Corruption or bastardization is a way of referring to certain changes in a language. The most common way that a word can be said to be corrupted is the change of its spelling through errors and gradual changes in comprehension, transcription, and hearing. This is especially common with words borrowed from another language. For example Guangzhou was formerly known as Canton, which is a transliteration of Guangdong following the rules of French sound structures. The terms "corruption" and "bastardization" carry negative connotations, and are rooted in prescriptivist theories of language.

Language corruption may refer to two similar things:

• Change of words, as described above.
• Difference from the so-called "purity" of standard language. For example, the split infinitive has long been disputed as either a corruption or norm of the English language.

History

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In the past, with unstandardized spelling for English and other languages, a word would be pronounced differently by people who encountered the word in text and not speech. Eventually, such changes could become standardized. A large number of these changes occurred during the 19th century. English is now highly standardized with some dialectal variation.

The mass written communication of the Internet promotes even greater standardization; however, its informal nature often encourages intentional language changes. In online interactive games, chat rooms and other situations, common typographical errors and attempts at humor have created a number of new alternate spellings (see leet).

Examples

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Some commonly known words and phrases which are the result of linguistic corruption include:

• "vamoose" (from the Spanish verb vamos, which means "Let's go")
• "Baphomet" (from the Old French transliteration of Mohammed: "Mahomet")
• "Cajun" (from "Acadian")
• "spitting image" (from "spit and image")
• "parting shot" (from "Parthian shot")
• "blab idiot" (from "blather idiot")
• "That doesn't jive (with the facts)." (from "That doesn't jibe with the facts.")
• "to coin a phrase" (meaning: "so to speak" or "to use a figurative expression")

See also

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• Lectio difficilior potior
• Morphology (linguistics)
• Neologism
• Portmanteau

Linguistics | Sociolinguistics