[text messaging, net abbreviations] and the purity of english

West country cheesemakers - blessed be the ...

Consider this:

Laccetti (professor of humanities at Stevens Institute of Technology) and Molsk, in their essay entitled The Lost Art of Writing, are critical of the acronyms, predicting reduced chances of employment for students who use such acronyms, stating that, "Unfortunately for these students, their bosses will not be 'lol' when they read a report that lacks proper punctuation and grammar, has numerous misspellings, various made-up words, and silly acronyms."

Fondiller and Nerone, in their style manual assert that "professional or business communication should never be careless or poorly constructed" whether one is writing an electronic mail message or an article for publication, and warn against the use of smileys and these abbreviations, stating that they are "no more than e-mail slang and have no place in business communication".

Uh-huh.

This is a reactive [note the avoidance of that other word] position and a conservative one, wishing, as one does, to retain some semblance of standards. The problem with English though is encapsulated in the old James D. Nicoll quote:

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."

Rather than give you my immediate opinion, may I give you the transcript of my speech to a state seminar in Russia in 2007 - the poor girl who had to translate had a hell of a time but I did give her lunch afterwards, I promise:


Maintaining the purity of the English language

Introduction

• In the 2000 Guy Ritchie film, ‘Snatch’, a Jewish-American gangster says to a London gangster, “Speak English to me Tony. I thought this country spawned the language and so far nobody seems to speak it.”

• In the G.B. Shaw play Pygmalion, Professor Henry Higgins opines, “The moment an Englishman opens his mouth, another Englishman despises him.”

• George Bernard Shaw is also supposed to have said, “England and America are two countries divided by a common language.”

There are two major movements in global language discussion today which are usually seen as diametrically opposite:

• Attempting to establish a one-world-language for all or at least for the majority

• Attempting to maintain the purity of the native language

There are, however, far more potent influences at work to dismember and prevent the integration of English as a single unified language and these are covered further down in this article.

If English has aspirations to be the predominant world language, or if it merely wishes to rank with French, Russian and other languages for ‘purity’, then surely it must first get its own house in order.

Attempts at establishing a global language

This is one of the key issues consuming much of the language teaching community today but as it is tangential to this article, here is an abridged summary of the current state of play.

World English

The most widespread second language of the present day, English, might make the world interlingual by becoming so well integrated in educational and social systems worldwide that it is accessible to all at minimum cost.

Over 85% of the scientific, technological or academic production in the world today is done in English. In most countries and industries, a knowledge of English is an invaluable asset - on the labour market or in monetary policy. And for the common people, English is simply prestigious.

Yet Yale linguist Stephen Anderson noted that:

“In most of the world, multilingualism is the normal condition of people. The notion that English shouldn’t, needn’t and probably won’t displace local languages, seems natural to me.”

Many authors have questioned the fact that English is not power-neutral and that for many, learning English is simply an exercise in upward mobility.

In the end, the usefulness of English, or any lingua franca for that matter, depends on the communicative competence of speakers and mutual intelligibility. Experience shows that this is by no means a given.

Esperantism

An invented language, designed as a global auxiliary language in which fluency can be achieved at low cost, might make the world interlingual. If it became customary to use such a language for all translingual communication, the burden of linguistic accommodation would be both small and equal for all.

Language Brokers

Professional translators and interpreters might achieve an interlingual world by enabling people without a common language to communicate with success, without the burdens and risks of widespread language learning.

Plurolingualism

If breakthroughs in the methodology of language teaching could be verified and propagated, and if multilingual competence became widely valued, people who needed to communicate across language barriers could easily develop the ability to do so.

Technologism

If the intricacies of grammar, meaning, and communicative strategy could be understood and codified, language barriers might disappear altogether in the presence of fully automatic translation between the world’s tongues, or be superseded by novel, automated, non or panlingual means of communication.

Interlingua

Created in 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association and based on Romanic languages, this made it a minus point for most of the world.

Lojban

The development of Lojban began in 1987, through The Logical Language Group, but is based on another constructed language, called Loglan, the foundations which were laid in 1955, by James Cooke Brown. Every word has been selected according to an algorithm aiming at getting it as similar as possible to the corresponding words of the most widely spoken languages in the World - Chinese, English, Hindi, Spanish, Russian and Arabic – in that specific order. Lojban has not taken off.

