ENGL 85 History of the English Language Spring 2008
WEDS MAY 7, 2008
ENJOY THE LAST DAY OF CLASSES WITH
A FREE SCREENING OF
BEOWULF (2007)*
EVERYONE WELCOME
FREE PIZZA
ENA THOMPSON READING ROOM
CROOKSHANK 108
STARTING AT 12N
BONUS FEATURE: POMONA STUDENTS READING THEIR ORIGINAL VERSE TRANSLATIONS OF THEIR FAVORITE PASSAGES OF BEOWULF (the poem, not the movie)
RSVP: amanda.crowley@pomona.edu
*(in fabulous 2D! ‘DIRECTOR’S CUT WITH SCENES TOO INTENSE FOR THEATRES’!)
Bartelby.com has the full text of Mencken’s The American Language online. I found the chapter on English as a world language especially interesting for its mix of prescience mixed with some strange 19th century thinking (courtesy of Otto Jespersen) on English’s supposed vitality due to its relative “masculinity” (meaning: laconic, gnomic utterances with clearly defined hard consonants apposed with easily distinguished soft ones, its increasingly simple grammar, etc. ), and some genuine American pride in our national tendency toward blithe monlingualism. Global English for Mencken (writing in 1921) is apparently a sign of the dominance of its “race” (his word). But the popularity of English in quickly industrializing China (see previous post) could also be a (cause? result? correlation?) of China’s current and future economic dominance.
As economic (and other forms of) power shifts from the US and western Europe to China, will English retain its status as a global language of commerce and politics? According to a recent New Yorker article, there are hundreds of millions of potential new English speakers and learners. This creates not only new potentialities of interaction between China and the West, but a vast new market for teaching English. Learning English has become almost a national obsession in China. The most successful English teaching system in China is known as “Crazy English.”
China has been in the grip of “English fever,” as the phenomenon is known in Chinese, for more than a decade. A vast national appetite has elevated English to something more than a language: it is not simply a tool but a defining measure of life’s potential. China today is divided by class, opportunity, and power, but one of its few unifying beliefs—something shared by waiters, politicians, intellectuals, tycoons—is the power of English. Every college freshman must meet a minimal level of English comprehension, and it’s the only foreign language tested. English has become an ideology, a force strong enough to remake your résumé, attract a spouse, or catapult you out of a village. Linguists estimate the number of Chinese now studying or speaking English at between two hundred million and three hundred and fifty million, a figure that’s on the order of the population of the United States. English private schools, study gadgets, and high-priced tutors vie for pieces of that market. The largest English school system, New Oriental, is traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
I was reading around page 477 in Crystal about the large amount of spelling variation that exists even in Received Pronunciation. I was struck by the fact that all but a couple of the presented examples of spelling variation were irrelevant to American English speakers (alright/all right, judgment/judgement, maybe amok/amuck). All the rest of them (aery/airy, anesthetize/anesthetise, aging/ageing, adieu/adieus/adieux, etc.) were only variant in the British standard. I wondered if British spelling is to some extent less standardized than American spelling, and why that would be. Part of it may have to do with the fact that American spellings are influencing British spellings at the moment, but Crystal notes that this makes up only a small proportion of British variant spellings. On the other hand, it may be that Crystal is only talking about the British standard, and American spelling has its own non-overlapping list of variant spellings.
As I was reading Crystal 18, part of his discussion on 19th-century grammar caught my eye. While not as grammatically far removed as Shakespeare, 19th-century English still occasionally sounds odd to us. “Whenever we sense that the phrasing of a passage is somewhat ‘awkward’ or ‘old-fashioned’,” Crystal writes, “or a conversation is in some way ’stilted’ or ‘unidiomatic’, we are probably noting a difference in grammatical norms between the beginning of the Modern English period and today.”
In many of his examples, and in much of the 19th-century British literature I’ve read, I actually find some of these “old-fashioned” constructions to resemble modern-day French–especially the verb forms Crystal singles out. For example, Jane Austen’s Jenny & James are walked to Charmouth this afternoon reminds me of many French verbs of movement and transportation that require the “to be” auxiliary in the past tense; Keats’ it rains parallels the modern French phrasing of that statement, etc.
Given that our class has collectively studied quite a few languages, I was wondering if anyone else has had similar thoughts. Are there “typically 19th-century” constructions that remind any of you of current usage in another language?
(click the picture to follow the link)
Above is a link to a site where users can post mistranslations found in foreign languages that actually try to use English in conveying a message.
Most are from Japan, where the funniest mistranslations occur.
“Engrish” because the “r” sound is replaced with the “l” sound in spoken Japanese.
Example: “Surprise!” would sound like “supplies!”
This has nothing to do with the latest class topic, I just find it amusing.
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For those times when you feel too relaxed:
Take up any of these points, or start your own thread on a different issue! Thanks for playing, sorry to be out of commission.
Ch. 1: Taking the measure of it all - the “need” for a dictionary based on historical principles that is not also a kind of encyclopedia or almanac (as some of the pre-Johnson dictionaries). The Philological Society as the impetus. Philology as an occupation of the leisured and educated class. Winchester doesn’t give quite enough background on the theory of language history and change that underwrites the project of the OED from its earliest days.
What we are seeing is the (slow) impact of scientific Indo-European philology on the study of vernacular languages. The study of Latin and Greek had long been fairly systematic and evidence based, because they were working from a long tradition of Greek and Latin study almost unbroken since the Classical era. But it was a revolution in perspective after William Jones figured out that Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek, Germanic (including English) and Celtic were all somehow connected by a lost “common source.”
While reading Samuel Johnson’s introduction to his dictionary, the following two sentences caught my eye:
The language most likely to continue long without alteration would be that of a nation raised a little, and but a little, above barbarity, secluded from strangers, and totally employed in procuring the conveniences of life; either without books, or, like some of the Mahometan countries, with very few: men thus busied and unlearned, having only such words as common use requires, would perhaps long continue to express the same notions by the same signs. But no such constancy can be expected in a people polished by arts, and classed by subordination, where one part of the community is sustained and accommodated by the labor of the other.
According to Johnson, there seem to be two important elements in the prevention of language chance: 1) seclusion from speakers of other languages; and 2) constant occupation with taking care of the basic needs rather than having time to sit around and become educated. I wouldn’t argue with the former — as we’ve frequently discussed, a whole lot of English language change did have to do with the influx of words from foreign invaders or trade contacts — but I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the latter claim. I don’t necessarily think that language change finds its roots in education or in having leisure time. If that education were to include reading works from people of other cultures who spoke other languages, then obviously language change could come from there, but I don’t believe that simply having someone else take care of one’s basic needs would entail language change, nor do I think that the constant preoccupation with providing for oneself would preclude it.
Any thoughts?
Looking at the pages that are linked from this blog, I noticed that this page was absent, which is a shame because this is such a fun site. A few years ago PBS produced a documentary called “Do You Speak American?” focusing on the various dialects of English spoken in the United States. Since both our books are coming from a British perspective, I have a hard time conceptualizing some of the dialects discussed since I’ve never heard them. I thought it might be useful to have a page to look at that only focuses on the dialects that we all might be more familiar with.
There are several different sections of the site, but the section called “From Sea to Shining Sea” might be a good place to start since it talks at length about more than a dozen different American English dialects. There are also sections that talk about language change and the infamous question of whether English is getting better or worse. If anyone is planning to study a dialect of American English for their project, there are also several “further reading” links that might be helpful too (and probably screened for the sites that are actually legitimate).
All right, I hope everyone has a great weekend!
