Page 14 - Exam-2nd-2023-Jun
P. 14
No . 24
New words and expressions emerge continually in
response to new situations, ideas and feelings. The
Oxford English Dictionary publishes supplements of
new words and expressions that have entered the
language. Some people deplore this kind of thing and
see it as a drift from correct English. But it was only in
the eighteenth century that any attempt was made to
formalize spelling and punctuation of English at all.
The language we speak in the twenty-first century
would be virtually unintelligible to Shakespeare, and
so would his way of speaking to us. Alvin Toffler
estimated that Shakespeare would probably only
understand about 250,000 of the 450,000 words in
general use in the English language now. In other
words, so to speak, if Shakespeare were to
materialize in London today he would understand,
on average, only five out of every nine words in our
vocabulary.
* deplore: 한탄하다
