In general, it is becoming less formal. Some changes have taken place in grammar. Many educated people say less Instead of fewer with countable nouns, for example — less people.
Over the past hundred years since linguists have been noting pronunciation, certain sounds in the language have changed. The area where most change has taken place, is that of vocabulary. Every year new words come into the English language. Some come from other countries, especially from North America, and some are created. These new words are linked with the society. For example, in the enterprise society there are yuppies who have a particular type of a life style. They live in big cities and are well-off. When they take their Porche to the garage for a service they take care not to be ripped off by cowboys. They call people over the age of forty wrinklies.
Many people today work with computers which gave us a lot of new words and expressions: to get to know a new machine you need hands-on experience. It’s bad to have a bug in the system and even worse to have a computer virus. You must also be careful of hackers.
Everyone is trying to be green. We don’t bin newspapers, we recycle them. We are also more careful about what we eat. We don’t eat junk food, we look for organic and additive-free food, and some of us are veggies.
Слова:
yuppies — (young urban professionals) — яппи (состоятельные молодые люди, работающие по профессии и живущие в городе)
well-off — состоятельный, богатый
wrinkle — морщинка
wrinkly — морщинистый (пожилой) человек
be ripped off — быть ограбленным
hands-on experience — зд. практический опыт работы с компьютером
bug — зд. неисправность, дефект
to bin — выбрасывать
junk food — суррогат (высококалорийный, но малоценный с точки зрения питательности продукт)
additive — добавка (пищевая)
additive-free — без добавок
veggy — вегетарианец
