"It would be very difficult to find a really clever 'situation' in Cooper's
books, and still more difficult to find one of any kind which has failed to
render absurd by his handling of it."
- Mark Twain, "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" (1895)
One of my favorite essays; it is uproariously funny and beautifully written.
Check out the rest of the article after the break!
Yet despite the worries of these (and many) scholars, the English language continues to be a driving force in the world. In economics, it is nearly a requirement in order to thrive in the world market. In literature, many inspiring and striking books are still written every year. To say that there is a great lack of English-speaking/-writing scholars would be a broad and incorrect statement (after all, I go to a college full of them).
Of course, the English language has changed quite a bit. Throughout its entire life, English has often been considered a somewhat absurd language. It lacks structures that are staples of other languages, particularly the Romantic languages, such as a plural 'you' and gender-specific nouns. It is commonly stated that English is one of the most difficult languages to learn simply because its rules are so flexible ("'i' before 'e' except after 'c'... oh, and in these dozen other random exceptions as well..."). Certainly common syntax and diction has gone through drastic changes throughout the centuries that is, perhaps, not as noticeable in other languages.
"Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else."
- C.S. Lewis, "Letters to Children" (1956)
Perhaps an indicator of the direction of the English language? I wish authors such as Sir Thomas More (author of Utopia, 1516) had thought this.
It is not so much the written word that fascinates me, however, as the spoken nature of the English language. Sometimes I wonder if the English language was really supposed to be spoken, not written. Of course, it is perfectly possible to write eloquently in English, but consider several situations that I have been puzzling over recently.
Let's consider the word "there's." It is singular, a contraction of "there is." A correct way to use "there's" would be "There's someone at the door." Because it is singular, it would be technically incorrect to say "There's five people at the door." Yet you would be hard-pressed to find someone that says it otherwise. Why is this?
The correct form, of course, would be to use the word "are" instead of "is" because "are" is plural. "There are five people at the door." Yet despite this very simple explanation, which could be instructed to a grade-school class, we continually use "there's" instead of "there are."
The answer is actually quite simple (or at least, what I believe the answer is). There are is not pleasing to say or hear. "There" and "are" sound far too similar. Putting them together is clunky and difficult, let alone contracting them as you often would for "there is." I don't believe I've ever heard anyone say "there're," and honestly I wouldn't think highly of someone's English if they said that.
I have heard incorrect use of "there's" everywhere, from my college professors to my friends to older folks to classmates.
So the question is, do we embrace this as yet another strange blip in the English language, or do we mourn over the loss of technically correct grammar? Is it worth the trouble to point out and correct? Is it worth your trouble to speak correctly when the majority of your peers do not? And why is this little mistake that slips out of everyone's mouth not as noticed and more socially acceptable than other grammar mess-ups amongst English speakers?
Of course, this leads me to the observation that people often write differently than they talk. Most people would correctly write "there are," even though in everyday speech they would say "there is" incorrectly. Does this indicate that the spoken English language is dying, whereas perhaps the written word is not? But if the quality of one dies, is it inevitable that the other follow suit? And is there any cause for real worry at all, when scholars have been predicting the complete ruin of the English language for generations?
Or could English, for all its complexity and simplicity, actually be considered the language of empathy?
For my musings on that, stick around for another blog post!
Beautiful Essay!
ReplyDeleteMy personal problem with the English language is that - while I do have a fairly sound understanding of how to use it - sometimes my brain and mouth do not like to cooperate. When I speak, I am sometimes in situations where I simply speak incorrectly (despite knowing that I'm incorrect) because I'm in a hurry to get something out there or simply because I'm at a loss for words. When I'm writing, however, I manage to sound much more eloquent. Going off of that idea, I feel that English has become a language of "Well, I sort of understood what you were saying anyway." as opposed to highly specific rules. So I would say that it is a language of sympathy. Not everyone will speak at the same level depending on their upbringing and such. For the most part, though, despite these differences of background or what have you, we can understand. While that deviates heavily from English's origins, I feel as though it is a change that is beneficial to the people that speak the language. At the end of the day, though, all languages have their faults and no one speaks perfectly all of the time. Language is not meant to be taken too seriously; it should be respected and paid attention to, but had fun with at the same time. Our words are endless and we have a tremendous variety of ways to conjugate sentences that mean the same thing. People find that fun, too - that's why wordplay is such a common form of humor. I believe that fact alone proves that the English language is not dying; it will cease to live when people cease to find joy and wonder in it
~Caitlin
The "sympathy" aspect is one of the reasons I'm started to find English so fascinating (which is what I'll be looking at in my next blog post). I think other languages are much more specific and controlled in a way. (I'm going to infer that Japanese, for example, is probably like this, as it's a very complicated language, though never having really researched it I can't accurately say.)
DeleteHopefully interest in English as a language will remain; its variances are what make it unique. Travel across the United States, even from state to state, and you come across new colloquialisms, sayings, accents, etc. Certainly other languages have some variances in accent and such as well (such as French and Japanese), but I don't think it's as widespread as English is, which is so openly versatile.
Still, of course that's no excuse to not be educated. I do think we should be highly aware of the quality of our writing. So really, the WRITING of English vs. SPEAKING of English are two different topics, which is really interesting. We write scholarly works differently than we talk. In a way, the way we type on-line often is a more accurate representation of how we talk.
So is writing non-scholarly work, such as e-mail or chatting, more TALKING in its essence than it is WRITING? And as long as we are able to differentiate between the two, are our concerns about the quality of the English language unfounded?
Of course English is meant to be spoken. Virtually all languages were spoken far before they were written. In a way, symbolic languages (Heiroglyphics, Chinese) don't actually write the spoken language at all - they're more akin to math in that regard (though at least Mandarin now has a phonetic alphabet as well.) The main concern I would have is that the written and spoken words feed each other. People speak with the words they read. If what people mostly read are text messages, language will begin to reflect that. I'm not going to say that's good or bad, but longer works - books, namely - provide more opportunity to plumb the depth of the English language, enriching what's both written and spoken. That being said, for as many mediocre web articles out there, there are plenty of wonderfully intelligent and well-worded articles.
ReplyDeleteLimited vocabulary skills makes the language flat. The English language is rich because it is capable of making so many careful distinctions and has such a large bank of near-synonyms. Without mastery of these words and their incredibly subtle meanings, English loses a lot of its beauty and wonder. I'm not a lingual doomsayer, by any means. People will always find ways of expressing themselves - who is anyone to dictate the RIGHT way? Humans use language to convey meaning to each other. If it's mutually understood, it's language.
When I was replying to Caitlin, I sort of was able to stumble upon the idea of WRITING vs. SPEAKING. When one is chatting or e-mailing, we tend to write more as we SPEAK, not as we WRITE, which is utilized for scholarly things. (So therefore chatting/e-mailing/etc. is actually more of a SPEAKING exercise rather than a WRITING one.) I think as long as we can keep that dichotomy, the quality of the language will remain intact.
DeleteBeware the thesarus! That's one lesson I have never forgotten. Though I often use the thesarus when I'm writing, you definitely have to be careful about the EXACT definition of the word you choose. I love words, so learning the subtle differences between synonyms is really fascinating.
I suppose if the English language fell so badly that it actually negatively affected society somehow, we would probably be mentally unable to notice the difference or be concerned. It would be like a Newspeak thing from 1984. You can't describe what you don't have the vocabulary to describe.