Oh
man I have been universally absent from the blog world for the last year and a
half! I promise I am trying hard to get
back to posting witty nonsense every week or two. Until I have a chance to come up with some
new content though I will share with you some randomness that may interest you
or it may just bore you to tears of agony.
Either way, I’m putting it out there!!
I
was bored for about a millisecond today and decided to go back and read through
some of my college papers. I took this
class in the spring 2012 semester called The History of the English
Language. It was an online class so
instead of in-person discussions, we wrote…a lot! Fine by me, I don’t like people well enough
to sit in a class and argue with them about why their shorthand, chicken-scratch
version of writing and speaking is BS so writing was no problem!
We
were required to do a bit of research and come up with 2 essays discussing a
certain assigned topic. My assigned
topic was something along the lines of comparing and contrasting Old, Middle,
and Modern English. Sounds terrible but
it was actually quite fun. I don’t
really love research (unless it’s a topic I am voluntarily researching) but we
were only required to have 3 sources so it wasn’t so bad. I decided to go with the minimum of 3 and
build the rest of my essay on my own opinions and experiences. I should mention that I was one of, or quite
possibly, the oldest person in the class and therefore about the only one that
remembers a day and age without the internet and cell phones at the ready.
Anyway,
I decided that I would simply share my essays with you all in a 2 part
post. There are so many problems in the
world today that I could discuss, but I chose instead to simply throw something
that goes virtually ignored out there for you all to toss around…or run away
from…whatever! Here you go!
Warning:
this is a formal essay complete with source list (I believe they are still
calling it a bibliography) and references…read at your own risk! ;)
(Originally
written on March 14, 2012)
Of Context and Culture: The Future of Our Language
What is language? Simply put, it is the collection and use of
words that are used for communication between people. We all know that language is in fact, much
more complicated than that however.
Language is indeed our means of communication but it is constantly being
shaped and influenced by culture, beliefs, ethnic diversity, scientific
advancement, movement of people, war and conflict, and social influences. Technological innovations such as email and
text messaging have likely affected the evolution of communication and language
more than any other events in history; perhaps even more so than the Norman
invasion of England in 1066!
Coupled with the incessant need for
instant gratification and sheer laziness, these innovations have caused a rapid
change in the way the English language is used today and leads to the question:
is our language un-evolving? Is the
English of the future going to look more like Old and Middle English than it does
our current modern language? Or, will it
be a myriad of words from various languages that are referred to collectively
as English?
The answer to each of these
questions is yes. Rather than
un-evolving, our language is just continuing to evolve as it has for at least
15 centuries now. The only difference
now is that it is changing much quicker than it has in the past. Unlike in prior centuries, the speed with
which people can now move from place to place and communicate with each other
is such that languages are able to evolve over the course of a lifetime rather
than over a few centuries.
Fifty, twenty, possibly even as few
as ten years ago the art of communication was much different that it is
today. Back then communication took
time. It could take hours to sit and
write a letter to someone, not to mention the three to seven days it took for
the post office to deliver the letter.
Talking on the telephone meant confining oneself to a space equal to the
length of the phone cord (driving and talking on the phone at the same time was
not an option!). Email wasn’t invented
or available to the public yet and cell phone and internet use were so limited
that they had very little influence on language and communication.
Then something happened. The advent of and public accessibility to
computers and the internet changed everything.
The age of electronic
communication had begun.
Email and text messaging have expedited
changes in language and communication. People are constantly looking for ways
to converse with each other more quickly and with less effort. In The
Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, David Crystal said “They
[electronic messages] are preferred over other methods [of communication]
because they can be the most economical way of sending or receiving
information…they do not require the participants to engage in time-consuming
rituals of a phatic kind (asking about health, family, weather, etc…). In other circumstances, a conversation which
omitted such pleasantries would be considered rude.” (Crystal, 392). It may be rude, but the shortened condensed
version of conversation used in electronic communication gets rid of time
wasting chit chat as people speed about, living life in the fast lane.
This “quick-fix” approach to
communication has lead to irreversible changes in the English language. Those changes include (among other things):
the use of acronyms as words, the use of numbers in place of letters or groups
of letters that sound similar to the number, the exclusion of vowels and
consonants in order to shorten words, and the combination of two or more words
to create one shorter all-inclusive word.
