English. RIP
March 20th 2009 17:31
Vincent van Gogh, Sorrow (1882)
The language as we know it is doomed. The pressures of change have grown until they are irresistible. Twitter may be the straw which breaks the back of English. Perhaps it is it too late. Language as we knew it.
Who uses full-form written language any more? For many people, the majority of their writing each day is on their phone. Even experts in the latter-day fine art of predictive text use short forms.
The condensed codes of SMS appear, not surprisingly, ever more in emails, the other daily writing exercise for most people. Letters (remember them?) had a culture of elegance and wholeness. Email is communication on the run.
Facebook asks us what we are doing now. Social media has elevated the mundane to a first-tier communication mandate. It goes without saying that it should be short.
And now Twitter has made an art form of it, or at least some of the cleverer Tweeters have done so. Our lives in 140-character snatches. Less is okay; more is forbidden.
The poets will feel at home. The ghosts of the telegram, or telegramme as we spelled it in more expansive days, are laughing.
Hemingway knew how to deliver large pictures in lean text, but surely even he would feel constricted by Facebook's narrow wall and Twitter's imperious imprisonment of free-flowing speech.
Some bloggers are offering resistance, but the how-to manuals warn you to keep posts short. Your readers have become conditioned. Short attention spans rule the blogosphere.
English. RIP.
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Comment by Edward Allen
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English is closely approaching this, but there are other culturally-derived languages that may rise to supremacy.
I, for one, feel that since the demise of the hand-set typesetters, and Linotype operators, the last sentinels for proper language usages have been lost. Editors come and go, and many of them tend to go with the flow, but the true typographers knew they would get fired if they let poor grammar and spellings get by them.
In the old days, it took at least six yeas to become a journeyman typographer. Today, even those without high school educations have the freedoms to post everything via the Internet. This is good, but once again, who knows where it will lead over time?
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Comment by Chris Champion
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We are obviously of an age. I worked with linotype operators and their skills were huge. The most spectacular was their ability to read upside down and backwards.
I saw the transition to cold metal, and I saw the same men, the last generation of a redundant vocation, reduced to wielders of a paper cutter.
It is a long way from there to the publishing freedom of blogging. But it is sad that there is probably no-one any more who can read upside down and backwards.
Comment by Chris Champion
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Like the television news, reading is becoming about word bites - quick-grab, instant gratification stuff.
Is the term 'a good book' to become an oxymoron?
Comment by Spike 2
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I don't think I've read many books below 200 pages in length, but then I was brought up in a house filled wall to wall (to wall to wall) with books of every genre...
How many times, when having this discussion, have you been called old-fashioned, Chris? I've heard it dozens of times. Old fogey. Grammar Nazi. Out of date. Irrelevant.
Then I'll click a link like the 'memorable modern quotes' one that's currently in the Orble popular list and guess what? They're all in proper English. I look on GAF for freelance work and what do they all want? Proper English.
Why? Because when we open our mouths, we don't speak in single letters, half-sentences and nonsensical babble. Unless we're adolescents.
Comment by Chris Champion
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Now I feel better (take note Edward
I'm with you on the books. I don't trust a book which is less than 200 pages, Jonathan Livingston Seagull excepted.
Comment by Norm
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Comment by Chris Champion
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Comment by Edward Allen
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I was one of those journeyman typographers who ran a Linotype for two decades. I can speak from experience and still read upside down and backwards.
We published newspapers, magazines and job work.
I agree with Spike 2. We still speak with full words and phrases, unless we are using ebonics, then all bets are off for communication.
Comment by Chris Champion
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The smell of the press room, the air (and the floor) thick with printer's ink, stays with me now far more than anything that happened in the newsroom.
A toast to you, Edward, and to memories.
Comment by Lilla
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The picture drew me, the words held me, despite their brevity. I have known this sorrow, albeit I*m not sure I have looked that dejected? Wow talk about a picture saying a thousand of them . . .
