We should speak only pukka English.

I see what you did there David...

I changed it Lisa, but your lightening fast reply still holds!


I don't know where people get these ideas from. I mean, if I try and read "Canterbury Tales" in the original Chaucerian English, it is really hard going. As you say language is dynamic.


Cheers


David

I agree with you both that the language is dynamic.However for centuries there was a brake put on the change by the continued use of Elizabethan/Jacobean English through the use of the King James Bible in churches and the study of Shakespeare in schools (both of which I am old enough to have experienced in church/school). However with the use of modern translations of the bible and the move away from studying Shakespeare, the language is evolving faster now than previously so the change is becoming noticeable within an individuals lifetime.

If you really want to know how quickly language can change, try comparing English from the time of the Norman Conquest (e.g. the Domesday Book, about 1086 I think) to English from Chaucer such as the Canterbury Tales (about 1385) and they appear to be two different languages (and are considered as such, being Old English or Anglo Saxon for the former and Middle English for the latter), even though they are only three hundred years apart. As a comparison, go back three hundred years from today and you can read the language with little difficulty. Try Robinson Crusoe, published 299 years ago next week!


Apologies - just checked and the Domesday book was Latin. Try Beowulf, published about 50 years earlier.....


Alasdair

Of course when I say 'published' for Beowulf, I actually mean 'written'. It may even have been an oral tradition from earlier, but was would have been written using language generally in use at the time.

Alasdair

This is something my wife and I often disagree about (after 30 years there has to be something ), as a professional editor she tends to look for "correct" English, I'm rather less worried about it changing. But the thing we do agree about is "unambiguous" English. Apostrophes are a fine (and commonly used) example - used correctly they do ensure ambiguity is removed. It doesn't matter too much if you are putting a price on potatoes, it does when you're writing a safety case!


Which is why I personally like  emojis . As these forums show again and again,brief and rapidly posted writing can be easily misinterpreted - and yes we can (and I sometimes do ) use huge numbers of words to ensure - for example - that a joke  isn't taken as an angry slur . But emojis are SO much quicker!


And what I think is very often forgotten is that - and I think this is a very good thing - in the 21st century more people are writing more then ever before. In engineering as an example, when I started we had technical writers, we had typists, we had a drawing office, the actual engineers didn't actually have to write anything - or if they did it would get "tidied up" before anyone else saw it. In the computer age far more people are "publishing" (for want of a better word) their own words directly. So language is going to change just because of that. Better that most people can write something than writing just being in the hands of a few who understand the arcane (and sometimes randomly invented by the Fowlers for example) rules of English.


I remember a very elderly next-door neighbour saying "in my day everyone left school knowing how to read and write". We tried explaining to him that what he was remembering was a grammar school, which in the 1930s was definitely not typical.


So I feel democratization of language is good, and anything that combats internet flame wars is good, it's just a case of keeping enough knowledge of the useful bits of grammar - not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.


Re any and all "correct English" mistakes in this post - as I say, it's my wife who's the editor, definitely not me


And I was going to be so good and not let these forums distract me today


Cheers,


Andy

P.S. Just because I like recommending it - for anyone who does need to know the rules of English I can heartily recommend Bill Bryson's wonderful "Penguin Dictionary of Troublesome Words". We have loads of books on grammar and style in our house but this is by a long way my favourite - it's the only one that actually makes me laugh -  written some years before he became famous. I particularly like his explanation of why sometimes it does just make sense to determinedly split an infinitive. I'm pretty sure it's updated and back in print.

Andy,

Well said. I absolutely agree what we want is unambiguous language, and whether it is deemed 'correct' by the grammar police is a secondary issue. I also have a wife who looks for the correct English (and once when at school to pick up our daughter, got her pen out and put corrections to the grammar on a notice on the board from one of the teachers!), so I feel for you.

The problem with more and more people writing, which you mention, is not the fact that they are doing so but rather the lack of checking. The one job that has declined as the amount of writing has gone up is that of proofreader, once considered essential but now replaced by a computer spellchecker, which unfortunately is not the same thing. A computer would certainly not have stopped the one that I did - a reference to doping material with arsenic where the word 'arsenic' had been split over two lines, and you can guess where the computer put the split!

I think the opportunities for people to self publish now is both a benefit and a drawback, a benefit in that anyone can now get their opinions out for the whole world to read (as we are doing in this forum) but also a drawback in that with so much material published, it is more and more difficult to find the worthwhile publications. As a result those that are not so well written are less likely to reach their target audience.

Regards,

Alasdair

My wife could agree with you at some length on those points! Her particular battle has been to try to persuade her clients that website designers need professional writers / proofreaders as much as any publishing activity does - she very, very rarely succeeds in this. It's an odd thing that printed language is seen as needing checking, while web published language doesn't - it's seen as "IT".

She used to correct the grammar of letters home from our childrens' teachers and return them to them. It's probably just as well that I was a Governor at my childrens' primary school otherwise I hate to think what hideous revenge the teachers would have taken on them for that!


Re "arsenic", when I was working in music technology design we had a very serious memo circulated to say that we were absolutely forbidden from using the abbreviation "anal" for "analogue". I think it's fair to say that the only effect was to encourage those that hadn't already thought of using that abbreviation to start doing so!


Cheers,


Andy

In one of my previous jobs I wrote and produced the School newsletter and annual magazine which was then checked by the English department and returned to me with many red circles.  Once produced, the staff room copy was then eagerly checked by other teachers and came out with many more red marks.  This was all before emojis, so I don't see these  as being a major issue in language and something else will be along to replace them.