> The additional layer of linguistic distance between them and Shakespeare is comparable to my own struggles through Chaucer in the original Middle English
I guess I don't talk to enough high school kids but is this really actually true? There has been ~200 years of linguistic evolution between when this teacher went to school and now? English has changed as significantly as it did between
"Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote"
and
"But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun."
Wasn't the theory that recorded media would decrease the rate of core linguistic evolution? There has always been slang, but I would call this a total false equivalence.
Agreed. When I was younger, talking to older (40+ year age gap) people was a bit of a minor shift in vocab or syntax, but I wouldn't call it a "code switch."
If we have hit a point where communicating with people speaking the same language in the same region who are only a generation removed (or 2 at most) requires a "code switch" carrying substantial cognitive overhead... we have a problem.
I'm not claiming that it isn't happening, but it seems like a misstep to just accept it as inevitable. Communication with most of the rest of the same-dialect speaking population of a region should be an innate skill by the time someone is in middle/high school.
(non native speakers or transplants are a whole different ballgame, but I don't think that is what the author is discussing here)
I guess I don't talk to enough high school kids but is this really actually true? There has been ~200 years of linguistic evolution between when this teacher went to school and now? English has changed as significantly as it did between
"Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote"
and
"But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun."
Wasn't the theory that recorded media would decrease the rate of core linguistic evolution? There has always been slang, but I would call this a total false equivalence.