F***! Did we really speak better back then? By Charlie Gutsell

Oh I'm sorry, did that offend you? Ever wondered why senior citizens seem to use a much more formal vocabulary that the rest of us? Back in their day it would have been words like golly that would have had us gasping in horror. F*** and golly. I know exactly which one I would be more offended by. Are we growing in to a spiral ignorance and immaturity? Or should we try to adopt the older more sophisticated way of speech, in an attempt to try and rekindle our dignity?

Having done a little research, and gaining the views of all generations, I was able to spot a similarity between the two age groups. According to the older generation, they seem to feel that using modern day slang can portray them as being casual and immature. This automatically indicates that the older generation will stay clear of using modern day slang. However back in their day words like golly would have probably exclaimed the same meaning as that as our modern day slang. Also having got the views of the younger generation on what they think, they led me to believe that they don't like older people using slang either. They claim that this will portray the Youngers to be 'less cool' and that they have a 'rep to protect'. So both generations seem to agree that older people using slang is something that should be discouraged. For more information on this visit: www.perspectives.com.

In my humble opinion, I'd say that your vocabulary ultimately depends on where you were brought up and when. Language has evolved over the generations, so it's understandable that everyone has a different kind of vocabulary. Two people born in exactly the same place, but say 50 years apart will almost definitely has a different idiolect, due to the evolution of language. So no, I don't feel older people are better spoken then younger people, I feel that both generations are implying the same things, but due to the gradual change of language, they are being expressed in different ways (language evolution.)

Do I feel that we should then adopt the language of yesteryears? No I do not, because that would then eliminate the evolution of language entirely. The whole point is to evolve and adapt to make things easier for ourselves, so if we all of a sudden changed our language back to years gone by, we would be taking steps back and not evolving. I feel that doing that could be lead to us astray and onto a path where we do not know the route. Almost turing us into robots, we need language to evolve, to help us keep our individuality.

Overall it seems that this is one question that doesn't consist of just one answer, there are many opinions that must be taken into account before coming to a conclusion.