The Final Word: Keeping Language Relevant
“Sadly, desperately sadly, the only people who seem to bother with language in public today, bother with it in quite the wrong way” — Stephen Fry
Are you guilty of it? Perhaps it’s a favourite source of Schadenfreude. Or maybe you’re just a hapless victim.
Regardless, every — single — day: someone corrects someone else’s English.
Some of us even get paid to do it.
Change is inevitable, but when it comes to the rules of a language there is a level of pretension over being ‘right’ that supersedes almost any other form.
It’s astoundingly arrogant. Consider the incredible widespread growth of English today: it’s recognised as an official language in no less than 67 different countries, as well as 27 non-sovereign entities. Over 1000 words are added to the dictionary each year.
With a whopping 70% of international business spoken in English, it is the undisputed lingua franca. In almost every case, any two cultures, even if neither is English, will still end up speaking it as their language of communication.
As other nations and language groups take on English as their own, different perspectives and different cultural understanding is brought to existing words and give new meaning. Words are lost when they no longer serve their purpose, and words are added as new needs arise.
Then there is what the Internet has done for (to?) us. Everyone is a writer and no one is; new words, acronyms and abbreviations are created almost daily.
Well, “En garde!” many editors and amateur retentives have cried! Woefully unaware of the zeitgeist, pedantic peasants recite ad nauseam the need for a universal decree that slows the rapid integration of ‘foreign’ and ‘incorrect’ words en masse.
Never mind that the paragraph you just read contains no less than five ‘accepted’ words taken directly from other languages.
English itself only exists in the first place because the French and Germans needed someplace to build their churches — it is the pale lovechild of other nations.
The type of linguistic gatekeeping I’m referring to has been responsible for many precepts, like the snubbing of double negatives (I didn’t do nothing). Once perfectly acceptable, shunned because the powers that be decided that they were not ‘intelligent sounding’.
But native and non-native speakers alike still use them. It’s a grammatical ‘mistake’ carried over from other languages and thus persists as a sign of integrated culture. To deny their use is by extension to deny identity.
Should we rally with those who oppose the rise of so-called actioning words? Shakespeare himself started us down that path when he first asked us to ‘table the discussion’ and ‘chair’ the meeting, and there’s hardly a more prominent master of the language.
Likewise, should we not be continuously examining what has been accepted language and adjusting it as our perspectives change — removing racist or derogatory language from the collective?
But it persists. The outcome of court cases have hinged on the use of the Oxford Comma; there are foundations to protect the apostrophe; and no matter what we do, there will still be people who say your when they mean you’re, and those that correct them.
What most forget is that rules exist in language for the purpose of clarity; they are a framework for accuracy and comprehension. But rules once learned can be broken, leading to the formation of identities, cultural protests and unique expression.
When language changes, it shouldn’t be because a keyboard warrior decides what’s right or wrong. It is when a culture changes that language needs to reflect that.
As a result, the language that awaits us in 10 or 100 years should have fewer claims of ‘ownership’ and be less divisive, more inclusive.
For writers, editors, and even keyboard warriors, acceptance of the inevitability of change will hopefully mean a greater level of flexibility and an expanded worldview. An understanding that just because something did work doesn’t mean it always will.
If nothing else, it will make for more interesting reading.
