I’ve found recently that things don’t generally anger me as much as they used to. As such it has been hard to rant about anything. My life has fallen into place and I feel at one with the world.
Except one thing still gets my blood boiling.
Improper use of the English language. I’m talking about all the people out there, mainly on Facebook, who daily and without remorse mutilate the beautiful English language.
However, as a student of language I can appreciate how language changes over time. Look at the transformation of language from the Old English of Beowulf to the Middle English of Chaucer to the ‘Modern’ English of Shakespeare, and even how that has changed to the language we know and speak today.
Spelling is one of the main things in the English language which has always been a bit hazy. For example, at one time the word ‘people’ could be spelt; peple, pepule, pepul, pepull, pepulle, poeple, poepul, puple, pepille, pepil, pepylle, pepyll, peeple, pupile, pupill, pupyll, pupul, peple or pople (The Adventures of English, Mervin Bragg). This gives hope to all those people (or pepylle) out there who can’t spell for peanuts (and I am willing to put up my hand and say ‘Yes, that is me’).
Grammar too has changed. We’ve seen the dropping of noun cases which took us from Old English to Middle English (and thank God too – noun cases are one of the most annoying things I have ever come across. I blame the Romans). There have been shifts in pronouns, changes in the formation of plurals and declensions of verbs, even changes in pronunciation.
So if I truly love the history of languages so much, why should I get so annoyed about changes that are occurring even as we speak? I should be embracing them for what they are – a historically, culturally and socially motivated shift in the English language. As a result, I have decided to undertake a brief if complicated analysis of modern English usage and morphology.
1. Vocabulary
Modern English | English Translation | Description |
Ayyy | No English equivalent - a sound of agreement/appeal for affirmation. | Similar to the long, drawn out 'ee' sound of Setswana meaning 'yes'. Also similar to Modern Scots 'aye'. |
Boii | Boy; used when addressing a man. A strange paradox, often indicating affection without it being obvious. Also used as an exclamation, as in the phrase 'yer boiii' (yeah boy). | Replacement of the English 'y' with multiple 'i' is similar to the repetition of the Egyptian hieroglyph for 'i' to represent the longer 'y' sound. This technique reduces the amount of letters needed for the English alphabet which is beneficial as 'y' is a rather pointless letter which only belongs in Welsh. Note - often simply shortened to 'boi'. |
Dat | That | Alteration of spelling where the 'd' harkens back to the Old English and Norse letter 'eth' (ð), which had a hard 'th' sound as in 'the' or 'that'. As this letter no longer exists in modern English, it is replaced with the more recognisable 'd' sound. |
Gud | Good | Direct influence of German 'gut'. The replacement of 't' with 'd' is characteristic of the softer sounds of the English language which has taken it down a different path to other Germanic languages, however the 'u' sound is that of German and ties the two languages back to a common ancestor. |
Gawjus | Gorgeous | …. No, there's no way I can make any sense of this one. Perhaps it’s a new word altogether, meant to resemble the original word but to change it entirely, much like Latin and Italian, Italian and Spanish, Spanish and Portuguese, Portuguese and Romanian, and all of the above and French. |
Hes | His | Genitive case of the third person pronoun 'he'. Rather than having different pronouns for each case (he, him, his) the pronoun declines through the addition of new endings: Nom -he, Gen - hes, Dat - here, Voc - hey, etc. |
Ily | Expression of love/affection - I love you | An alternate and simplified conjugation of the reflexive verb 'to love oneself'. The expression of first person present indicative mood plus second person pronoun, that is 'I love you' is expressed as 'ily' while another common expression, that of first person present indicative mood plus first person reflexive pronoun (that is, 'I love myself') is rendered by the modern English word 'wanker'. |
Lol | A versatile word, originally a contraction of 'Laugh out loud', now used as expression of humour in non-verbal communication. Also used as a verb; 'I saw it and I lolled', and a noun, as in to do something 'just for the lols' (alternate spelling 'lulz'). | An example of an acronym which has entered the English vocabulary as a word in its own right. Other examples include ANZAC, meaning someone from New Zealand or Australia who fought in the World Wars, or QANTAS, meaning poor safety/economic records. |
