‘In his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell argued that bad writers “are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones.” Today, artificial intelligence chatbots have fallen victim to the same blunder.

The idea that Latin-derived terms like “exhibit,” “triumph” and “consume” sound fancier than Germanic words like “show,” “win” and “eat” traces back to at least the Norman Conquest, when the previous Old English-speaking elites were suddenly replaced by a new French-speaking aristocracy. As Romance vocabulary became associated with the educated upper class, it increasingly took on a feeling of cultural prestige — a feeling that compounded as English borrowed additional waves of Latin loanwords during and after the Renaissance.

Even in the 21st century, this bias continues to permeate our social interactions. We’ll use more Latin terms when we want to speak formally or authoritatively; we’ll use Germanic words to sound crass or casual. I’m writing this article using Romance words like “permeate” and “authoritatively” because they make it sound like I know what I’m talking about. A new study from a group of researchers at Florida State University suggests that AI chatbots have also inherited this proclivity. After testing six AI models, the researchers found consistent favoritism for words coming from Latin and French over those with Germanic etymologies — even more than you would typically encounter in the English language….’ (Adam Aleksic via The Washington Post)