English Language Unity

I recently came across this article about the English Language Unity Act in the United States. I have to confess that I knew nothing about this before now, but it's fascinating to see the fierce debate that surrounds it when it's hard to imagine the same kind of controversy arising over any effort to make English the official language of the UK (I understand that it doesn't have that status at the moment). I may be wrong, but my guess is that any such move would scarcely be noticed. Perhaps it's because the English language is embedded in our culture in a way that it just isn't in the US. And, although the UK is just as much a cultural and linguistic melting pot as the US, the latter is nevertheless a younger nation, and perhaps the English language hasn't (despite a strong literary tradition) had the time to become part of its very fabric.

Rebuild the English language from the bottom up?

English is a poor choice for a lingua franca.

Despite its relatively simple grammar, it has so many quirks and special cases that it must be fiendishly hard to learn for non-native speakers. Those of us who have tried to explain some of the rules (or exceptions) must be used to the confused stares and protests of 'that desn't make sense'. Because very often it doesn't. There's no logical reason, for example, to prefer 'I don't drive' to 'I drive not'.

It's clear that it's history, not common sense, that's led to English being the common language for so much of the world's population. And while the very things that make English a great choice for literature – the vast vocabulary, the flexibility and the potential for ambiguity all make it a wonderful language for storytelling – those same characteristics make it a terrible choice for law, commerce and mutual understanding among non-native speakers.

And it made me wonder. Given that attempts to create a new, common world language generally seem doomed to failure (Esperanto, anyone?), might we be better off giving English a proper clear-out? Do away with some of the more bizarre quirks. Simplify the rules. And the spelling for that matter – the idea that English is sometimes spelt phonetically and sometimes not must be very confusing, especially for speakers of languages that are not written phonetically, such as Chinese.

There would be enormous obstacles to any such venture, of course. Who would be in charge of it, for one thing? And there are, I understand, already non-native English speakers, especially in the Far East, who do use a slightly modified, simpler and more logical version of English for business. So perhaps more radical, wholesale, change is just not needed.

More to the point, though, language tends to be pretty democratic, and attempts to dictate widespread rule-changes from on high are often doomed to failure. And perhaps that's the way it should be. English has been influenced by vast numbers of people and has borrowed words and expressions from all over the world. It is not logical, and it is not straightforward. But then neither are people...

From internee to internist

Nothing ages you like receiving an email and realising that there was a time, well into your adult life, when half the words in it would have made no sense whatsoever. I recently received an email about iPad apps and usability (old word but new, specialised, meaning) that mentioned such things as 'swipe ambiguity' and 'navigation overload'.

This golden age of communications technology has spawned a plethora of new words and phrases – some, such as 'app' are relatively new, even to the technologically savvy, even if 'application' has been around for years. Others are better established – just out of curiosity, I checked my old and trusted, but now woefully out of date, Concise Oxford Dictionary to see what was there and what was missing. Interestingly, 'virus', in the computing sense, was there, as was 'email'. But 'internet'? No sign – straight from 'internee' to 'internist'.

Of course, language, especially the English language, is constantly growing and adapting. But I think there's something more at work than the gradual shifts to which we've become accustomed.

Because the very communications revolution that's led to all these new words and phrases means that those words can become embedded in our everyday lives with incredible speed. And developments that might once have taken years need now take only months.

A new word for this extended bank holiday break..?

Because, apparently, they have one in Italy. There, to take a few days off work between public holidays is to do 'il ponte' (the bridge).

It seems this doesn't happen quite often enough in the UK for us to have a word for it. Perhaps we should, though? What would it be? We could adopt the Italian. It sounds rather nice. Or use the translated Italian (which somehow sounds rather less attractive). Or come up with something completely different.

Any ideas..?

Evolving English - well worth a visit

If you have any interest in the English language and you haven't been to the Evolving English Exhibition at the British Library, then (if you’re in easy reach of London) go! There is still just over a week before it closes (it runs until 3 April) and some of the exhibits are just breathtaking. In fact, it’s worth going just to take a look at some of the manuscripts and printed documents on display (11th century Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, for example). But there’s also plenty to learn from some of the video and audio clips, and plenty of common myths about English are exploded. You can even listen to regional accents by hitting buttons on a map of the UK. What’s more, it’s free to attend. I went with the SYP last week and was so glad I did. See http://www.bl.uk/evolvingenglish/index.html.