I have to agree, like, Engwish is like going to the dogs, like its doomed. My friend? texts all this like stuff, in like seconds, like how do you do that? Like its amazing how he can, like, just shorten so many of the words . . wow, like I am so jealous!
*nuf said, *hanging my head,* I*m going to read some Keats.
Lilla ..
Comment by Banana Mango
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To Spike 2 and Edward Allen: the written word can only approximate the spoken word anyway; it cannot capture all the nuances of the speaker and the delivery.
Comment by Spike 2
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Comment by Chris Champion
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Hi Fruit, like Spike says.
Comment by Morgan Bell
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i have no doubt there are more people writing today than ever before, more people literate, more people published, more people communicating in written formats
im not a poetry expert but i know fine literature is produced every year, writers still win the Booker and Pulitzer Prizers, its not as if all "fine" writing has disappeared and they no longer have any contenders for these competitions
im sure theres someone as talented as Keats writing his little heart out right now, and in this electronic and diverse age he is more likely to be appreciated within his lifetime
i think some newspapers have become more easy to read because they realise verbosity excludes certain people, but at the same time verbose publications still exist, its just that people have more choice now
maybe one day there will be an entire newspaper or award winning book written in net-speak (sms abbreviations) but i havent really noticed either of those things happening so far
different horses for different courses . . .
Comment by Chris Champion
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You're right. All languages are works in progress, alphabet-based languages more so than character-based, and English more so than any of them because of its size and the wide range of influences.
But arguably it has never been changing so quickly, and arguably, with the advent of the internet and blogging, I have never been better placed to whinge about it
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A very pathetic situation indeed!
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Comment by Chris Champion
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I hadn't thought of text short forms creeping into student essays. That is depressing indeed. Wilson, we are relying on you in the fight against this insidious destabilisation of the language!
Hi Morgan,
Yeah, but it's roolly easy to make Norm laugh.
Comment by Jarrah
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Some just can't embrace change and progression.
I wrote an article on the benefits of the change, which most seem to miss...but I'll leave it for now.
We'd still all be speaking Old English if we all had this attitude...or Latin.
Comment by Chris Champion
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Thanks for your little ray of sunshine.
You missed an apostrophe.
Comment by Spike 2
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That's better. I'm obviously on the other side of the metaphorical fence here, Jarrah, but I'm not way over the other side of the garden. I can embrace change, provided I can still understand what the hell the writer's trying to say.
Incidentally, the last time I saw someone write an answer ranting about how important it was to change the language (which is not what you were doing - your comment just made me think of the incident), it was just before the site I was working on binned them because their writing was "teh suck".
There's a comma missing, too, by the way.
Comment by Jarrah
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Like most ppl, as when I'm writing a TXT, I'm not going to bother with grammar too much when I'm writing a comment on a blog...LOL
Comment by Chris Champion
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Comment by Jarrah
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Comment by Banana Mango
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The fact that it is "depressing" to some teachers (honestly...) is more a reflection on them than the students.
Comment by Jarrah
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I'm gonna unsubscribe now, because this will go on forever...but it is an impossible fight...change WILL occur.
Comment by Spike 2
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And the award for the best description of language ever goes to Banana. I doubt anyone could say it better.
I have no real opinion on it being depressing or not, though I sometimes find the quality of particular articles to be a major downer. More often, I look at the matter from the point of view of the person paying me to write for them - and only one out of a thousand of those will not be bothered by mistakes (in the sense of "the old rules"). So I will continue trying to attain better accuracy according to those rules.
I don't consider it a fight, either. It's a personal choice which way one goes: some prefer to stick to the old style; others prefer to write conversationally; yet others write in teen-speak. It's all good, as they say - assuming your editor and publisher agree!!
