About Me

My photo
British/Irish Saxophonist, Bassoonist, Composer and Arranger. Queens Park Rangers Season Ticket Holder, Qualified Teacher, Atheist, Barefooter and occasional Political Activist.

Monday 15 July 2013

How has writing made English less standardised rather than more?

It's almost paradoxical that with the advent of the internet and a lot of text-based communication we're using writing more rather than less, and yet it's going against the historical linguistic trend that the rate of change of a language slows down when more things are written. The reason Ancient and Mordern Greek are so similar despite being changing for longer than it took Latin to turn into French, Italian, Romanian, Spanish and Portuguese (just for a start) is due to the extent to which things got written down. Or you could look at Hebrew where the difference is slightly greater, but the age gap is enormously bigger even compared to Greek. And yet the most change is coming about now when more writing takes place than ever.

I'd say it's probably because the writing is so cheap and quick that it's easier to write something out again (and only then if the reader insists it's necessary) than to make sure it's perfectly clear and intelligible. It's so easy to send written communication now that it's seen as trivial, and effortless so less pride is taken with it. The lazy defence of "well everyone can understand it can't they?" is wheeled out each time despite there being the obvious problem of one's laziness in their writing being a clear symptom of laziness in their thinking, meaning that any writing that's not done with great care is unlikely to contain any text composed in the mind with any great care.

We're already at the point where people are making cringe-inducing requests to translate Shakespeare into the language it's already written in; i.e. Modern English. How they can not see it's already in Modern English is ridiculous. We wouldn't be able to understand much of it at all if it weren't. It's not Chaucer, and even Chaucer can be understood with a small amount of preparation and effort. So many people who should know better (broadcasters, advertisers, newsreaders, film screenplay writers) are displaying complete ignorance of rarely used but very simple English concepts, like what "whom" actually means, (this is still in standard use and should be taught in primary school, or better yet by parents when teaching their children to speak in the first place) like what "thou" and "thee" are for (relating them to "I" and "me" - which is also how you explain what "whom" is for) and how "thou" and "you" differ in the same way as "tu" and vous" in French (alarmingly there are people who think that "thou" can be plural), and the outmoded present tense verb endings (thou makest, he speaketh)

Every time I hear an -eth where they should be an -est, or even worst on the end of a noun or adjective, coming from a film script, a part of me dies inside. Sure, in a thousand years it won't matter, but right now it does, because right now these words have meanings, and they mean things to people and if you get them wrong then you are saying something that has no meaning, or means something different from what you intend. Above all, you're also saying "I don't really care about you enough to make effort in my communication and thus I have a lot less respect for you than I ought to".

No comments:

Post a Comment