The English language

Vishishtha Upul
Nov 5 · 3 min read

Bonjour. Or should I say Hola? Ohayo? Even the short and weet Olá wouldn’t sound bad, would it?

Greetings in different languages

There are so many languages on the face of this earth that I won’t be able to finish greeting you all for a very long time. My language of choice today is English.

Legend has it that English was spoken for the first time when three Germanic tribes invaded Great Britain in the 5th century AD. That was how old English was born, mainly Anglo-Saxon in nature. The invasion by the Vikings and the French resulted in the inclusion of many Norse and French words in the English vocabulary, making it more sophisticated. The end of the war established English as a powerful language yet again and Shakespeare spearheaded the birth of modern English in the 15th century. The colonization of countries around the world by Britain led to the widespread usage of this language. It evolved in its own way in America, New Zealand, Canada et al with its distinct accent and dialects. The interesting thing is that with time, the language has only penetrated more nations around the globe and is still evolving.

Language is a social phenomenon. Barriers break when people talk. And that is why over the years, new words from a host of different languages have been added to the Oxford English dictionary. A few latest additions to the lexicon from foreign languages are -

  1. bokeh: a Japanese word referring to the blurred effect seen in the out-of-focus portion of a photograph taken with a narrow depth of field
  2. emoji: a Japanese word referring to any of various small images, symbols, or icons used in text fields in electronic communication (as in text messages, email, and social media) to express the emotional attitude of the writer
  3. schneid: a German word meaning a losing streak (as in sports).
  4. jugaad: a Hindi word referring to a flexible approach to solve a problem using limited resources in an innovative way
  5. anna: a Tamil/Telugu word meaning elder brother

With the advent of social media and instant messaging, a slew of “cool words”, abbreviations, and pop culture references have also made its way to the coveted English language, much to the dismay of the purists. The English dictionary now includes words like -

  1. ICYMI: In case you missed it
  2. Lightsaber and Jedi: Star War references
  3. Whovian: a fan of the TV series Dr. Who
  4. promposal: where a person invites someone to be their date to a school/ college prom, usually in an elaborate manner
  5. hanging: a state of a hangover after drinking.

By continuously embracing change, the English language has become an important record of how we have evolved as a society. Although it has just 26 alphabets, the riveting repertoire of words(the total number is about 0.25 million words) means I can keep on writing and still have new words to incorporate into my piece. But I can’t. Because I need to go back and be a Samurai(a Japanese word meaning warrior). Life’s a battle you just can’t run away from.

Alvida.

Vishishtha Upul

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Capturing life in snapshots

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