Everybae People

The recent news stories about Scrabble are a gift to A2 students revising Language Change and Discourses, so have a look at these links for some good stuff on new words, and lots of "OMG, how can that even be called a word?!" reactions.

Here's Ben Farren of The Guardian listing lots of them.
Here's The Daily Telegraph looking at both sides: from Sue Bowman of the Association of British Scrabble Players who reckons it's "an abuse of the English language" to Gyles Brandreth, founder of the National Scrabble Competition who says "hang loose and get down on the street". Yeesh!
Meanwhile, Elaine Higgleton offers a staunchly descriptive defence of the new entries in this Radio 4 clip.

Language change hit the headlines a little while ago too in the aftermath of a thinly-disguised marketing exercise for a new Samsung phone, with several articles looking at how older generations claim to feel completely bamboozled about young people's new slang.

Here we have The Guardian explaining how language is changing faster than ever before.
Then, there's The Daily Telegraph saying the same thing in a slightly older and more baffled way.
The Daily Mail reckons it's all the fault of trades unions, gay marriage, Red Ed and immigrants (probably).
The Huffington Post keeps it fleek.

But just to prove that older people have always struggled with young people's language, here's Ben Zimmer looking at an American newspaper from 1911 saying nearly the same thing.

Thanks to various Twitter people for the links (@languagepigeon @agwilliams9 @tonythorne007 @bgzimmer)