Posted on 01/10/2005 10:26:26 PM PST by nickcarraway
One of the smaller, but no less bloody skirmishes in the Culture War is being waged on the linguistic front. For those new to the field there are essentially two camps: one made up of linguists, lexicographers, academics or language liberals; the other of conservatives or prescriptivists, the so-called "linguistic luddites." The conservative's anguish over the decline of the English language, the linguists charge, is no different than his distress over the decline of culture in general. This "whining," writes linguist Alan Pagliere, is a mix of nostalgia, self-righteousness, and ignorance of the reality of the laws governing and of the myriad variables involved in language change.
Indeed, the battle cry of the language liberal might be, "Languages change. Get over it." Most linguists judge that language change is neither good nor bad, and, anyway, resistance is futile. Languages, like hemlines, will change whether we want them to or not. This indifference to standards is reflected in the latest editions of our popular dictionaries in which words that are commonly misspelled (alright) or misused (disinterested) have been given the lexicographer's stamp of approval.
Yet despite all this talk of transformation the mother tongue has gone remarkably unchanged since the King James Version of the Bible began to stabilize the language in the mid-seventeenth century. Words come and go, yes, but a letter written 367 years ago by John Milton to Benedetto Bonomatthai reads much like one composed by a good writer today:
I am inclined to believe that when the language in common use in any country becomes irregular and depraved, it is followed by their ruin or their degradation.
Now note the dissimilarity between the writing of Chaucer and Shakespeare after a mere 225 years.
Chaucer: Whanne that April with his shoures sote
The droughte of March hath perced to the rote.
Shakespeare: Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
Often there is good reason to be skeptical of change, particularly when it comes about out of laziness and the dumbing-down of grammar rules. Again, compare Fowler's inflexible 1926 Dictionary of Modern English Usage to current grammars like Woe is I, in which rules that are troublesome or too difficult to remember are pronounced outdated or dead. (Rats, if I had known this was possible in my college days I would have pronounced Algebra outdated and dead and gotten on with my binge drinking.)
What the conservative sees as threats to the mother tongue are dismissed by the linguist as the natural progression of language, and nature trumps civilization (here represented by long-established rules) every time. These threats include the politicization of language, as in politically correct speech; threats from bureaucrats, businessmen, and politicians who use language to obfuscate, confuse and deceive, or in the case of academics to disguise a dearth of ideas; and, finally, threats from linguists who promote a laissez-faire approach to language.
Ever since the ancient Egyptians began scratching hieroglyphics into sandstone, civilization's most brilliant writers and thinkers have maintained a deep appreciation for -- in Swift's phrase -- the "proper words in their proper places," and felt it their duty to defend their language against its natural tendency to slide back into barbarism. In the preface to his 1755 dictionary Samuel Johnson noted how "…tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggle for our language." Johnson's statement would get only derision from today's anything-goes linguists.
The difference between the Age of Johnson and now is that proper and elegant language today is seen as elitist and anti-democratic, whereas once it was considered every educated man's duty to uphold. Here is linguistic pioneer Friedrich von Schlegel writing in 1815:
The care of the national language is at all times a sacred trust and a most important privilege of the higher orders of society. Every man of education should make it the object of his unceasing concern to preserve his language pure and entire, to speak it, so far as in his power, in all its beauty and perfection.
Language, being an important part of our national heritage, as well as our cultural identity, necessary says a great deal about what kind of people we are. A slovenly, anarchic language reflects poorly on us. The language liberals may have abandoned their duty to preserve the language, but the recent popularity of "why oh why" books such as Lynne Truss' Eats, Shoots & Leaves and Robert Hartwell Fiske's Dictionary Of Disagreeable English prove that the public is serious about its upkeep. Once again academics and other language liberals have shown themselves to be out of touch with the mainstream and their opinions hopelessly irrelevant.
That be mava tung,dumma!
Looking at the replies on here, it appears a couple of points implied in the article were missed?
1. PC language corrupts the thoughts and ideas of what peopel "really" mean. I suppose it does challenge people to use words creatively, but it also disguises content and meaning. Midget connotes much more than a person of small stature and doesn't corrupt the "usual" meaning of stature.
2. This use of euphemisms by the left moves us just that much further (or is it farther?) to an Owellian society of double speak. Articles implying such abound here on FR...the Democrats and the left repeatedly trivialize real concerns or matters of import by making everything important.
