Posts

Showing posts from February, 2011

Is the general standard of English declining?

Image
Or  has there 'never been a time when English was not thought to be going to hell in a handcart'?  Complaints about English are (a) as old as the hills, (b) based on no linguistic logic, and (c) ultimately futile, since no one can stop language from varying and changing.   In The Language Wars , Henry Hitchings argues there has never been a time when English was not thought to be going to hell in a handcart. He cites what sounds like a contemporary essay on "the growing illiteracy of American boys" and invites us to guess when it was written. The answer turns out to be, in 1896 – and the boys whose illiteracy so alarmed the essay's author were not hillbillies or slum children, but Harvard undergraduates.  Source But aren't young people today reading far less?  Is the Internet destroying our 'book culture'? Adam Gopnik summarises the different approaches to this question: Never-Better : The internet is opening up a new information democracy. Everyone

Who manages the English language?

Image
There is no official academy of English as there is with French, Spanish and other European languages. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is the closest we have to such an authority.  How does the OED decide which words to include? It accepts a new word if it is commonly used over a period of time.  More on how this works  here Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary  Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary (Dictionary & CD ROM) Concise Oxford English Dictionary: 11th Edition Revised 2008 Oxford English Dictionary: 20 vol. print set & CD ROM

Which words are beautiful? And which ones ugly?

Depends what you mean by beautiful? Or ugly for that matter. This brave blog has attempted a list of 100 'beautiful and ugly words'. The writer suggests: One of the many fascinating features of our language is how often words with pleasant associations are also quite pleasing on the tongue and even to the eye, and how many words, by contrast, acoustically and visually corroborate their disagreeable nature All pretty subjective but interesting to see that there are far more 'beautiful' words on the list than 'ugly' ones. Full list here:  

Beijing or Peking?

Image
This is a question which still causes great confusion. Is the name change essentially political, an assertion of Chinese nationalism? Then why is still Pékin in French and Pekín in French? The Economist's Johnson Blog (named after the great dictionary pioneer) confidently put forward a theory last year - only to quickly withdraw it after protests from commentators. I personally go with the idea Peking is the Cantonese form of the word.  This is what I was told when I lived in (Cantonese speaking) Hong Kong and seems to make sense. Anyway, Kung Hei Fat Choi (a Happy (Cantonese!) New Year

In which play does 'a ghost and a prince meet. And everyone ends in mincemeat'?

Hamlet. At least according to the wonderful Howard Dietz lyric for 'That's Entertainment' in the Hollywood musical 'The Band Wagon' (1952).

Why do we say Iraq War but not Afghanistan War?

Not another debate over the rights and wrongs of those wars but a peculiar linguistic quirk pointed out by Jay Nordlinger My colleague and I were talking about this, too: We say “Iraq War”; but “Afghan War.” Those are unequal. We would never say “Iraqi War” or “Afghanistan War.” Strange. We refer to the “Korean War.” But we would never say “Vietnamese War.” We say “Vietnam War” — and not “Korea War.” It is curious. My theory is that we instinctively reach for the adjective but collectively abandon this rule for multi-syllable countries. So 'Korean' but not 'Vietnamese'. Not very scientific but when did that stop me ....

Eight nations without an official language?

Image
According to Henry Hitchings new book Language Wars there are only eight nations which do not have an official state language. Can you guess what they are? Here's a clue to help: three of the countries are in Africa and two in Europe. Two are very surprising! Answer/explanation here :

Does language shape the way we think?

Image
Do the languages we speak shape the way we think? Do they merely express thoughts? Or do the structures in languages (without our knowledge or consent) shape the very thoughts we wish to express? Provocative article is WSJ from Stanford psychology professor challenging - or at least refining - Chomsky's theory of a 'universal language'. How do we come to be the way we are? Why do we think the way we do? An important part of the answer, it turns out, is in the languages we speak.  Full text here On Nature and Languag by Noah Chomskye