When common sense collides with logic

I wrote a post some time ago about the ambiguity inherent in English (http://edittrain.blogspot.com/2010/06/trading-clarity-for-creativity.html), and this reminded me of a case I read while studying for my law degree. This was a very long time ago, and I may have got some of the details wrong (so please don’t rely on this as any guide to the law!), but I think it went something like this…

A van full of stolen goods was intercepted by the police, who, disguised as the thieves, went on to rendezvous with the people who had arranged to buy the items.

The police promptly arrested those people for attempting to handle stolen goods.

To secure a conviction, it had to be proved that the defendants intended to handle stolen goods.

This was the tricky part. As soon as the police had taken custody of the goods, they ceased to be ‘stolen’.

Even then, though, common sense seems to suggest that, since the would-be buyers believed the items to be stolen, they had every intention of handling stolen goods.

The trouble is that what common sense suggests doesn’t always go hand in hand with what logic dictates.

Consider the following questions and answers:

Did the buyers intend to handle the goods in the van?

Yes.

Were the goods in the van stolen?

No.

Did the buyers intend to handle stolen goods?

On this basis the only logical answer to the question is ‘no’.

I have a feeling that the conviction was secured in the end, but this does go to show how easy it is to tie yourself up in knots, and how poorly suited our language is to representing logical ideas.

Apostrophes changed for ever by a word-processing quirk?

Not that I'm normally quite this picky, but ...

If you've ever tried typing something like:

Let ‘em go!

... in your average word-processing program, you probably won’t end up with an apostrophe in front of em.

Why? Because most keyboards don’t distinguish between an apostrophe, or closing quotation mark, (’) and an opening quotation mark (‘). As a result, your word-processor has to decide what it is you wanted to type.

You don’t normally find an apostrophe in front of em, so it reasonably assumes that you were after an opening quotation mark.

You weren’t, though. You were looking for an apostrophe. The trouble is that so many people have got so used to accepting their word-processor’s decision as final, that they seem to have forgotten (or come no longer to care) what an apostrophe is.

The word-processor induced usage seems to have become so widespread as to be generally accepted. Normally, I don’t mind. Really I don’t. But it hit home to me when it appeared on some TV ad or other recently, which had something like:

The class of ‘96

I still wouldn’t really mind, but even my (now pretty ancient) word-processing program can work that one out and automatically makes it:

The class of ’96

Il fait beau, innit?

There's a great programme on Radio 4 at the moment, hosted by Stephen Fry, called Fry's English Delight. Last week it was all about contradictions, and there was lots of really interesting stuff about the logic of double negatives, and so on.

But the bit that stuck in my mind was a piece by (the brilliant) David Crystal towards the end. He pointed out something which should be obvious, but which never occurred to me before. And that was that the much derided 'word', 'innit', derived from 'isn't it', has come to be used in just the same way as 'n'est-ce pas' in French (which also means 'isn't it').

I'm not sure this holds true in every case – I hear people say things like, 'He told me to get lost, innit', and I'm not sure you could use 'n'est-ce pas' in quite that way (I may, of course, be wrong – my French is rusty!).

Nevertheless, love it or hate it, 'innit' has genuinely added something to the language. What brought this home to me was the fact that when I first started learning French at school, I seem to remember that the teacher had some difficulty explaining the meaning of 'n'est-ce pas'. It was one of those things that didn't quite have an English equivalent. Now it does. So do teachers now say, 'It means 'innit''?

Does the world need semi-colons?

Perhaps not the most pressing issue facing the planet. But I heard an interview recently in which a writer suggested that this particular punctuation mark was redundant, encouraged bad writing and should be done away with.

And you can kind of see the point. Except when it's used to separate items in lists, a semi-colon can always be replaced by a full stop. Shorter sentences tend to be more readable than long ones, so why make your sentences unnecessarily long by using semi-colons?

Certainly, a piece of writing that's littered with semi-colons will look untidy and will be hard to follow. But, personally, I think it would be a shame to do away with anything in the writer's armoury that allows for a little extra nuance of meaning.

The semi-colon allows you to create a closer association between two independent clauses than is possible with a full stop. If you want one thought to flow naturally on from another, then the semi-colon's what you need. It allows you to keep up the pace of a passage of writing, without the pauses created by full stops. So let's hang on to anything that has the potential to make writing just that little bit richer or more diverse.

When is a three-letter word a four-letter word?

Public health minister Anne Milton has caused a stir by suggesting that health professionals use the term 'fat' instead of 'obese'. Many people will have some sympathy for the view. Isn't it just a case of calling a spade a spade? Of reversing the tide of insane political correctness?

Well, possibly. But it made me wonder why people find the word 'fat' so insulting in the first place.