For example, a few descrepancies in Ohio are elevated to a national fraud on the election of the President.
Just about any matter that involves a person with dark skin pigment is "racism" and anyone who questions the validity of the assertion is automatically labeled a racist! Such tactics stiffles any type of intellectually honest debate. Yes, Conservatives can engage in this too.
Aren't we just too clever? Having obscure facts at one's ready disposal should be admirable, but a quick response that illustrates the writer's failure to understand someone else's statement is not to be admired at all.
The learned Amador de los Rios, whose opinion carries great weight, thinks that the famous poem must have been written prior to 1157.
Learn to read context. That was what I was trying to convey. Spanish is a much more stable language.
interesting.
i guess collective nouns have been trashed because they're too difficult to teach in public skools and to immigrants.
however, i have trouble with one that i saw on the cover of a textbook at a community college:
peoples
1 people, 2 people, ....
The Conservatives always can try to emulate the French with their French Academy which keeps French pure (or tries to, anyway.) German and Spain have academies too.
Ha! I suggest you send this 'l334 d3v310p34' a brief note telling him that he is a '10z3r' and that he will not be getting 'teh j0b' until he learns to write. :)
And just how should we have understood the original statement?
The facts aren't that obscure and my points were relevant. Hundreds of years ago, "white boys" (including Chaucer, who is studied as literature) were writing and saying "axe" or "aks" for "ask" because it was part of their dialect and they were neither "stupid" (unless you want to call Chaucer or the authors of the Cloverdale Bible "stupid") nor necessarily "kollege" educated nor under the influence of the evils of Ebonics.
Further, "Where you at?" could easily be considered a contraction such that "Where are you at?" -> "Where're you at?" -> "Whe're you at?" This is similar to the multi-sylable contraction of "Did you eat yet?" into "D'y'eat yet?" Why call people stupid or making fun of them (as President Bush's critics do with the way he says "nuclear"), when the person simply speaks a different dialect of English? Isn't it a lot more constructive to try to understand why people are speaking English differently?
Are there legitimate issues that can be raised about the dialects spoken by young people and the association between dialect and social class? Of course. Heck, I've taken English test for employment years ago that seemed purposely crafted to catch "Ebonics" (I'm white, by the way) and know quite well that people are judged by their accents and dialect. Are different dialects necessarily the result of stupidity or a lack of education? No.
Many urban blacks have no trouble switching between a standard TV English dialect and an urban black dialect and I have a friend who can switch from Jamaican to American television English effortlessly. People pick their dialects for a reason and if you just chalk it up to stupidity, you are missing the bigger picture that many people are choosing their dialect to mark their identity. And white kids adopt black dialects primarily because it annoys their parents. It's the same reason why Roman kids dressed up like Huns. Usually they grow out of it.
Okay, so you do think it adds to our verb-rich language.
Adds "value," that is.
Nothing at all against Webster; a fine lexicographer. However, his broad agenda extended rather further than lexicography per se. He himself said, on numerous occasions, that part of his intent was to clarify and enhance the political delineation between the United States and Great Britain through the use of language.
Sorry, but excluded middle clearly applies to spelling; a time- and context-sensitive version of it if you like, but nonetheless. 'Cheque', although comprehensible to Americans, would be held to be an incorrect spelling of the word in a grammar school test in America, just as 'labor', although similarly comprehensible to Britons, would be in a test in the UK. However, while time and geography will to some extent alter commonly accepted ('correct') spellings, through repetition and custom, this historical pattern has been usurped and corrupted by too many modern-day 'educators'. We now see, far too frequently, such abominations as 'layber'.
No one I've seen, and certainly not I, was making any sort of argument about language being static over any reasonable span of time. Such an argument is insupportable; new and useful words are coined monthly, even perhaps weekly or daily at times. Variants in spelling, as a rule, take considerably longer to appear, presumably due to something like the attitude of ''if it ain't broke, don't fix it.''
kewl
I've got a copy of that book on my desk! LOL Perhaps I should use it more often. :)
My personal pet peeve is the use of "go" in place of "said." It sounds sophomoric.
That's him.
He has a dreadful accent!
I don't even know if he's a good cook, because I can never stand to listen to him -- I have to turn away.
16.
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