The lengthy list of acronyms that
now function as words includes IDK, OMG, NBD,
& LOL, but the list goes on and
on. These are just a few of the new
“words” that are commonly used in the English language today. The use of these acronyms as replacements for
standard phrases like "I don't know" and "no bid deal" is a
daily practice for many people, but these new “words” are just as confusing to
many people as Old & Middle English because they are unfamiliar. To older
generations, the English of the future may make little or no sense, just like
older forms of English make no sense (to most of us).
It could be said that many of the
words and/or abbreviations that have worked their way into our current language
more closely resemble words from the time of Caedmon and Old English than of
the 21st century. Like in words from the
time of Caedmon, vowels are used but don’t seem to be positioned in a way that
can be easily pronounced. However, as
with Old English or any other language, if the context is known and the reader understands
the vocabulary being used, they can easily decipher the message.
Other ways that the English language
is changing is through the use of numbers in place of letters that sound
similar to the number and the exclusion of vowels. For example, the word tomorrow is often spelled 2mro
in text messages or emails. This spelling
not only replaces a group of letters with a number that is pronounced the same
way, but it also shows the exclusion of nearly every vowel in the word. Another example, the word anyone, is often replaced with n e 1 in order to shorten the time it
takes to create a text message. Other
examples include great (gr8), see you
later (c u l8r), and by the way (btw). Initially, these spellings simply made it
quicker and easier to type a message on a the tiny keypad of a cell phone but
with hundreds of millions of people worldwide using these on daily basis, the
English language is changing right under our noses (or perhaps our fingertips).
Omission of consonants is becoming
more common in English. The suffix “-ing” is rarely pronounced properly in
today’s English. More often than not,
the “g” is left off and the pronunciation ends up as “-in”. A few examples of
this are: walking (walkin), wondering
(wonderin), and thinking (thinkin). According to dictionary.com, this variation
of “-ing” was used occasionally in
Middle English, however, it is probably safe to say that regular use of “-in” instead of “-ing” didn’t occur until the mid to late 20th century.
Another process that is noticeably
changing English is the combining of two or more words to create a shorter more
inclusive word. Common examples of this
include Idunno (I don’t know), gonna
(going to), gotta (got to), and whatchadoin
(what are you doing?). It could be
said that this is a blatant display of both laziness and the “do more in less
time” mentality that many people live with.
Although they may have had the
greatest impact on the evolution of the English language, the reasons listed
above are not solely to blame for the vast, rapid changes it has endured. Prior to the 20th century, most
people were limited to their native lands.
Aside from invasions and conquests, people kept to their homelands and
their cultures remained untainted (or at least less tainted by outside
influences). Passage by ship or horse
drawn carriage was the only means of travel available. As a result, languages also remained more
pure and changed at a much slower rate.
Advancements in travel, in addition
to mass communication, the internet, etc, have had a great impact on how people,
and therefore language and culture, spread out across the planet. Yet these developments that have helped
spread the English language across the world may be the very things that
endanger it in the future. In a 2008
article for Forbes.com, Nicholas Ostler writes “English is not thereby immune
to the principles of language survival. Above all, it is notable that beyond
the 330 million or so native speakers, perhaps twice as many more use it as a
second language. The community of over
600 million second-language speakers, who make English pre-eminent as a world
language, also make it vulnerable in the long term.”
Ostler goes on to say that “In sum,
the world in the next few generations is likely to see greater multilingualism
and less English-backed bilingualism. We can learn the long view from language
history, but it may be a hard lesson.” He
is illustrating that because people can move about so freely, the English
language is being infiltrated by words from other languages to the point that
eventually, it will exist as a generic world-language rather than a specific
mother-tongue.
Although it is unlikely that such an
extreme dilution of the language will occur in this lifetime, it is reasonable
to state that the English language is already on a path toward globalization
and becoming the tongue of the world.
Unless it is preserved by current native speakers, English as it has
been known for the last few centuries will not exist in the future.
Sources
1.
Ostler, Nicholas. "English's Bleak Future." Forbes.
Forbes Magazine, 21 Feb. 2008. Web. 14 Mar. 2012. http://www.forbes.com/2008/02/21/future-english-chinese-tech-cx_no_language_sp08_0221lingua.html
2.
Graddol, David. The Future of English. London:
British Council, 1997. Web. 14 Mar. 2012. http://www.britishcouncil.org/learning-elt-future.pdf
3.
Lerer, Seth. Inventing English: A Portable History
of the Language. New York: Columbia UP, 2007. Print.
4.
Crystal, David. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the
English Language. Cambridge England: Cambridge UP, 1995. Print.
5.
"-ing." Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com.
Web. 15 Mar. 2012. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/-ing?r=75
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