How Language Changes—Modern English

It is useful to see how language change has happened in our own language even in times relatively close to our own. As recently as Shakespeare, words had meanings more different than is always obvious to us, which interferes with our comprehension of his language. Even in the 1800s, Jane Austen’s work is full of sentences that would be considered errors today, and we would be shocked by what was considered acceptable pronunciation of many words in that time. This also shows that language change is less decay than mere transformation, given that we tend to gain alongside the losses.