Business Secretary Greg Clark studied at Cambridge and got a PhD from the LSE. Yet his speech isn’t that of an educated man.
He stresses the third syllable, not the proper second, in ‘contributed’, and the second, rather than the proper first, in ‘comparable’. The second solecism is an Americanism; the first is demotic usage, expected from politicians who must sound prolier than thou.
When I complained about this, a friend mocked my pedantic nitpicking. At least, he smiled, you understood what Clark said. How about this locution from Hillary Clinton:
“My accomplishments as Secretary of State? Well, I’m glad you asked! My proudest accomplishment in which I take the most pride, mostly because of the opposition it faced early on, you know, the remnants of prior situations and mind-sets that were too narrowly focused in a manner whereby they may have overlooked the bigger picture, and we didn’t do that, and I’m proud of that. Very proud. I would say that’s a major accomplishment.”
Clearly, the aspiring president doesn’t use language to express thoughts, nor even, Metternich-style, to conceal them. She simply babbles on in the knowledge that her audience has no more respect for English than she does.
English is blessed with the largest vocabulary of all European languages, at least twice that of Russian for example. Thus most concepts are finely fractured into nuances, which allows for unmatched precision and concision.
This reflects the English mind, predisposed to mental rigour and laconic dynamism. The former produced the vast vocabulary; the latter, a grammar uniquely revolving around the verb.
A language able to convey a precise thought with a single word discourages long-winded musings. In fact, English used to punish loquaciousness like no other language.
Yet that punishment is no longer exacted. The English mind has enveloped itself in a fog, and the language follows suit. Hence this comparative calculation:
Pythagorean theorem: 24 words; the Lord’s Prayer: 66 words; Archimedes’s Principle: 67 words; the Decalogue: 179 words; the Gettysburg Address: 286 words; the US Declaration of Independence: 1,337 words; EU regulations on the sale of cabbage: 26,911 words.
“Language,” one hears so often, “is only a means of communication.” That’s not strictly true: if it were nothing but that, we wouldn’t have Shakespeare to savour. But, as the examples above show, even the face value of this sentiment no longer holds true.
Just like obtuse rationalism destroys reason, such dull utilitarianism destroys utility. The more language is seen strictly as a means of basic communication, the more the communication will suffer.
Advocates of this linguistic mayhem insist this is par for the course, for language develops. The assumption is that any change is for the better, which is as false in linguistics as it is in politics, culture, religion or anything else.
Not every development equals progress – much depends on what and who affects the development, and where it’s going. In this, English again reflects the national character, this time its innate pluralism and respect for all walks of life.
Our constitution was never codified in a single document. Our common law gradually evolved at the grassroots rather than being imposed by the state. Likewise, the English language has developed naturally, without any diktats from a central authority like l’Académie française.
Hence English has always been wide-open to numerous inputs, from different countries, classes, ages, professions, social trends. There’s a potential for anarchy in such openness, but it used to be kept in check by a hierarchy of cultural authority.
Formal speech came from the educated classes, with the lower strata adding colour and spice to keep English from turning into a linguistic eunuch. Free interaction between the language of the university and that of the street enriched the language, while preventing it from descending into chaos.
Then the hierarchical skeleton of the language disappeared and its body collapsed onto itself. The linguistic game began to be played without rules; it was Lord of the Flies time, with cultural children taking over and turning primordially feral.
Rather than developing under the influence of educated speech enlivened by informal infusions, English began to suffer the pernicious effects of bureaucratesque jargon, illiterate rather than colloquial usages of the newly dominant uneducated classes, unnecessary Americanisms, political correctness, electronic communication and whatnot.
Today one can’t open a broadsheet without seeing ‘affect’ confused with ‘effect’, ‘complimentary’ with ‘complementary’, ‘pour’ with ‘pore’, ‘masterly’ with ‘masterful’, ‘its’ with ‘it’s’, ‘nauseous’ with ‘nauseating’.
And our newscasters, if unprompted and unscripted, destroy whole grammatical categories, such as the subjunctive. What also comes out of their mouths is such ugly new locutions as ‘people were sat at the table’.
The new additions to the OED sound the death knells. These include such indispensable words as ‘gender-fluid’, ‘yolo’ ( ‘you only live once’) and ‘Fuhgeddaboudit’, a dreadful American dialectism, perceived as such even in its native habitat.
In addition to self-induced damage, English is suffering the effects of becoming the world’s lingua franca. ‘Everybody in Europe speaks English’, say home-grown ignoramuses with pride.
In fact ‘nobody in Europe speaks English’ would be closer to the truth, if not exactly true. What most Europeans speak is an ungrammatical, lexically impotent neuter of a patois, just sufficing to convey basic messages but falling far short of the glory that English used to be.
Given the most lamentable rise in global tourism and business travel, the newborn monster is exerting a reverse influence on native English. This hurries along the demise already rapidly progressing under its own steam.
Will Shakespeare, where are you when we need you?
We should not worry too much about pronunciation and spelling. The Great Vowel Shift was followed for centuries by yet more changes. The works of Aubrey, Hooke and others were almost indecipherable about 100 years after they were written. Today, some people seem to be stuck with the speech patterns they heard as children (particularly ‘professional Scotsmen’ and ‘professonal Yorkshiremen’) whereas others can easily adopt those that they hear in whatever company they keep. When shocked, embarrassed or drunk the latter are known to lapse into their proletarian argot until people start laughing.
However, ignorant misuse of words can only lead to confusion. Dictionaries capitulate and condone this misuse and so we get alternative meanings recorded. Thus in time we will have to accept that many words can mean anything. Then each word we use will have to be embellished with a description of what we actually want it to mean at the moment. The result will be very much like Pidgin.
Ignorant use of grammar was once a source of great mirth but the joke has now worn thin. In fact, ignorance of grammar and attempts to use ‘non-gendered’ pronouns leads to confusion as to number in many cases and we shall have to lapse into Pidgin again to solve such problems.
So how can we avoid our descent into primitive babble? We could send our children abroad to learn Euro-English, but we have already established that it is just a long-winded managerial creole devoid of nuance, passion or wit. Perhaps we should bless the web with a new kind of social network that detects solecisms and instantly deletes messages that contain them. With luck, we may be able to do something similar to news broadcasts. Just imagine a programme guide that goes something like ‘8.00 pm Evening News, followed by News in English’.