“Words Began Dying More Often In The Past 10 To 20 Years”

It would make sense that the lingua franca becomes simpler and flatter as people communicate more widely, as they need to find common ground with others from a variety of backgrounds and locations. And what has spellcheck, texting, etc. wrought for language? From Charles Choi at Discovery:

“The investigators found words began dying more often in the past 10 to 20 years than they had in all the time measured before. At the same time, they discovered languages were seeing fewer entirely new words emerging. They suggest that automatic spell-checkers may be partly responsible, killing misspelled or unusual counterparts of accepted words before they see print.”

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Speaking Ubbi Dubbi, back when pencils were still in use:

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