I thought it was a cute Japanese phrase like "Wai!" that made it over into English via geek culture, but if it's been around in English for more than a decade or so... probably not.
Baby talk --> Cookie Monster --> General American Public sounds both reasonable and delightful.
Re: Why do languages change specific words the way they do? I would guess there aren't "rules" for it because the systems are so complicated - it'd be like flipping a coin and trying to figure out exactly why it landed on heads, taking into account particles in the air and the rotation of the earth, etc. It's impossible to predict exactly what will happen in a specific instance; much simpler to work with trends and probabilities, like you said. Half the time a flipped coin lands on heads... most of the time in X situation [insert appropriate example of linguistic trend here].
These sorts of questions are why I think about going into systems research.
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Baby talk --> Cookie Monster --> General American Public sounds both reasonable and delightful.
Re: Why do languages change specific words the way they do? I would guess there aren't "rules" for it because the systems are so complicated - it'd be like flipping a coin and trying to figure out exactly why it landed on heads, taking into account particles in the air and the rotation of the earth, etc. It's impossible to predict exactly what will happen in a specific instance; much simpler to work with trends and probabilities, like you said. Half the time a flipped coin lands on heads... most of the time in X situation [insert appropriate example of linguistic trend here].
These sorts of questions are why I think about going into systems research.