My five year old, Demetrius, is a loquacious kid. He is halfway through kindergarten and has pretty much gotten rid of almost all of his speech impediments from previous years. He no longer says, "Dad, I'm hungary," or "I'm sweepy." Though he still doesn't always understand when to use the th sound as opposed to the f sound ("three" and "free" are only now sounding like separate words), he is, for the most part, pretty understandable. (His rendition of "Hallelujah" is "Hall-lay-you-yuh" though, and that's just adorable.)
One thing, however, is he doesn't understand the word supposed. In his ears, he hears shouldposed, as in, "I'm shouldposed to pick up my toys." As I was thinking about it, though, this word, though it doesn't really exist, fills in an interesting gap. I feel like there are things you should do, and things that you're supposed to do, and the fact that there isn't a word for the Venn-diagram center of this concept is a failure of the English language. On a less personal side, though, it brings up the idea of how language ought to be manipulated--and who ought to do the manipulating. As an English major, I've been confronted with this question for a long time. I maintain a prescriptive approach to language--that the flexibility of its meaning can only be in response to what has come before. In other words, I feel like the shifting meaning of words is not the areas where English is strongest. Prodigal is one word that, I think, needs to maintain its original sense of "one who spends generously". Other words have somehow come to mean the exact opposite of what they are supposed to mean: peruse is perhaps the most egregiously abused word, as it means to study deeply and with a single focus, rather than a light skimming as it too often used to mean. Another would be the loss of the word niggardly, which is an antonym to prodigal but has an unfortunate sonic similarity to a word that I won't be writing here. That similarity is so strong that a person once lost his job over the use of it, even though the person used the word correctly…and everyone around him thought it was an epithet. (That being said, I'm also aware of how few people are cognizant of the meaning of the word and, quite likely, would respond out of ignorance; I, therefore, take pains not to use niggardly…pretty much ever.) Again, the shedding of words that are no longer accurate isn't necessarily what I have a beef with in terms of language description/prescription: It's the mutilation of them that bothers me. As I mentioned earlier, peruse is one word that really grinds my gears. So are apropos of and enormity. The former means "with regard to" and the latter "a great wickedness", but they're misused so much that the term's metamorphosis is assumed as the actual definition. Of course, there's a problem in being a prescriptivist: Where does one draw the line that isn't fundamentally arbitrary? And, in this case, there isn't a way to delineate the English I'm trying to prescribe that isn't arbitrary…at least, not one that I'm aware of. Additionally, I have my own capitulations to certain grammatical battles: I don't push hard on ending a sentence with a preposition (as you can see from the preceding sentence), nor do I have too much of a problem with people who like to expertly cut infinitives (as I did right there). "What's the worry?" some may argue. "Who cares if the rules change, so long as communication still transpires?" On one level, I can get behind that. Having had to learn a second language, it's nice to have the contextual flexibility that allows for linguistic neophytes to still be able to say something and be understood. And I think, in many instances, the incomplete way in which we speak to each other is fine--inferences, allusions, and references to a previous part of a conversation all work to communicate, even if the grammar and word choice aren't professional quality. Heck, my essays alone show a deplorable lack of continuity with specific stylistic choices, are often riddled with typos (and why isn't it spelled typoes, anyway?), and try too hard to circumlocute an idea. So I think there is a space for less-than-perfect language. However, I feel like there's an expectation--perhaps it's a presumption--that our speech is fine as it is simply because it's our speech. It's the same sense of entitlement that people have when professing their opinion, which is valuable and important and right for no other reason than because the person expressing the opinion is the one who came up with the thought in the first place. (And, let's be real for minute: Shakespeare wasn't lying when he said, "Opinion's but a fool, that makes us scan /The outward habit by the inward man" (Pericles 2.2).) When it comes to the incorporation of new words, that's where I'm happy to drop a prescriptive stance. Without our language's ability to pull in new ideas and find ways of expressing them, we would stagnate. Having words like "download" or "bandwidth" allow us to expand our understandings. And while slang doesn't compel me to really admit a lot of additions to the language--they tend to be so ephemeral as to not warrant protracted attention or inclusion, save as a novelty--the overall use of slang and other shibboleth are valuable contributions to the language. I'm reminded, however, of a man I met in Miami once. We were at a church dinner and he was enjoying the drumstick of the chicken that had been served up. He looked at me and said, "This is a great milkbone." "What?" He pointed again at the drumstick. "A milkbone. This is a milkbone." "No, it's not." "You gotta help me change people's minds. We need to start calling this a milkbone." "No, I'm okay. Thanks, though." It's that sort of willy-nilly restructuring of the language that shouldposed to go away. The rest can stay as they are.* --- * This essay, despite quoting Shakespeare, doesn't really approach the critique that Shakespeare reinvented the language in all sorts of ways, so what's the big deal? A couple of parts to that: 1) No one else is Shakespeare. Einstein rewrote what's possible in terms of physics, which he could do, because he was Einstein. There's a reason we remember these men of genius. Their contributions are in part because they helped to establish the new rules by which we're operating. 2) Early modern English (not, as people wish to assert, Old English), which is to say, Shakespeare's English, was not yet standardized. While I could probably teleport (that is to say, "would gladly teleport") into London 1599 and be able to understand much of what was being said, there are certain things that would be nontransferable. Spelling is one of them. The use of certain words (excrement is one that pops to mind. To us, it means one thing that we expel and it isn't a pretty one; for Shakespeare, it meant a thing that's excreted, whether it be hair, sweat, or anything else) would put me at a disadvantage. Nevertheless, that's the beginning of our language. Shakespeare's power with the English language comes in no small part because he was part of the formative shaping of the whole thing. Shakespeare and the King James Version of the Holy Bible are two of the largest anchors for creating the kind of English we enjoy today. So of course he was inventing and reinventing the language: It was in its nascent format, just beginning to coalesce into what we now understand English to be. ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the name of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! |
AuthorWould you like to support my writings? Feel free to buy me a coffee (which I don't drink, but I do drink hot chocolate) at my Ko-Fi page. Thanks! Archives
July 2022
Categories
All
|