Shame Jarrah's not staying - it was enjoyable reading the back-and-forth, especially since it was all with a big smile and a laugh, until that last comment. Emotion and whether someone has a life or not have no place in a debate. I could have posted a smiley and "Fail !" Bah, humbug.
Comment by Brenton
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Who's 'we'? The only mourners are those who care.
Comment by Zabeena
"We prefer to do things comfortably."
"But I don't want comfort. I want grammar, I want punctuation marks, I want real sentences, I want free flowing speech, I want good structure. I want spelling."
"In fact," said the Controller of the Brave New World, "you're claiming the right to whinge."
"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to whinge."
"Not to mention the right to grow old and unfashionable and irrelevant; the right to have verbosity and accuracy; the right to have too little net-speak to be read; the right not to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen to the correct use of the ‘nominal I’; the right to catch out others and to be called a fascist; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind." There was a long silence.
"I claim them all," said the Savage at last.
With apologies to Aldous Huxley.
Comment by Brenton
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I know the language. I know you change quotation marks to do a quote in a quote. I know Jim threw an apple at Tania and me, not Tania and I. But I also love that English can be modified, changed, shortened and adapted. i luv tht i kn wrte lk ths n u kn ndrstnd wht im seyn. I love that we can fill MSN conversations with errors and sacrifice accuracy for fast conversation. I love that Non Native Speakers can stuff up every third word and all the grammar rules and still makes sense.
English fits our needs, not us its needs.
What is commonly called the Death of the Language, is indeed a showcase of why the language is so wonderful
Comment by Chris Champion
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Very clever, and very relevant.
There's a natural response which none of the knockers have deserved as yet. Now sit down and get comfy, because you're the Chosen One.
We do prefer to do things comfortably, and the older we get, the more defined and structured those things become.
The knockers are right that this argument about language has been around pretty much as long as language has been around. And it is usually, naturally enough, the younger generations ringing the changes and the older generations resisting them.
Which is just as it should be, because this way the changes that do occur - as changes must inevitably occur - are the good ones; the ones that have been tested and have overcome the resistance.
Without this balance, the rate of change would be chaotic, ruled only by the whimsies of youth.
It's a point which I consider fairly self-evident, but one which Jarrah and Brenton and Fruit have either chosen to miss or failed to grasp. And the funny thing is that, just as sure as god made little apostrophes, it will be their turn one day to defend the things which have become comfortable for them.
Thanks for your great comment,
Chris
Comment by Norm
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Very sharp in a tie.
It's good to hear from you, Brenton.
Your stupidity has been missed.
That's a joke, alright.
The bottom line is the top.
Comment by Chris Champion
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Comment by Brenton
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It's like the Japanese concept of intelligence in Primary school; If the kids UNDERSTOOD it was wrong to throw rocks off bridges, they would not. IF they throw rocks it is not because they disregard, it is because they do not understand. They are not as smart as the others.
The role of the Teacher (talking about myself here - not yet but in a year) is not to 'defend' the language but to teach how to use it; in all its most traditional and its most recent forms.
The older generation defending language from change? What nonsense. Imagine defending science from change. Would we mourn science, now that the youth say Pluto is not a planet? Even though that is what we are comfortable.
How strange too that the modified passage from Brave New World was used. A book that mourns the ability to think freely and creatively, that expresses a false Utopia where comfort rules and change is not permitted. IN the Brave New World I have no trouble imagining that the language never changes. Change makes people unhappy and everybody's happy now.
Norm; I never completely understand what you're saying.
But good to see you.
Comment by Chris Champion
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Are you going to teach children to use semi-colons like that?
Comment by Brenton
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I wasn't 100% where I stood with the semicolon, but it does seem to be used for pauses, so it's appropriate where I've used it.
I'm fairly sure it's also one conventional way to direct comments in a blog or forum, so assuming I'm correct in that, if I focus on the construction or analysis of web based texts I guess I will.
Or we can keep doing tit for tat if you prefer; there's no hyphen in semicolon
Comment by Chris Champion
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For heaven's sake! Please, please tell me you are not going to teach English.
