Words Come and Go in English

01For VOA Learning English, this is Everyday Grammar.

02This week's Everyday Grammar is by a guest author, David Sullivan.

03He is Assistant Managing Editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer and Vice President of the American Copy Editors Society.

04Part of the reason that English has grown as a world language is that it adjusts easily to change.

05Unlike some other languages, there is no official English that must be used generation after generation, and there never has been.

06However, this means that what one was taught as a child in school may be out of fashion a couple of decades later.

07Slang is meant to come and go, but when common phrases change, it can make speakers feel wrong because they were taught that something else is right.

08One example of this is a term linked to school itself.

09Today, it is common for people to say that they graduated high school or college.

10graduated has two common meanings.

11One is to mark off a series.

12The easiest way to think of this is to go back to high school chemistry class and remember the tubes used for experiments.

13They are called graduated cylinders because they have lines to show how much liquid to add.

1410 milliliters, 20 milliliters, and so on.

15The lines make up a series.

16The other meaning is closely related.

17As you move through school, you cross off a series of achievements.

18Grade school, middle school, high school, and college.

19So, in a way, school itself is graduated.

20So, when people used to speak of getting a diploma, they said they graduated from college.

21To graduate college would have meant, literally, to mark it off by year.

22Freshman, sophomore, junior, senior.

23Similarly, to graduate to college would have meant to complete high school and move up to the next level.

24The use of the preposition was important.

25But, as happens often in English, when people understand your meaning, smaller words, verb forms, and other parts of speech can disappear.

26I graduated college today is easy to say.

27Sometimes, written language reflects the spoken one.

28Sometimes, it does not.

29In this case, usage has moved rapidly toward graduated college as acceptable, if not correct.

30This may upset people who were taught that you had to use from to be correct.

31But this is not the first time this phrase has been simplified.

32It used to be that you said, I was graduated from college instead of I graduated from college.

33The change may reflect how we think about the student and the university.

34Before, the emphasis was on the college.

35It graduated you.

36Now, the emphasis is on the student.

37I graduated.

38A search in Google's Engram viewer shows a sharp fall in the number of times people used was graduated from between 1920 and 2000.

39The phrase graduate college increased from 1930 to 2000.

40You can't predict what English will keep and what it will lose.

41Who could imagine that we would still say we dial a phone number when we now push buttons on our cell?

42Yet, we know what it means.

43And, of course, dial, like text, at one time was only a noun, not a verb.

44You looked at a sundial or the dial of a compass.

45People complain that English uses too many odd spellings like through, T-H-R-O-U-G-H, or donut, D-O-U-G-H-N-U-T.

46Many want to change them to simpler spellings.

47When it comes to speaking, though, modern English speakers get to the point quickly.

48The question is, why are we complaining?

49I'm Pete Musto.

50And I'm Jill Robbins.

51I'm Pete Musto.

52I'm Pete Musto.

53I'm Pete Musto.

54I'm Pete Musto.

55I'm Pete Musto.

56I'm Pete Musto.

57I'm Pete Musto.