In English a duck says quack quack , in Italian qua qua , in Thai gaab gaab , and in Russian krya-krya . Language mirrors the history and culture of its speakers. Dialects often incorporate words or grammatical structures of other languages. Word meanings change with time hence the need to indicate the original meaning of words when we read Shakespearean plays, written around 1600, today. Dictionaries indicate current educated usage, not what a word is supposed to mean, which explains why there have been ten editions of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate dictionary in the past hundred years.
Many people lament how, or even that, the language is changing.
Such an attitude is, regrettably, both uninformed and hopeless. Spoken languages constantly change, as surely as the trees turn every fall. All rights reserved. This Web page may be linked to other Web pages.