Ygyde

The basic structures of Ygyde were worked out by Andrew Nowicki, and presented in 2002. Later during 2002, Patrick Hassel-Zein contributed with the first grammar.

All words are built with the help of tables of syllables with specific meanings. The words usually do not have any similarities with corresponding words from any other language, but the structures are very simple and a speaker can create new words rather freely. Ygyde is a language well suited to scientific texts.

Defending the purity of native languages

Some attempts include:

L’Academie francaise

The primary role of l’Académie française is to regulate the French language by determining standards of acceptable grammar and vocabulary, adding new words and updating the meanings of existing ones, publishing an official dictionary, working with French terminological committees and offering linguistic and literary patronage to approved bodies.

The linguistic jury is more commonly known as «les Immortels» and that gives you a very good idea as to their status n French society.

Due to the recent hegemony of English in the world, l’Académie's major task now tends to be to diminish the influx of English by choosing or inventing French equivalents and the French are most passionate in their view of English. As Claude Gagnière said:

“Un homme qui parle trois langues est trilingue. Un homme qui parle deux langues est bilingue. Un homme qui ne parle qu'une langue est anglais.”

Russia

Vladimir Neroznyak, a Moscow linguist who helps advise the Russian government on language policy says: “If, before, more than 90 percent of the people in the Soviet territories spoke Russian, now less than half do. Within the decade that figure will have fallen to one in ten.”

Russian is under assault even within Russia itself. As many as 10,000 foreign words, such as voucher, biznesmen and bizneslunch, have entered the language within the past decade.

Neroznyak, who is lobbying to introduce language-purity laws as strict as those of the French, says:

“Whether we like it or not, half of Russian business is conducted in English.”

President Vladimir Putin has more than doubled the amount of money appropriated for the protection of the language. Russian “must be preserved as a language of international discourse,” he said soon after being elected.

14-year-old Adele Setjanova, in 2002, said:

“English is easy, it’s interesting and it’s new. Russian has been around for ages.”

England

And what of dear old England itself? There have been historical attempts to maintain the purity of English, most notably through Nathan Bailey, in his ‘Universal Etymological English Dictionary’ [1721], and Samuel Johnson’s ‘A Dictionary of the English Language’ [1755].

Though heavily influential in their time, neither managed to achieve any permanence and the reason can best be summed up in the internationally famous but irreverent quotation by James D. Nicoll [op.cit.]:

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."

In other words, English acts like a gangster, holding other languages at gunpoint and forcing them to give up their best vocabulary. Here is an example from a BBC article entitled, ‘Tingo, Nakkele and other wonders:

“English is a rich and innovative language. But you can't help feeling we're missing out on some words. Of course, the English language has borrowed_words for centuries [but] perhaps it's time to be thinking about adding others to the lexicon.

Malay, for instance, has gigi rongak - the space between the teeth. The Japanese have bakku-shan - a girl who appears pretty from behind_but not from the front. Then, from Tulu, India, there's a nakkele - a man who licks whatever the food has been served on.”

That gives you a very good idea of the attitude of English towards other languages. From time to time, there have even been language committees dedicated to searching other languages for words to rob.

Natural Evolution

The natural evolution of English, from the dropping of stressed final letters to the blending of Latin, French, German and so on, is beyond the scope of this article. Two small examples of change, from the same author, Bill Bryson, are:

“Today we have two demonstrative pronouns, ‘this’ and ‘that’, but in Shakespeare's day there was a third, ‘yon’, which denoted a further distance than that. Today the word survives as a colloquialism, yonder, but our speech is fractionally impoverished for its loss.”

“Until the eighteenth century it was correct to say ‘you was’ if you were referring to one person. Robert Lowth, an eighteenth-century clergyman and amateur grammarian, didn't like it and now, in the 2nd person singular, the only variant is ‘you were’”

Dialects and Pronunciation

When we look at the multitude of dialects and differing pronunciations which already exist, we could almost throw up our hands in despair. Here are a few from the British Isles alone:

Received Pronunciation

RP is the prestige British accent often taught to non-native speakers as ‘London Dialect’; used as the standard for English in most books on general phonology and phonetics; and represented in the pronunciation schemes of most British dictionaries. Many Britons abroad modify their accent to make their pronunciation closer to RP, especially teachers of ESL.

