Oxford Dictionaries' word of the year for 2015 isn't a word at all; it's an emoji, one of those little faces that you see all over on social media. And I'm hearing extreme glottal stops (as in "the new football coach at USC is Clay Helhhh-uhhn (Helton)" and "strength" pronounced as "shtrength." It's enough to drive a language purist to distraction.
On Thursday's Access Utah we're going to ask: Where is language going and how can we stop it from going there? :) We'll entertain your language complaints, and talk with Simon Horobin, Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Oxford, and author of a recent article on The Conversation titled "What Will the English Language Be Like in 100 Years?"
Horobin is also the author of the new book "How English Became English: A Short History of a Global Language."
Then, our listener Steve MacIntyre, created a list of Convergent Word Twins — a hobby of his, which assembles a list of word pairs with similar meaning and similar pronunciation. He views them as candidates for convergence by which each of the pairs drives the other out of the language over time.
• Boom/Boon
• Clasp/Hasp
• Careen/Career
• Elegy/Eulogy
• Explication/Explanation
• Fail/Flail
• Feast/Fest
• Fletch/Flitch
• Founder/Flounder
• Grill/Griddle
• Home/Hone
• Immunity/Impunity
• Maunder/Meander
• Musky/Musty
• Persecute/Prosecute
• Prattle/Rattle
• Quash/Squash
• Rebound/Redound
• Roll/Roil
• Salon/Saloon
• Scrabble/Scramble
• Snoot/Snout
• Scattering/Smattering
• Spatter/Splatter
• Swatch/Swath
• Track/Tract
• Trammel/Trample
• Trawl/Troll
• Wiggle/Wriggle
