Language change is inevitable

There is nothing anyone can do to avoid it: the only unchanging language is a language without native speakers, such as Classical Latin or Sanskrit. Languages of this type may be of considerable importance within certain cultures, but they are retained as a heritage item, rather than an integral part of everyone's experience from early childhood. Moreover, there was a time when languages of this type were true languages: at that time, these languages were as given to change as any other natural language: we need only consider the differences between early varieties of Latin and the Classical Latin many of us learned at school to recognise this truth.

Language change is everywhere

As I hope I have shown in this book, everywhere we look we will find evidence of language change. We can hear it in our own linguistic behaviour and in that of people younger and older than us. We can see it in the names of places, whether we understand them or not. We can perceive it in the books we read and the reasons why we choose not to read books or plays which were once fashionable and current. All we need to do to begin to do this is to ‘tune’ our inner ear to recognise change; with further study, it becomes very difficult not to concentrate on change in the past and the present.