RP uses a broad ‘A’ accent, so words like bath and chance appear with /ɑː/ and not /æ/; it’s non-rhotic in that /r/ does not occur unless followed immediately by a vowel and the standing joke is that it can best be imitated by putting two plums in your mouth, producing the desired effect.

Cockney [East End of London]

Not really a language since the words spoken are clearly English; not a dialect either, since the speakers are perfectly capable of not using it, the criminal fraternity took to it so that they could hold open conversations within earshot of the Sweeney [police].

The word Sweeney comes from Sweeney Todd, a historical murderous barber. Todd rhymes with Plod, Mr. Plod is slang for a street beat policeman and so the Sweeney are the police. Clear? The Cockneys don’t want it to be clear and are happy to use their famous Rhyming Slang as an esoteric code to exclude strangers. Here is an example:

Cockney: 'Allo me old china - wot say we pop round the Jack. I'll stand you a pig and you can rabbit on about your teapots.

Translation: Hello my old mate (china plate) - what do you say we pop around to the bar (Jack Tar). I'll buy you a beer (pig's ear) and you can talk (rabbit and pork) about your kids (teapot lids).

Cockney is also constantly mutating, as much of it is based on contemporary celebrities eg. ‘hair’ is now ‘Tony Blair’.

Another trend is reported by the right wing National Vanguard [2006]:

“The Cockney dialect - studied by linguists for its ingenious use of rhyming slang and distinctive colloquialisms - is being replaced by Bangladeshi patois among White youth, who are now a minority in many East End neighborhoods.”

Scouse [Liverpool]

Liverpudlians are often called Scousers and speak Scouse, perhaps from the name of a traditional dish of scouse (food) made with lamb stew mixed with hardtack, eaten by sailors.

A notable feature of Scouse is its tendency towards lenition of stop consonants The /k/ phoneme is often pronounced [x], especially at the end of a word, so that back [bax] sounds like German Bach. In other positions /k/ may be realised as an affricate [kx].

The th sounds /θ, ð/ may be pronounced as dental [t, d]. This feature is shared with Hiberno-English. The /r/ sound is often a tap [ɾ], similar to Scots. Vowels /eɪ/ and /əʊ/) are pronounced as diphthongs similar to those of RP and do not use the broad A.

Scouse is noted for a fast, highly accented manner of speech, with a range of rising and falling tones not typical of most of northern England.

Glaswegian [Glasgow]

Glasgow residents from the poorer sectors of the city take the strangulation of the English language to new heights [or depths]:

"Gees-a-cheeper-hen" Give me a kiss, darling.

“Awright, Mucker? Hows-it-gawn?” Good day to you Sir, how are you?

“Oot-ma-face-fore-a-gie-ye-a-wee-malchie.” Go away please, before I do something violent to you.

Jim – Whether your name is Charles, Peter, or Godfrey, you will be called Jim or Jimmie by everyone. Don’t be alarmed, this is a sign that you have been accepted. Wain – It’s a myth that all Scottish children are named Wayne. This is merely a popular term-of-endearment for infants. Hen/Doll – Two very commonly used terms for females.

Tyke [Yorkshire]

This is the language of the largest county, Yorkshire and itself mutates into differing dialects and pronunciations:

‘If yer want owt fer nowt, alus, do it fer thisen.’ If you want anything for nothing, alas, you must do it for yourself.

Tyke is heavy on occluded articles, for example in the comedy programme Monty Python, in which Graham Chapman states: "There's trouble at t' mill!", and where John Cleese exclaims: "I'm going down t'market."

Geordie [Newcastle-upon-Tyne]

Many are of the opinion that the further away from London one resides, the ‘worse’ the dialectic abominations. This, of course, is a purely London opinion:

‘Ye knaa what ah mean leik?’ Do you know what I mean?

‘Eeeh man, ahm gannin te the booza.’ OK, I have had enough, I am going to the bar.

‘Whees i' the netty?’ Who's in the lavatory?

‘Gan canny or we'll dunsh summick.’ Be careful or we will crash into something.

