The English language is well good, innit!
The English language is amazing. It’s a pot pourri of languages from across history and across the globe. It’s made up of Celtic (Irish Scots, Manx — the Goidelic languages; and Welsh, Cornish, Breton — the Brythonic languages). There’s also Latin, then Saxon and Anglian (Germanic), Jutish (Danish), Norse and Frisian (spoken in the Netherlands). And all before 1066 when Norman French was brought over. Curiously, though, after this battle which is considered as the beginning of our history, the defeated nation did not take the language of its invaders. Instead “Englisc” remained the language of the common people: those of the Court spoke Anglo-Norman; and religion and education was conducted in Latin. And since then there have been MANY foreign “Loan-words” which have found their way into English, for example café (French for coffee), bazaar (Persian, meaning market) and Anorak (Greenlandic Inuit, meaning hooded coat).
The Oxford English Dictionary is a testament to just how complicated the English language is, and English is the only language in the world that has such a comprehensive scholarship of its word origins. There had been earlier dictionaries, of course. The most famous of them is that compiled by Samuel Johnson in 1755. Johnson famously included a couple of jokes in his definitions, defining a “lexicographer” as “a harmless drudge that busies himself in tracing the original and detailing the signification of words”, and “oats” as a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people”.
First begun in 1884, the first edition of the OED was finally completed in 1928, but is being constantly revised. It contains around 250,000 different words, and as well as defining what they mean, the OED explains which language they have been derived from and when and what context they were first used (and if the meaning of the word has changed over time). Authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien worked on the OED, contributing to the words beginning with “waggle” and continuing to “warlock”.
As if there weren’t enough words to worry about, some of the same words mean very different things. Words like “bow” and “refuse” have different pronunciations and meaning. But words like “set” — spelled the same, pronounced the same but … it refers, for example, to a collection (a set of cards); it’s to put something down (set it on the table); it means something starts going (set in motion); a film may be set in a particular time; it’s what you do with a gem; it’s a group of people with the same interests; it’s what the sun does in the evening; it’s what happens to jelly after a while; it’s where a badger lives …
Generally, an adult will know between 20–35000 words. On the other hand, the English language expands by thousands of words each year. This is partly to do with the way we have global communication, and we bring words from other cultures into our own. William Shakespeare and John Milton brought in new words — neologisms — to help them explain certain ideas to their audience (there wasn’t an English word for “balcony” until Juliette rushed to her window). Milton enjoyed compounding Greek words together, for example the city where ALL (Greek, “Pan”) the DEMONS lived, was called “Pandemonium”. These days the definition has changed to “unrestrained disorder”.
Shakespeare used 31,534 different words (presumably this has been counted by a computer, rather than a single scholar with no friends). But Shakespeare INVENTED over 1700 of these words (words like swindle, compromise, grovel, radiance, gloomy, generous, hobnob and bump!) So effectively, Shakespeare’s contemporary audience didn’t know one word in every 19 that was used on stage. What chance do we in the 21st century have? (When I taught GCSE, one of my students complained, asking “Why didn’t Shakespeare write in modern English?” The answer, of course, was that he did!)
Language also develops with the massive rise in technology available to us, and we need new nouns and verbs to cover it. Many of us have iPods. Not so long ago we had no need for the word “terabyte”, no one was ever a victim of “frape”; one of the key things we worry about when we go somewhere new is whether it will have wi-fi. Sometimes the nouns and the verbs are interchangeable. When I was younger we used to “video” something; these days people Sky+ it; a friend of mine once told me she’d “dysoned the whole house” (my spell-checker here doesn’t like the word “dysoned”, but it will catch up eventually!). Of course, my friend should have “hoovered”, but that’s also the brand name. And we use many other words that have taken the name of their creator: Lazlo Biro invented the ball-point pen; Thomas and William Bowler designed the Bowler hat; Rudolf Diesel invented the diesel engine, and tarmac takes its name from John McAdam. Contrary to popular belief, Thomas Crapper did not invent the flush toilet.
So, here we are in 2015, standing on the shoulders of giants, looking at the words our generations have added to the English language, and in the 2015 additions to the OED with words introduced such as “earwigging”, “laters” “autotune”, “backronym” and “crowdfunding”. (Some of these words have been around for a while, but now they are considered to be in “common usage”.) But according to the oxford dictionaries blog (Blog is also a relatively new word, short for “web-log”) the word of the year is not a word at all, but a pictograph. Apparently the emoji (pictured at the top) “was chosen as the ‘word’ that best reflected the ethos, mood, and preoccupations of 2015”. It’s a face with tears of joy. “Tears of joy” are seen as a moment of rapture in Classic Hinduism. There must be a load of examples. How are we supposed to feel, that Oxford dictionaries, one of the last guardians of the English language, have chosen a subject that cannot be written or described, only expressed. It is ironic that this “word” is expressed through punctuation: :’-)
The Oxford dictionaries aren’t about defending language, but how to facilitate communication. The new words in the OED are about common usage. And language evolves: I remember going into a church and seeing engraved over the doorway “Welcome to this dreadful place”. Some of us may be perceived as dinosaurs hanging on to archaic language, like someone else insisting on watching a video on an analogue TV when DVD, Digital, Blu-ray, HD and 4k are now accessible. A major way we communicate now is via email and text, where voice inflections can’t be heard and communication becomes cloudy (how often can a text be misconstrued?) But it is interesting that, in order to clarify our meaning, we end up reverting to the easiest way of communicating: human facial expressions.
Thanks for reading.
Laters!
Jon Mackley is Senior Lecturer in English and Creative Writing and is author of the six novels including The Gawain Legacy, Cthulhu Rising and Twisting Fate’s Arm.