Ppl | People | Mirroring abjad alphabets such as Arabic, Hebrew and early Aramaic. These are consonantal alphabets, where vowels may be inserted by means of diatrics, but are not always included. Perhaps a more formal/literary spelling would be Pᶷpĺ, where the diatrics represent the diphthong 'eo' and the silent 'e' respectively. |
Sum | Some | This is simply an attempt at rationalising the spelling of English. Other languages such as Italian are phonetic, and spelling is much easier. Indeed, Italian has no word for the verb 'to spell'. Spelling instead is synonymous with 'writing'; e.g. How do you write this? (How do you spell this?). English on the other hand has so many exceptions to the various complicated spelling rules that the fact that it is one of the most widely used languages in the world is beyond comprehension. Perhaps non-English speaking people are just a lot smarter than the English speaking world? Is a mystery. |
Txt | Text | This is similar to a phenomenon in the Irish language where certain vowel sounds are implied between two letters and are therefore omitted in writing. These are called ‘unwritten vowels’, and make the Irish language one of the most ridiculous in the world. Perhaps this tendency in English words is an attempt to make it more complex than it already is. However in a word such as 'txt' where there are only consonants a more likely explanation is that, as with Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the absence of vowels implies the presence of the 'e' sound. |
Tha | The | Modernised spelling consistent with a change in the pronunciation of vowels, harkening back to the Great Vowel Shift which occurred in English in the Middle Ages. |
Wen | When | Rationalised spelling of the English equivalent, omitting the silent letter 'h', just as Gaelig (Scottish Gaelic) is a more rational version of Irish. |
U | You | Iconograph - a single letter/symbol is used to represent an idea in a single sound, such as certain Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs such as 'ankh' for life. |
Use | You (plural). Also spelt 'youse'. | Second person plural pronoun. Most other languages have two separate words for the second person singular and plural pronouns; e.g. Italian (tu, voi), French (toi, vous), Welsh (dy, eich), Irish (tú, sibh). The slow development of a distinction in English between the two shows a gradual assimilation of this trend into our language. It is possible that 'use' will one day be used as the formal singular form of 'you', much in the same manner as the aforementioned languages. |
2. Usage
Currently these changes are only noticeable in the written language. It has not yet entered literature or official usage, being solely in conversational or colloquial writing. However, some of the renderings of this written language (for example ‘tha’, ‘use’, etc) reflect changes in pronunciation that have been occurring for at least a century.
3. Sample texts – Historical Comparison of Developments in English
Old English – Beowulf c. 700 - 1000
Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum, þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
Middle English – The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer c. 1400
Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote, the droghte of Match hath perced to the roote, and bathed every veyne in swich licour, of which vertu engendred is the flour.
‘Modern’ English – The Sonnets, William Shakespeare 1609
From fairest creatures we desire increase that thereby beauty’s rose might never die, but as the riper should by time decease, his tender heir might bear his memory.
Modern English – Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen 1813
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife.
‘Modern’ Modern English – Facebook, 2011
Dn't u luv it wen ur readin a post nd none of the wurds r makin ne cense lol
As you can see, this is quite a development over the last 1000 years. Note over the years the ommission of letters from Old to Middle English, the changing of spelling from Middle to ‘Modern’, the omission of archaic expressions from ‘Modern’ to Modern and ommission of punctuation from Modern to ‘Modern’ Modern. We are truely in a new age of language.
If I had the time or the patience I could devote my life to studying these changes. Then again, surely there is an academic out there who is arleady being paid a pitance to sit online and analyse how we talk. What have I learnt from this little snapshot? Well, for a start I’m no longer sure whether or not this is satirical. Or how to spell. But I do feel better about people who don’t use English properly. They are pioneers; paving the way for a newer, more efficient form of the English language.
God speed little Facebookers. God speed.
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