It's clearly not just because it's an everyday word and not a medical term. It's all too easy to say the word in a way that sounds insulting. And that's partly down to its origins. 'Fat' has Old English and Germanic roots, something it has in common with some of the more extreme swear words in the English language. The fact that it is a one-syllable word, ending in the hard 't' (known in linguistic circles as a stop consonant), gives it a short, sharp quality. It's just not possible to spit out 'obese' (a Latin-based word) in the same way.

So 'fat' is not just a word. Depending on the context, it's come to be an insult. And even if health professionals don't mean it to insult people by using it, it will be interpreted in that way.

Englaland, England, Ingerland?

An end to cries of 'Ingerland' will, for many, be one of the silver linings on the cloud that was England's world cup exit. If you're supporting your country, you should at least be able to get the name right, surely?

And yet, of course, it didn't start off as 'England'. When the name first came into use, more than a thousand years ago, it was 'Englaland' – land of the Angles. That's also what it continued to be for hundreds of years thereafter. So, while it's not quite the same, you could say that football fans are, by adding the extra syllable, just returning the nation's name to a closer approximation of the original.

Is there anything wrong with that? And does it matter why it's happening?

Presumably, the reason is to do with the many chants and songs. The additional syllable just seems to make the word fit a little more easily. In this respect, it's not unlike the extra syllable often added to the ends of French words in songs (think of 'Frère Jacques', for example).

As to the rights and wrongs of it, irritating as it is to many, it's difficult to see why it should be seen as any more reprehensible than the mutation of 'Englaland' into 'England'.

So, come on Englaland!

Just not this year, obviously...

Can your native tongue affect your nation's success?

I'd love to know if any research has been done on this. It does seem to have been established that being bilingual, or being brought up in a bilingual environment, at the very least boosts your mental agility (see http://www.livescience.com/culture/090413-bilingual-smart.html, for example).

And this made me wonder whether the intellectual demands of a particular language can actually affect a country's performance on the world stage, in terms of economic output, the propensity to come up with new inventions, or the tendency to nurture or discourage entrepreneurship.

For example, might the stereotypical German efficiency be due in part to the relative complexity of German grammar? Does fluency in Chinese, with its extra layer of difficulty (at least for English-speakers!), based on a falling or rising intonation, help you to think in different ways? Does speaking Japanese, which seems, to me at least, to be a highly logical and efficient language, make you better at thinking logically and efficiently?

And what of English? Grammatically, it has become relatively simple, and yet it is still difficult to master, largely because of its idiosyncrasies. It is certainly not the most logical language, although it is arguably one of the most flexible and expressive. Quite what that might mean for native English speakers is difficult to imagine!

Of course, the effect, if there is one, will also be working in the other direction, and it's natural to suppose that culture affects the development of language just as much as, if not more than, language affects culture.

And even if language does affect whole nations in this way, it is just one of many factors, so testing the idea would be far from easy. Still, I wonder if anyone has tried...?

Trading clarity for creativity

If there's one thing that makes life especially difficult for the proofreader or editor, it's that the English language is in a constant state of change. Unlike the French, we have nothing like the Académie française to give definitive rulings on grammar, etc.

Would we be better off if we did?

Well, life might certainly be a lot simpler. There might also be a benefit in diplomatic and legal circles. French is widely regarded as the international language of diplomacy, partly because of the precision of the language, in contrast to the ambiguity often found in English. This must be due in part to the fact that it's possible to identify a single 'correct' version of French at any one time. In theory, it advances much as a computing language does, in carefully defined steps, as opposed to the gradual changes that take place in English. Of course, it's not quite as simple as that, and 'unauthorised' new words do effectively enter the French language, but the existence of the Académie at least means that it's possible to get a definitive answer when one is required.

The difficulty in English is magnified because a lot depends on the context. What might be acceptable in a novel written for teenagers may not be acceptable in an academic textbook. Knowing where to draw the line takes more than a knowledge of language and grammar; it also requires an understanding of the cultural setting in which a particular piece of writing will be read.

But it's possible that this great weakness in the English language is also its greatest strength. Ambiguity allows for creativity. The ease with which new words enter the language (and with which grammatical rules can become eroded) allows for new forms of expression.

How diverse is the English language?

I've always taken it for granted that English is one of the world's most diverse and expressive languages. But I've recently discovered that proving it is virtually impossible. This is not just because of the scale of the research that would be required, but also because, while counting the number of words is one thing, calculating their ability to express different ideas and concepts is quite another.

So it's apparently just possible that English is overrated in this respect. But I still love the way in which historical quirks of spelling, writing and usage have resulted in a richer language.

