Griffy and Zippy contemplate the immensity of geological time, and the effects of erosion:
Over on Language Log, we’ve posted again and again about so-called “g-dropping” (most English speakers don’t in fact have a final [g] in words spelled with final NG — there’s no actual “erosion” here — but the name is traditional, so the phenomenon of alveolar or dental nasal as a variant of velar nasal in final position is customarily referred to, even by linguists, under its orthography-based name). Pretty much every native speaker of English has some g-dropping in PRP –ing and some compound pronouns in -thing, but there is very complex variation as to who does this, in what social and linguistic contexts, and to what degree. And of course some people are especially likely to detect it from certain speakers — so Sarah Palin tends to take more heat than she probably deserves.
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