English’s ability to evolve means it will not go the Latin way

You cannot order a pizza in Latin. Even if you spoke the ancient tongue, there is simply no vocabulary to describe the Italian savoury. The language is dead. Nothing is being added or taken away from it.

However, English, is going great guns. New words are constantly being added and existing words embracing new meanings, quite literally. The words come from everywhere: different languages across the continents to the present youth culture.

The dictionary would somehow seem incomplete today without our beloved omnishambles, geek chic or, dare we say, twerking, which have recently entered the Oxford Dictionaries Online.

The proliferation of new words in the lexical landscape will perhaps wreak havoc on the poor spellcheck; as if it wasn’t hapless enough already. But as the word bank of the language grows, it evolves and continues to live.

We are perhaps lucky witnesses to the transmogrification of the English language. After all, English must continue to evolve as it has ever since the days of Chaucer and Shakespeare.

Today’s neologisms will form tomorrow’s clichés. That is the way of the word. Here today, changed tomorrow. Apart from giving a new lease of life to the English language, the additions — above all — remind us all of the inevitability and poignancy of change.