English has never sat still. “Nice” once meant foolish, “silly” once meant blessed, and “literally” has been meaning “not literally” for four hundred years, long before anyone started complaining about it on the internet.
What has changed is the speed. Dictionaries used to wait decades before admitting a word; today “gaslighting”, “quiet quitting” and “unmute yourself” travel from niche to boardroom in a couple of years. Some will last — “ghosting” has already crossed from dating into recruitment — and some will fade before the next rebrand. The words we use for work are increasingly written by the work itself.
For learners, that matters more than it sounds. Coursebooks describe a frozen, formal English that native speakers reserve for never. If your team’s material stops at “I am writing to inquire”, they will understand their British counterpart’s emails only if that counterpart was trained in 1985.
So teach the living language. Keep a shared word list of what is actually circulating in your meetings, chats and headlines, and update it every quarter. Encouraging learners to notice new usage is not lowering standards; it is keeping the language they are paying to learn in working order.
It is also, honestly, the fun part. Watch a language change and you are watching culture with the lid off.
– fin. Questions? Just ask.
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