Language in society

LANGUAGE is a good conservator. Many times the customs and practices of society which have not survived anywhere else can be found in language. For instance, stipulation comes from stipula, a straw. This refers to the Roman custom of two persons breaking a straw between them when entering into an agreement with each other. Thrall or thraldom comes from a time when it was the custom to thrill or pierce the ear of a slave as a symbol of servitude. Again, while signing one’s name, one is preserving a record of the time when most persons made their mark or sign; even great kings and barons had to do it. The rudiments of writing were available to very few people.

Calculation comes from the early period of the science of numbers when pebbles or calculi were used for counting.Libraries preserve the fact that books were once written on the bark or liber of trees. Theories which were renounced long ago have left their footprints behind. The words good humour, bad humour and even dry humour come from the old medical belief that four principle body fluids or humours control the disposition of mind and body. Temper originates from the same theory, the due balance or right tempering of these gave the happy temper and an imbalance, the unhappy temper. Similarly, distemper, which is still used in the sense of illness, was the evil frame of body or mind which had its origin in an unsuitable mingling of these humours.

Similarly, very few people now believe in astrology which says that the planet under which a person is born affects his temperament. We still speak of a person being jovial, mercurial or saturnine; Jove being the happiest star, Saturn the most stern and Mercury the light-hearted one.

Sometimes, words that have fallen out of use are revived by changing social norms. For instance, brethren and sistren were used upto the Fifteenth century as the plural forms of brother and sister. From about the time of Shakespeare, brothers began to take over and sistren vanished. Brethren was occasionally used to refer to fellow members in a community. Recently, sistren has been revived, mainly by feminist writers, and is in the process of regaining general acceptance. To quote R.C. Trench, "The great streams of thought and feeling have changed their course and now flow in quite other channels from those which once they filled, but have left these words as lasting memorials of the channels in which once they ran."

Tap-root

Like every other language, Hindi, too, faithfully records the changes and trends in the world. The addition of Arabic, Persian and Turkish words to the vocabulary of Hindi during the Bhakti period, reveals the deep impact of Muslim culture and tradition on Indian society. The advent of the British rule in India is aptly reflected in the number of English words absorbed by the language. After being absorbed, these words went through various semantic changes.

— Deepti