ILTBY there's a book that just came out about Shakespeare. The author has good evidence that Shakespeare's plays were full of swears and sexual innuendo that we just don't understand because of how much the language changed. Apparently the big scene of Juliette on the balcony saying "wherefor art though Romeo", would be rated R if it was put into modern terms today. Except for a few decades where it was hidden and hushed up, people have always cursed and sworn, it's just seen more often today because of tv.
PrincessGarnet, I'm ashamed to say I use 'like' over and over when I'm speaking. It's just something I've slowly succumbed to, it's a major part of my vocabulary now. I'm a very awkward person when I speak IRL, so I fill in the gaps with 'like' and 'you know' and 'I mean'. I also use quite a lot of slang and some swearing these days, I guess people are just conforming to it, even if subconsciously. I'm glad to say that I'm very strict with spelling, though, I always make sure my sentences make sense, are properly structured and that all the words are spelt correctly Dom, that's very interesting, I think I've heard that before actually. I've just been studying some Shakespeare recently and it is easy to pick up how explicit he was if you study the text properly. Othello is incredibly inappropriate and explicit in some parts, it implies a lot of things that would be considered 'adult' these days.
I did not know about India. Cool. But I did know about China. Although that number is exaggerated, somewhat. A lot of their 'English' speakers, are barely intelligible and stop bothering to learn as soon as they are out of high school. Still the number who do learn it is huge. Which is why there is talk of calling Chinglish a new dialect of English. It will be interesting to see how that turns out.
