I have noticed this phenomenon a lot in news broadcasts. Last night, for instance, a local talking head, referring to a person who had refused to speak to a reporter, said the person “didn’t want to interview.”
I understand the change in language and think the shift is fruitless to fight, but I don’t care for it. But the “problem” is self-correcting. If the growing avoidance of the passive voice results in greater ambiguity, we will coin new words to resolve it. That is how language works.
Huh. So it’s not just the “release” usage, but others as well. I’ll have to keep an ear out for it. Maybe I just listen to NPR too much, although I haven’t heard it on local news, either. Maybe it’s somewhat regional?
Most other languages’ grammars and syntax constructions are far more regular than english. And while youth slang tends to make a mockery of the local language structure, it tends to normalize back much more than English does, once youth has been served.
And those few languages whose characteristics are as f*ked up as english tend to be rather uncommon ones.
As one of my favorite quotes goes
Go learn the rules of French verb conjugation and come back and tell me that. Or German verb and noun inflections. Actually, there is a close correspondence between strong verbbs (most of those we call irregular) in English and those of German. No surprise there.
For a strong example: sing, sang, sung in English, singen, sang, gesungen in German.
A weak irregular example: think, thought, thought in English, denken, dachte, gedacht in German.
This could just be that common verbs are much more likely to be irregular. For any language that has irregular conjugations, I’d bet that ‘to be’ conjugates irregularly. I’d also bet that ‘to vivisect’ is regular.
And English combines the worst of both those languages, as you well know that it’s heavily influenced by their ancient forms!
Plus the irregularities of Danish, Latin, Celtic, and Og knows what else. 