A translation service for the bewildered is maintained at: http://www.geordie.org.uk/cgi-bin/dialect_convert.pl

West Country [South-West of England]

The West Country dialects can still be difficult for speakers of Standard English to understand. Although popularly considered to be only accents, academically the regional variations are considered to be dialectic forms of English.

One popular West Country expression is "Ooh, arr", used as a greeting, a farewell, or simply during conversation.

The West Country dialects derive not from a corrupted form of modern English, but reflect the historical origins of the English language, in particular Late West Saxon. English pronounces ‘warm’ as ‘worm’, and ‘worm’ as ‘wyrm’ but the dialect pronounces them as written.

The characteristic features of the accent of the region include: a slower, drawling manner of speech, with lengthened vowel sounds, the initial "s" is pronounced as "z", "r"s are pronounced far more prominently than in Standard English, in a Rhotic fashion, an initial "f" may become pronounced "v", as in Varmer Joe, use of male (rather than neutral) gender with nouns; put he over there = put it over there. Plus many other features too numerous to mention here.

There is a strong nautical element and the accent is associated with pirates of old: ‘Oo-ah, me hearties’ and is used extensively in comedy, eg. Monty Python’s: ‘Oo-ah, them be sheep up in them thar trees.’

Estuary English [along the river Thames and its estuary]

This is the most divisive dialect/pronunciation today, as it has spread like wildfire, first among the young and then into each section of society. Diana, Princess of Wales was sometimes said to use it and the Queen's granddaughter Zara Phillips speaks with a pronounced Estuary accent.

David Rosewarne, in the Times Education Supplement in October 1984, argued that it may eventually replace RP as the Standard English pronunciation. Tony Blair has been heard to drop into the accent at times in TV interviews, when he wishes to appeal to the common man.

Estuary English shares the following features with Cockney pronunciation: use of intrusive R, some glottal stops: eg. "t" sounded as a glottal occlusion instead of being fully pronounced before a consonant or at the end of words, diphthong widening; L-vocalisation, words from American English and Australian English, but it respects the standard grammar used by RP speakers.

‘Eh, John, got new motor’ is basically English, until you hear it spoken. Detractors say it is a bastardized, aggressive, mongrelized form of English which will eventually destroy a once beautiful language. It is fair to say that Estuary English is extremely harsh on the ear.

Slang and Idioms

Once heard only on the street but never taught, this is now changing. For many educators, this is just another nail in the coffin of ‘pure’ English. David Burke said:

“After years of presenting to numerous teachers and leading discussion groups, I have found that the vast majority of teachers feel that familiarizing students with slang, idioms and even some vulgarities is much more desirable than having students pick up this type of language haphazardly on the street.”

Political Correctness

For the last twenty years, in the English speaking west, everything people say to one another, read or which is taught in educational institutions has been slowly and methodically scrutinized, modified and often expurgated.

It is specifically aimed at language and is based on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, from 1929, concerned with linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity. Put simply, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that "a language's grammatical categories and value-loaded vocabulary shape its speakers' ideas and actions".

The aim, then, is to place yourself into a position of influence as shaper of the nation’s language in education, journalism, the arts, music, literature, religion and politics, according to what you see as important and valuable.

The majority of people who have worked their way into such positions today are left-liberal, believing in such things as feminism, gay rights, abortion, the legalization of drugs, inter-racial marriage, the abolition of traditional teaching eg. grammar and the enforced teaching in schools of the values just mentioned.

Examples:

• In 1988 a Stanford University faculty changed its popular "Western Culture" course to "Cultures, Ideas and Values", as "Western" was now seen as a dirty word for some minorities.

• The Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work, in the UK, states that "non-fluency in English should not be used as grounds to refuse employment, even for an interpreter or air traffic controller". This means you don’t need to know English any more to become an English interpreter.

• In New York, publishers’ have official guidelines as to topics which now must be avoided in any literary work:

“Abortion, death or disease, criminals, magic, politics, religion, unemployment, weapons, violence, poverty, divorce, slavery, alcohol or addiction, women as mothers or doing household work, men as lawyers, doctors or plumbers, African citizens in any negative light."

• A London educational conference was told, in 2003: "Everything written before 1970 was either gender or racially biased" and that "reading and writing are merely technologies of control." Therefore, Shakespeare can no longer be studied and reading and writing must be dropped from the curriculum.

