’s well-intentioned remonstrations regarding the misuse or abuse of the English language are but whistlings in the wind (The Yorkshire Post, August 21). Two processes that bring about language change are contraction and emphasis.

We hear plenty of the former in Yorkshire from the legendary “tintintin” to the everyday “Innit”?

Very unique, etc belongs to the latter along with “Thank you so much” and “Thank you ever so much”. These are simply aspects of human nature that affect all languages to some degree or other.

If English hadn’t changed, we would still be speaking the language of Shakespeare or even Chaucer.

Understandably the phrase “Oh! My God” irritates him; that, along with “Wow”, seem simply to be fashionable expressions. We can but hope that this trivial usage rapidly fades from common usage.

Doubtless they will be replaced with other equally irritating expressions.