In a recent article in “Scientific American,” author Anvita Patwardhan discusses “how our thoughts shape the way spoken words evolve.”
We might ask, what causes a word to survive versus another that goes extinct?
Darwin likened the evolution of words with the natural selection of human and animal species. He said that some words continue because they fulfill our lexical needs to communicate. (Others get dropped because they don’t.)
Recently, researchers have studied how words pass down to other participants. Thousands of subjects passed stories down a line and academics recorded which words survived. Also, large collections of English historical texts were studied (dating from the last two centuries, containing more than 40 Billion words), and only certain kinds of words survived then.
The word types that speakers consistently used drove language use, over time.
Patwardhan notes that three types of words are most likely to survive:
(1) Words we learn early (“uncle,” “today,” “hand,” “dog”);
(2) Words that are concrete, not abstract (“dog” survived longer than “animal”); and
(3) Emotionally exciting words (eliciting both positive and negative emotions, such as “Happy Birthday!” or “Get Help!”).
In the past, linguists and historians assumed that language complexity increases over time.
But a recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, shows that language becomes more efficient and easier to understand, as time passes.
This is “not” however, to say that English is “baby talk,” one of the authors asserted.
Yes, we gravitate toward simple language. But “we also grab complex language” when we need it.
And there are plenty of complex aspects of English grammar, such as the “five ways” to express the future tense in our contemporary tongue. But even these complexities are growing simpler over time. 
In this increasingly AI-driven world where some communicators delegate plenty of communication to ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude3, we must consider how important it is for us to keep on expressing our own ideas, or risk losing words we need to reflect human experience.
Words that are learned early, that are concrete and emotionally evocative persist over generations. They are important, but they are not everything.
So in ways not before seen, Patwardhan urges us to consider how “our thoughts” and emotional needs “shape the way spoken words evolve.” And if we want our lexicon to reflect the complexity of our (human) experience in the future, we must keep writing–our own texts and copy!
AI is useful, but only integrating it with EI (emotional intelligence) will keep our ideas and vocabulary alive. So, keep writing!
And that’s a commendation to learners of the English language (ESL), language majors, copywriters, editors and more.
And now it’s your turn. How do you think that the longevity of language relies on our thinking and emotions? Please write in; I’d be delighted to hear from you!