• In 2005, at two British universities, the English Literature degree can now be awarded without studying the classics but must include a selection of feminist writers, which comprise 67% of the reading list.

• In the United Kingdom, in 2005, a government think tank advised schools to replace the term "failure" for students who failed their exams, with the term "deferred success", so they would not "feel sad".

• An under age criminal must now be called a "child at risk", so that he does not become traumatized by the word "hooligan".

• A person living illegally in your country is now to be called an "undocumented immigrant", so he does not become "anxious about his situation".

• Men must not call a life partner "wife", because it is humiliating for her.

• All references to men must be expunged from the language eg. the word ‘chairman’ must now be ‘chairperson’ or 'chair' and ‘manual labour’ must now be just ‘labour’.

Traditionalists point to the suffix "-ism", added to anything the Politically Correct find offensive, eg. racism, sexism, elitism, lookism [looking at another person] and "clientism" [liking one client less than another – this is deeply traumatic for the client].

The Politically Correct call their actions "affirmative action" and say they are working towards a "philosophy of inclusion" and "uncritical tolerance" of everyone’s point of view or "personal orientation", whether gay, terrorist, child molester or drug addict. The mixing of all religions into one is part of this process.

The effect of PC on the English Language is the greatest single factor today in the dismembering and disintegration of the grammatical and lexical basis on which it once rested.

Short Message Service Text Messaging

This is the latest horror story to strike at the heart of English. Or is it so horrifying? Here are some stories about the Short Message Service:

• In the UK alone there are 52 million mobile phone users who send about 2.3 billion text messages a year. A study at the University of Bath found that texting was the preferred medium for flirting and arranging dates. 62% of females compared to 52% of males are comfortable arranging a first date by text.

• Professor Helen Haste says: “Texting is replacing speech for much communication among young people. It is immediate, accessible, private and gives them unprecedented control over how they communicate with friends and family.”

• The staff at Wolverhampton University are now sending students revision tips, timetables, appointment times and coursework feedback using mobile phone texting.

• Base 25 is a Wolverhampton charity offering advice on relationships and health issues. They use texting to communicate with their audience.

• Texting has also been used as a cry for help. A potential suicide victim not wanting to talk, sends a text instead.
• Keith Grammar school is using texting to provide parents with regular updates on pupil’s progress. Rector John Aitken said the intention is to praise positive attitudes to work or behaviour but it will also be used to highlight any problems.

• Short messages are particularly popular amongst young urbanites. Despite the low cost to the consumer, the service is enormously profitable to the service providers.

• The most frequent SMSers are found in south-east Asia. Europe follows next. Curiously France has not taken to SMSing in the same way. In the US, SMS even more limited.

• "SMS Chat", involved sending short messages to a phone number, and the messages would be shown on TV a while later.

• Shakespeare is now taught in SMS form: “if u pardon we wil mend; & I am honst Puck”

• In December 2002, a cheating scheme was uncovered during final-exam week at the University of Maryland, College Park. A dozen students were caught cheating on an accounting exam through the use of text messages on their cell phones.

• In December 2002, Hitotsubashi University in Japan failed 26 students for receiving e-mailed exam answers on their cell phones.

• In July 2001, Malaysia's government decreed that an Islamic divorce (which consists of saying "I divorce you" three times in succession) was not valid if sent by short message.

• In the wake of the 2004 Madrid train bombings, SMS was used to garner up support for large protest rallies. It became known as "the night of short text messages".

• Emoticons are another way to send text messages. Emoticons are little pictures made out of punctuation marks. Here are some examples:

:-) = happy face :-( = sad face ;-D = winking grin

• One detractor, on an SMS website, wrote:

“i oftn fnd msgs ritn n ths nw styl Nglsh vry dfclt 2 undRstnd n wud rthr ppl jus rot clrly.” I often find that messages written in this new style of English very difficult to understand and would rather people just wrote clearly.

If you also are having trouble with understanding this new phenomenon, a free translation service is readily available at: http://www.transl8it.com/cgi-win/index.pl?convertPL

Two Conclusions

• If English is ever to become the global language, the question which must first be addressed is: ‘Which English?’

• If English is ever to become ‘pure’, the question which must first be addressed is: ‘What does ‘pure’ mean?’