If you were to transcribe the last conversation you had with a friend, word for word, what would it look like? For starters, there would probably be at least a few dozen extra words, depending on how long you talked. Think of how many times we say things like "but" or "and" or "you know" in informal conversation.
That's just one of the many differences between written and spoken language that we've talked about on That's What They Say, but this week we're thinking about them from a whole "nother" angle, thanks to our listener Peter O'Neill:
"It seems like one of the primary ways you research usages of words over the years is through searching through large databases of texts. It seems to me that phrases like ‘a whole nother’ are primarily spoken things — and would rarely be written out. How do you approach studying changes in spoken language from the past?"
The fact is that if "a whole nother" did get written down, it would probably get edited out. O'Neill brings up an important question though, particularly for a linguist like Professor Anne Curzan, who studies the history of English. How can we study spoken English from hundreds years ago?
Unfortunately, we can't look at spoken language that old because we don't have recordings. All we can do is look at written text that comes as close to the spoken as we can get — things like personal letters and diaries, trial records and witness depositions. We can hope that this gets us closer to the spoken language of older periods, but the truth is, much is lost.
For more on written vs. spoken language, listen to the audio above.
