The Queen Victoria monument-London
The Decline & Fall of the English Language
By
By
Chris Green
The
history of the English language has its roots in the arrival of three
Germanic tribes who invaded Britain during the 5th century AD. These
tribes, the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes, crossed the North Sea
from what today is Denmark and northern Germany. At that time the
inhabitants of Britain spoke a Celtic language. But most of the
native Celtic speakers were pushed west and north by the invaders
into what is now Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The Angles came from
"Englaland" [sic]
and their language was called "Englisc" - from whence the
words "England" and "English" are derived.
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| Christ Church -Oxford |
The English language has three distinct
historical categories with the latter having two sub-categories: Old
English (450-1100 AD), Middle English (1100-1500) and Modern English
(1500-1800). The sub-categories are therefore Early Modern English
(1500-1800) and Late Modern English (1800-present day). A further
sub-category has evolved within the last twenty years which has yet
to be given a title, a matter which may be resolved by the end of
this column which will draw attention to the steep decline and fall
of the standards of both written and spoken English in Great Britain
and England in particular, today in 2014.
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| The flag of St George-Patron Saint of England |
To
develop the ultimate point, let us look in more detail at the
development of Modern English. Towards the end of Middle English, a
sudden and distinct change in pronunciation (the Great Vowel Shift)
started, with vowels being pronounced shorter and shorter. From the
16th century the British had contact with many peoples from around
the world. This,
and the Renaissance of Classical learning, meant that many new words
and phrases entered the language. The invention of printing also
meant that there was now a common language in print. Books became
cheaper to buy and more and more people learned to read. Printing
also brought standardization to English:Spelling and grammar became
fixed, and the dialect of London, where most publishing houses were,
became the standard. In 1604 the first English dictionary was
published.
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| An old map of England & Wales |
The
main difference between Early Modern English and Late Modern English
is vocabulary. Late Modern English has many more words, arising from
two principal factors: firstly, the Industrial Revolution and
technology created a need for new words; secondly, the British Empire
at its height covered one quarter of the earth's surface, and the
English language adopted foreign words from many countries. But as
with any country in the world, England has myriad local dialects
which employ colloquialisms and these have added to the overall
richness of the language, however with greater social mobility and
the quantum leap in telecommunication, dialects have softened greatly
during the course of the last 30 years or so.
From around
1600, the English colonization of North America resulted in the
creation of a distinct American variety of English. Some English
pronunciations and words "froze" when they reached America.
In some ways, American English is more like the English of
Shakespeare than modern British English is. Some expressions that the
British call "Americanisms" are in fact original British
expressions that were preserved in the colonies while lost for a time
in Britain (for example trash
for rubbish, loan
as a verb instead of lend, and fall
for autumn; another example, frame-up,
was re-imported into Britain through Hollywood gangster movies).
Spanish also had an influence on American English (and subsequently
British English), with words like canyon,
ranch,
stampede
and vigilante
being examples of Spanish words that entered English through the
settlement of the American West. French words (through Louisiana) and
West African words (through the slave trade) also influenced American
English (and so, to an extent, British English).
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| The historical City of Bath |
The
English language has evolved as all modern-day languages must evolve
but there can be no doubt at all that the standard of English has
fallen steeply even during the last ten years although this may have
begun earlier still. With the advent and development of mobile
telephones and social media based communications, the written word
has become badly abbreviated to form what has become known as 'text
language' and involves the mixing up of consonants and numerals. For
example 'mate' becomes m8; 'see you tomorrow' becomes 'c u tomoz'.
And so it goes on to the extent that some schools are no longer
correcting their students for adopting 'text-ese' within their
written work and it could even be suggested that their teachers use
the same awful 'dumbed-down' English that their students have learned.
