Choice in words often changes with time.
Examining data and word usage over the past sixty five years in the United States will show that grammar and vocabulary has changed over time even if everyone still speaks English.
A popular saying would be "
We all speak English, but we don't all talk the same language". This is evident in various professions or job roles throughout developed nations such as banking, accounting, trucking, car mechanics, computer technicians, engineers, nursing, doctors, lawyers, attorneys, government workers, and humanitarian relief services.
They all speak English but they may not necessarily understand each other unless their specific usage of the combination of words is explained through job role based or communications training so that they can all understand concepts in the words they have selected to form their methods of communications.
Its important to document this from time to time or as it occurs. Currently, a form of doing this is to keep excerpts or archives of media and publications from different time periods so that a comparitive analysis can be completed by historians, archivists, human development specialists, and behavioral psychologists, who most often now work in medical research and baseline documentations.
These human communication documentations, can be found in television, radio, newspapers, magazines, government publications such as legislation and laws, and select court dockets such as those that aren't privacy protected or who have been redacted and publicized with the court participants permission. Often, further obfuscated to prevent infamy of crimes or undue behavioral norms in seeking sought out attention.
This is something fairly new, and there is a current trend to modernize existing archives for accesibility; and to additionally traditionalize modern online publications and communication streams so that they conform to archival standards if selected and allowed for inclusion.
Its worth noting that the documentation of word origin is called
etymology and while this normally traces the dates when a word first appeared, went out of popular usage, or replaced by a synonym or non related word completely, it can also document the word breakdown of a portmonteau which, each word part would then have their own history and historical context.
Examples:
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- paralegal - legal stoppers
- parasol - sun blockers
- paragua - water blockers
- paramilitary - stop a military or military stoppers
from dual mixed Spanish where para means stop.
Will update this list with more examples later and this will be a popular subject amongst human development specialists and behavioral psychologists between 2025 and 2040. It'll be worth noting how words have shaped human development and how communications differ even with the same set of words are used in combination.