Shakespeare is credited with inventing or developing many of the words and phrases we use regularly today. There are several web sites quoting these - references below - but I’m not sure how authentic they all are. Looking at the list, many of the new words were verbal forms of nouns already in use: to blanket, to champion, to drug, to educate, to elbow, to impede, to lapse, to rival. So Shakespeare was not against verbing. But others are wonderful juxtapositions: moonbeam, farmhouse, lacklustre, outbreak. Many simple words we use today appear first in his works: accommodation, assassination, bump, generous, gloomy, lonely, majestic, sanctimonious.
The item on ‘From Our Own Correspondent’ was about the French attitude to the English language. The French, who are quite comfortable talking about le parking and le weekend, have an annual award ‘Prix de la Carpette Anglaise’ (which Hugh Schofield on the programme translates as The English Rug Prize) that is presented to the person who has given the best display of "fawning servility" to further the insinuation into France of the accursed English language. There’s a link to the full talk below. The winner this year is M Jean-Paul Nerriere who has invented a new language - or version of English - called Globish. This he promotes as a common language for international communication particularly for business. He claims that something like this is already developing in the business world so we may as well codify it. And if we’re not careful, the rest of the world will be able to speak it and we English speakers will be lost because we will be looking for subtlety that’s not there.
There are some Globish web sites with examples including the following version of The Lord’s Prayer:
That won’t catch on in Little Hampden.Our Father,
Who comes to us from above,
Your name is holy.
Your rule will soon be here,
Your will will be executed, in this world, and in the above as well,
Give us today the food we need everyday,
And forgive what we do wrong
As we will also forgive the other persons who do wrong to us,
Do not lead us to have bad desires,
But, free us from all that is evil,
For your are the ruler of the above, and yours are the power, and
highest honour for ever and ever.
Amen.
If you have any views on our language, please comment (when did that start to be used as a verb?) or e-mail (!) me.
References
From Our Own Correspondent transcription:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7844192.stm
Shakespeare words and phrases:
http://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/resources/shakespeare-words-phrases.htm
http://www.pathguy.com/shakeswo.htm
http://piksels.com/words-invented-by-shakespeare/
Globish:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globish - contains several links including the 1500 words in Globish
http://www.globish.com/
http://www.jpn-globish.com/
2 comments:
A couple of new uses of words have long interested me. The first is "Decimate" used today as meaning "virtually annihilate". As some readers will know, Decimation was originally an extreme measure undertaken by commanders of Roman legions that were in mutiny. The disciplinary measure was to take out (kill) one in 10 of them - there were no employment tribunals in those days! Current usage implies taking nine out of ten. That would not have left the commander with much of a legion!
A quite different word is one that has crossed the Atlantic - "right". It is used instead of "yes" or "really" and has even entered my vocabulary. Surely the origin of this word use is the wish not to lose face by indicating that one did not know the piece of knowledge that another party was imparting to the listener. "Right" would in past years have affirmed the correctness of the other party's statement, whereas now it can really mean anything other than "I didn't know that", even if you didn't.
Yes, I'm an old grumbler when it comes to what I consider is mis-use of our language. Actually, I've been at it for some decades now, even before I was an "old grumbler". That was probably due to my professional life when use of language, both spoken and written, was part of that life in a formal way.
The first interesting aspect was at the end of a period of six months spent working on a kind of secondment in New York City in 1978. During my time there I really worked hard on maintaining my Britishness in both language and attitudes. Sometimes I had to compromise like saying "fuel" for feeding cars (autos?) rather than "petrol" as I could not bring myself to utter "gas" in that context. Spelling was also an interesting aspect, but here I was aided by our unit's typist who had been born, brought up and educated in Jamaica. She used British spellings such as "neighbour" and "colour" rather than "neighbor" and "color".
Anyway, after all that rambling, on to the point of this comment. On my final day as a full-time member of the Educational Products Information Exchange Institute on the upper west side I was presented with a certificate. Many kind comments about me were written on the certificate which ended with, ". . . but he did have trouble with the language."
At the risk of being boring, I have a few grouses about current aspects of language that I keep hearing on radio and television. Incorrect applications of "compare to" and "compare with": they do mean rather different things. Pronunciation of the indefinite article as "ay": I've even heard "aynother"! And pronunciation of the definite article as "thee" when this variation is not appropriate as in, "thee government".
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