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| Durham Cathedral |
It
is also very clear – if unintelligible – to this columnist at
least, that the standard of conversational English has and continues,
to steeply decline. One only has to listen to peoples conversations
today to understand this point. For example a typical exchange
between two people might go like this:
“I'm
tellin ya like, I was standing there literally and I`m like OH MY GOD
and its like, you know what I mean, literally (lit-ra-lee) I dint
know what to do!” which
is likely to elicit a reply along the lines of “Oh
My God (which would be written O mi god) that appened to me, like
literally happened to me!” And
so the conversation would continue, unintelligibly but nonetheless
entirely satisfactorily to the participants thereof. Colloquialisms
are one thing, but 'Estuary ' and/or other forms of 'dumbed-down'
English today serve to diminish the country as a whole.
Another noticeable change in the spoken language is that people now have a tendency to employ the use of a rising cadence at the end of sentences which implies a form of 'questioning' within their statement even if they are not actually asking a question, or that by doing so, they give emphasis to whatever it is they are trying to say. This influence is again partly American but also antipodean in origin too. Another pet hate [of the writer] is those who approach a bar or servery counter and order whatever it is they wish with the aphorism "Can I get..." as distinct to the correct manner which is "Please may I have or May I have..." It is absolutely awful and it is NOT correct English either!
Now we come to the modern day methods of greeting and enquiring as to mutual health. Instead of 'How are you?', 'I`m well thank you' or words to that effect. What do we have now? 'Are you good? yes, I'm really good thanks, are you good?' And so the exchange of 'goodness' flows on ad nausea. 'Touching base' seems to be a popular activity presumably after having 'caught up'! Goodness, its a mighty busy activity having conversations and discussions now as I edit this piece in 2020.
Another noticeable change in the spoken language is that people now have a tendency to employ the use of a rising cadence at the end of sentences which implies a form of 'questioning' within their statement even if they are not actually asking a question, or that by doing so, they give emphasis to whatever it is they are trying to say. This influence is again partly American but also antipodean in origin too. Another pet hate [of the writer] is those who approach a bar or servery counter and order whatever it is they wish with the aphorism "Can I get..." as distinct to the correct manner which is "Please may I have or May I have..." It is absolutely awful and it is NOT correct English either!
Now we come to the modern day methods of greeting and enquiring as to mutual health. Instead of 'How are you?', 'I`m well thank you' or words to that effect. What do we have now? 'Are you good? yes, I'm really good thanks, are you good?' And so the exchange of 'goodness' flows on ad nausea. 'Touching base' seems to be a popular activity presumably after having 'caught up'! Goodness, its a mighty busy activity having conversations and discussions now as I edit this piece in 2020.
Foreign
immigrants are expected to learn English as part and parcel of their
citizenship and rightly so, but one envisions an aspiring citizen who
might take their birth and infant nurture from the Far East ending up
speaking in a 'like' manner but with peculiarities due to their
accents. For example: “Excuse
me, could you give me 'rike' directions to 'der' station, please 'rike'
(like)” And
so it could go on and of course, a degree of exaggeration is being
employed here to make the point however far more seriously, in the
world of business, a whole new language has evolved which could be
described as 'Office-ese' and comprises partly of inane nonsense that
is punctuated with acronyms. If you are not conversant with the
acronyms employed, you are effectively excluded from the entire
process; it has recently become the practice of this writer to bemoan OUA's
when he finds himself in such situations. This usually elicits the
enquiry “What are OUA's?” To which the blunt reply erupts in a stridently
Oxford English accent thus: “ OVER USE of ACRONYMS!”
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| Chester Cathedral |
One
only has to review BBC news bulletins during the past half a century
to gain an understanding of how the spoken, let alone written form of
English has changed and the American influence is as marked as it is
malign in terms of the tendency to lower and diminish the standard
thereof. Looking forward, one is filled with much foreboding as to
what might unfold during the ensuing years in relation to what the
shape of our rich language might in the future take. But the English
language has been used to communicate the works of some of the worlds
finest minds, writers and poets throughout the whole world from time
immemorial. It would indeed be a tragedy for future generations if
this language became extinct.
"I have travelled amongst unknown men
In lands beyond the sea.
Nor England! Did'st I know 'till then
What love I bore to thee."
Wm Wordsworth
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