Globish

The New Scientist ran an article on the evolution of the English language this week and it provided some very interesting reading.

The English language has changed over the centuries and it continues to change today. As you probably know, It can be hard to understand Shakespeare's English, and that is only 400 years old. Chaucer's 14th century English is beyond most of us. So imagine what English might be like in 500 years from now...or 1000 years!

One of the theories described in this article is that irregular verbs gradually disappear from the language. Apparently "helped" used to be "holp" for example.

However, there are still many irregular verbs in use today such as "be", "have", "do", etc. The next candidate for regularisation is, according to the article, the past participle of "wed" which is "wed" and yet is now being changed slowly to "wedded".

Well, this is all very interesting but what has it got to do with science? Quite simple, the article was written by a mathematician! This sort of analysis requires scientific methods and what really caught my interest is this wonderful statement about verbs:

"The half-life of irregular verbs is proportional to the square-root of their frequency"

Can you explain what this means?

Hint: You will need to sketch at least two graphs to illustrate your explanation.

The School LIbrary, Colegio Euroamericano, Pachacámac, Peru, 29/03/2008