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to current grammars like Woe is I, in which rules that are troublesome or too difficult to remember are pronounced outdated or dead. (Rats, if I had known this was possible in my college days I would have pronounced Algebra outdated and dead and gotten on with my binge drinking.)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.
"TO WHOM DO YOU THINK YOU ARE SPEAKING, YOUNG LADY????"
"(sigh) Jen...and...I...are going to (wherever)..."
It'll learn you good.
That word appears in many dictionaries, by the way, because it's so commonly used.
The style of many periodicals was more formal half a century ago. Where the language lived was on the sports pages. I also enjoyed the Police Gazette. However, all that said, I think that if you go back and look at the old papers/Reader's Digest etc., you'd see the simplicity of the writing.
This is stupid. Go back 1000 years and english is unrecognizable. On the other hand, El Cid is readable in the original.
English is NOT a stable language.
Irregardless of what you think I is going to Walmarts and buy me a coke anyways. now I axe yas did I miss any?
Not to mention writing "to" for "too" and making a mess of your/you're ,there/their and many others,besides the incorrect conjunction cockups. FR has examples of ALL of the very worst of the worst.Sometimes it's so depressing to read a thread and the replies.
What's wrong with it? Uh, my impression at the time was that the lessons were intended for the sole purpose of writing thank you notes and place cards for dinner parties. It's an actual "thing" they do in L.A., which is trying to duplicate what they perceive as a more gracious period in time. And, of course, they make a mess of it.
How old is your youngest?
Does "friggin'" add value to our verb-rich language?
Your right, its one of my pet peeves. [sic]
It's most clear in Britain where Received Pronunciation (eg, Alistair Cooke, the Queen, Tony Blair) is dead -- no longer even taught at Oxford and Cambridge. And it's happened only in the last 20-25 years. It's been replaced by "Estuary English" which really sounds horrible to my ears. The best example of Estuary English pronunciation is Jamie Oliver. It hurts my ears to hear him. I can't stand it.
Try "may" and "can", Petronski.
"May" denotes permission. While "Can" denotes ability.
Children and many adults know not the difference.
Jack.
A 'linguist', by definition, understands and uses the structure of X number of languages, presumably with a view toward furthering communication between speakers/writers of languages A and B. Or, perhaps, engages in other worthwhile endeavours, for example, translation of either historical documents or the straightforward translation from language to language in order to facilitate communication in the 'real' world. These aren't any part of Chomsky's CV, even though he is fluent in 5 (6?, sorry, can't recall just now) languages.
Chomsky's academic expertise, as published, deals with what are called ''formal grammars'', and has been quite useful in the development of computer languages -- a result, btw, that he did NOT anticipate. Chomsky, at his early best, was to language what Bertrand Russell was, at his early best, to formal logic.
I won't waste your time recounting the subsequent and unfortunate history of these two gents' psychopathy after they abandoned their respective fields of expertise, and at some point decided to make a subsidiary career by telling the rest of the world how to live.
Their wildly misplaced assumptions about their competence, and their subsequent insistence about expertising upon social and political issues resembles very strongly the similar phenomenon we see today of some number of alleged actors named Baldwin, as well as the occasional Streisand, who offer similar, although far, far less coherent, ''expertise''.
Damned shame, too, isn't it!
Yes, public education, taxes, lawyers, Clinton, the unions and OSHA have all devolved our language to a series of grunts and snorts.
Personally, I think a good argument can be made that English is a pidgin of Anglo-Saxon, Danish, and Norman French with a smattering of Latin (including hunks of the grammar imported by smarty-pants academics that thought English should work more like Latin) and other languages. There is a reason why it has so many irregular forms (e.g., ox/oxen uses the Danish pluralization while horse/horses uses the Anglo-Saxon pluralization), why we pluralize many Latin words with Latin inflections rather than English inflections (e.g., data instead of datums), and why we've got at least two words for all sorts of things because we got one word via the Germanic language family and the other word from the French language family (e.g., chicken/poultry, big/large, etc.). Oh, and then there are the throwbacks to non-existant forms such as "a pair of pants". Ask anyone who has tried to learn English as a second language. It's really quite a mess.
The writing was NOT as "simplified" as you claim. But let's take on books,shall we? And I'm talking now about "pop culture";not any "highbrow" stuff. "CANDY",which isn't exactly great lit,used better language than what is sloughed off on today's populace as "great" modern works of literature.
And if you go back a bit farther,just look at the brilliant use of English in "THE WOMEN";even the movie.
More seriously, though, yours is -- in my humble view -- an excellent commentary, **particularly** the part about public (alleged) schools.
Well said, and FReegards!
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