Take, for example, the way that many words beginning with gu, borrowed from French, came to be written with a 'w' in English. So, we have the word 'warranty'. And yet, we've retained 'guarantee' and even, in legal circles, 'guaranty'. One word, spelt in three different ways, has become three words, with three ever so slightly different meanings. Similarly, we have words from different sources, which have essentially the same meaning, running in parallel, before the meanings start to diverge ever so slightly (e.g. 'get' and 'obtain'). And it's that nuance of meaning – the abundance of not-quite-synonyms that really makes the language come alive. It also helps speakers of that language to understand different ideas (a concept is much easier to understand if you have a word for it in your own language!).

Now that English has effectively become an international language, it looks as though this process will continue for many years to come. I hope so.

Did everyone in my generation miss out on grammar teaching at school?

I learnt what verbs, adjectives and nouns were, and that was about it. I even remember one teacher being suitably outraged when he discovered the level of ignorance in the class ... but not quite outraged enough to do anything about it. And I know I’m not alone. Many of my contemporaries seem to have had the same (lack of) experience.

For me (and, it turns out, for quite a few of the people I’ve talked to about this), the saving grace was learning foreign languages. When I realised that my knowledge of French, Spanish and Latin grammar dwarfed my knowledge of English, I realised something was very wrong and decided to do something about it.

Should I have bothered, though? Does it really matter? So what if we can’t all conjugate our verbs correctly? If someone says ‘He done well’ instead of ‘He did well’, I still understand what that person means.

Well, from a purely mercenary point of view, it matters to the people who do get it badly wrong, because it will cost them. You may have been able to get good academic grades with poor English, but you’re unlikely to get very far in a job application.

But I think there’s something more fundamental at stake. The English-speaking world is huge. Imagine what would happen if we abandoned all attempts to control the language through education.

Some might argue that it would free the language to evolve in its own way, unfettered, and not held back by the fossilising effect of the classroom. But I believe we would soon be in a world where we would be unable to agree on a common meaning for even the commonest forms of words.

Education in general would become more difficult and law – which relies on unambiguous and clear language – would become almost impossible. Ultimately, the language would dissolve into a myriad of dialects, making it impossible to communicate with even our closest neighbours, or with different generations. Books would become unreadable within a few years of being written. For society to function at all, we would be forced to develop a common language – one with a clear set of rules and a well understood vocabulary. So maybe it’s not quite time to abandon the one we already have.

The real tragedy for those of us in the ‘missing link’ generation, though, is that things seem to be so much better in schools nowadays. Children are once again learning the basics of English grammar. Those of us who missed out had better make sure our own skills are up to scratch before we are upstaged by the next well-educated generation...

Should anyone care about split infinitives?

Because I can't help it. Ever since I found out it was something 'you're not supposed to do', seeing or even hearing one has made me cringe and want to change it.

If you're reading this, you probably know what a split infinitive is, but just in case you don't, it's what happens when you break up the infinitive form (e.g. 'to stop') of a verb by inserting one or more words (usually an adverb) directly after the word 'to' (e.g. 'to finally stop').

The grammatical justification for a prohibition on split infinitives has been widely debated and is tenuous at best. Similarly, their use has become more widespread in modern writing. In some cases, though, they really can make a sentence hard to understand. For example, few people would defend the following sentence: 'He was determined to, with every fibre of his being and every ounce of strength he had left, stop this from happening.' In other cases, they do nothing to hinder understanding. For example: 'He was unable to properly construct a sentence.'

Yet, for many people, they still sound so wrong; they grate like an out-of-tune violin because for years it was drilled into children at school that split infinitives are bad English.

And surely that is the point. Language (especially the English language) is a democratic institution. Surely, 'correct' English is the form of the language used by the millions of native speakers and writers all over the world? This is how the language develops and how formerly rigid rules at first become relaxed, then obsolete. It's why we don't use constructions such as 'thou art' any more.

But, by the same token, who's to say that new, more rigid, rules can't develop in the same way?

A rule against split infinitives doesn't need some kind of ancient grammatical pedigree for it to be valid. It just needs most people to agree with it and, just possibly, for it to make some kind of sense.

And there is a kind of logic behind it if you consider how hard it is to devise an abstract rule that would draw the line between split infinitives that make sentences harder to understand and those that don't. Perhaps that's what's caused educators over a couple of generations to impose a blanket ban.

But now, of course it's far from clear that most people do agree with the 'rule' (if there ever really was one). It is almost certainly on its way out: a grammatical oddity that survived for a century or so, but destined to be forgotten...

So I'll try to control my instinctive reaction to split infinitives in future, and be a little more understanding. Maybe I'll even include them in my own writing – but only if I think the reader won't mind...