#language-evolution

#language-evolution

Evolution rarely invents entirely new solutions. Instead, it tinkers with existing systems, repurposing and refining them for new functions. Before our ancestors developed language, they already possessed sophisticated systems for controlling movement-reaching for objects, grasping tools, navigating space. These systems shared a common architecture: a motor planning component in the frontal lobes, a sensory target component in the temporal and parietal lobes, and a translation system connecting the two.

If you have spent time with an infant, you might recognize the scene: A child is wailing, inconsolable, and you, the parent, have to go to the bathroom. Or eat. Or attend to a pot that's boiling over. But someone needs to watch the baby. Such urgent situations often call for innovation. In modern times, we might negotiate schedules with our partners, seek out affordable child care, or purchase "baby-tainment" contraptions via our phones.

"It's not every day you get to see words like skibidi and delulu make their way into the Cambridge Dictionary," said Colin McIntosh.

"We only add words where we think they'll have staying power," Colin McIntosh, a Cambridge lexical program manager, said in a press release announcing the additions.

Skibidi is defined in the dictionary as 'a word that can have different meanings such as 'cool' or 'bad' or can be used with no real meaning as a joke'. An example of its use is 'What the skibidi are you doing?'.

Algospeak refers to the words used to get around censorship imposed by the algorithms that determine what ends up on our feeds; for example, kill has become unalive.

Social media creates new identities in order to commodify them, with decisions curated under personalization, designed primarily for profit. Language shifts reflect these changes.

The investigative journalist Diana Salinas referred to her craft as la filigrana, the filigree. I wouldn't have used the term in that context, and yet it struck me as perfect to describe the intricate, careful work that investigative reporting requires.

Shame I had to leave the job I loved, but better that than working for dickheads. If they're not interested in you, it is not worth trying to change them from within.