Language is always changing. At one point ‘an apron’ was ‘a napron’ while words like ‘literally’ are no longer literally literal. What are some language battles that have been lost in living memory and what are some others you predict will soon occur?
Edit: Non-english examples very welcome!
Unfortunately, I’m not a native German speaker. So, take this with a grain of salt.
I will say that the German language has always been open to loan words from other languages. And, according to my German teacher (who is native), the biggest change recently in that regard is NOT how loan words are accepted BUT how quickly they are accepted these days. New loan words are being added all the time, especially by young people. He said that generally the word will be accepted as it is at first, and then over time it well become more “germanified” and used more like native words. He said this process used to take decades but now it can happen in less than a year. An example of a germanified English loan word is “chatten” which means “to chat,” just like English. Ich chatte, du chattest, wir chatten. (I chat, you chat, we chat.)
I believe the simplification of grammatical structures (like the abandonment of genetive) has been going on slowly over centuries and is mostly unrelated to contact with English speakers. But, there is likely some influence there.
Really interesting stuff! It just goes to show that even without ‘authorities’ such as the French Language Academy, loan words end up becoming modified and molded by their adoptive language. I’m learning Japanese and it has so many loan words going all the way back to the dutch. Some are barely recognisable for example computer is パソコン = pasokon = personal computer.