Any publication seeking consistency on hyphenation must write its own style guide on the subject.
But I'm glad you think it important enough to mention.
Comment by Brenton
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I agree it doesn't matter particularly about the hyphen. It seems most credible articles mentioning the semicolon don't hyphenate though.
Anyway, my point is, we can understand each other regardless and this is good.
Comment by Chris Champion
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We all speak the same language, and therefore language is an effective tool of communication. The foundation of that effective communication is the rules that govern the language. If we all know the rules and use the rules, then we are speaking the same language and we can understand each other.
If we use different rules, we run the risk of misunderstanding and miscommunication.
The rules in something of the size and structure of the English language must in the course of time change. Change is inevitable; it can be argued that it is necessary. However, it does not necessarily follow that change is of itself good, or that it should be accepted for its own sake.
The argument that you and others seem to be making is that in some forms of communication, near enough is good enough. I disagree. You seem to be arguing that the rules aren't important so long as you can understand each other. I disagree again, because if you have unfixed rules you can not in fact be certain you are understanding each other.
I don't resent the language changing, or the tendency of younger people to drive that change. I do resent being told that I am foolish for mourning the passing of something dear to me, something which has been both a vocation and a passion.
It's my language too.
Comment by Brenton
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My concern is that every seocnd day I hear somebody talking about the end of the language as though it's on the brink of collapse. I just don't think this is accurate. There will always be adaptation,s but there will always be constnt rules as well. I just think that the internet is in the best position to make the best use of short forms and that this is a good thing.
Sorry if i was a bit harsh, but I go on autopilot with anything predicting the end/deth/destruction/downfall of a language/country/practice/pol iteness. etc.
Comment by Zabeena
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Actually, there is far too much to say on the subject. I chose to write that little persiflage above (ch. 17, BNW; last paragraph, I think) as a self-ironic comment on us whingers and the unspeakable pain some of the modern use of English causes us, and also as a way to comment without having to discuss the various strands of this topic in a discursive manner.
The thing is, I’m not just in two minds about the subject, but several. I have found that holding two or more conflicting views is the only way I can be true to myself:
I’m with Spike and the ‘fit for purpose’ aspect; I’m with Jarrah and the dispensation of rules in texting & comments; I’m with Banana and the bottom line of understanding; I’m with Brenton and the inclusiveness of the ‘bendability’ factor. And yet, I’m also with Chris, mourning the demise of English as we know it - and I probably mourn more individual aspects than anyone in this discussion, on account of being a non-native dinosaur who was taught an outdated version of this beloved language. Mourning and lamenting doesn’t mean that you don’t understand the processes and the inevitability, and it doesn’t mean that you can’t accept and appreciate innovation, in exactly the same way that using non-standard English doesn’t mean that one isn’t aware of the rules. Wouldn’t it be good if we could all give each other a bit more credit?
Brenton: It was the ‘right to be unhappy’ which prompted me to modify the BNW passage, I hope you can forgive me.
And of course, Chris, future generations will have their own issues to mourn, and I presume they will do so with a similar fervour as any generation before. I wish you were right about change occurring only where it prevails against resistance. I think it just occurs, full stop. On the other hand, too much resistance, too much preaching can also lead to unwanted over-compensation. I believe the current confusion over ‘you and I’ vs ‘you and me’ goes back to overzealous teachers in the 70s, certainly here in the UK. It sounds horrendous to me when people get it wrong but it’s a lost cause as the time will come when those who feel the same way about the correct form are in the majority. – I am not going to add to the even wider topic of ‘communication’ as I have to go now and write 750 words on the usefulness of Esperanto.
Comment by Zabeena
"those who feel the same way about the correct form"
sounds confusing. To clarify:
The majority will feel that the correct form sounds horrendous.
Comment by Chris Champion
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~Dianna
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