You ’ve probably heard that English is being ruined — by theInternet , by texting , by Americans , by untested people who have no respect for proper grammar . But it turns out that masses have always worried over English , and over the centuries , have charge all sorts of thing of “ ruining ” the language .
Is the Innanet wrecking teh English Language ? ? ? ¯( ° _o)/¯
Top image made with theHistoric tale construction outfit atbayeux.datensalat.net .
1. The Norman Conquest
Let ’s start with one matter that actually did put English at genuine risk . In 1066 , William the Conqueror absorb England and claimed the English throne . Being the Duke of Normandy , William did not utter English , but Norman French , and French became the language of government and business organization . But for centuries , English held on at the fringes , the language of the occupied people , even as baron and queen after magnate and queen spoke French and Latin , but hardly a word of English .
Melvyn Bragg , in his Scripture The Adventure of English , credit a number of factors with the revitalization of English in the 14th century : the deaths of a disproportional telephone number of clergy penis during the Black Death , the use of English as the language of populist revolt , the marriage between English women and Norman men , leave in generations of bilingual children . Eventually , English reasserted itself in the classroom and in business . In 1377 , King Richard II , became England ’s first monarch to use English solely since the Norman Conquest .
Of naturally , English hail out of this struggle quite change ; the language of Edward the Confessor was not the speech of Geoffrey Chaucer . It had retained many of its solution , but also covetously consumed plenteousness of French ( and later Arabic ) word in the intervening years .
2. Foreign Loanwords
Today , it ’s hard to imagine English as anything but a hodgepodge of word borrowed from other speech communication , but for some author , English went downhill when we start tainting our tongue with Viking and Norman speech . One of the original Chicken Littles of the English language was Ranulph Higden , a 14th - century Benedictine monk of St. Werburgh in Chester . Old Ranulph complained that his contemporary English just did n’t sound as courteous as it did before those bothersome encroacher amount and fuck everything up . He write ( in modernized language ):
by intermingling and mixing , first with Danes and afterwards with Normans , in many people the spoken communication of the land is harmed , and some use strange inarticulate vocalization , chattering , snarling , and harsh teeth - gnashing .
Yes , Virginia , people have always been complaining about the English language . Higden was an old - shoal withstander of the nomenclature , and interrogatively , he was defending a interpretation of the language that no longer existed in the coarse jargon . After all , as David Crystal channelise out in his excellent leger The Fight for English , many of the words Higden uses in this very ill ( “ rural area ” and “ language , ” for model ) issue forth from the French .
3. The Printing Press
The complaint about the printing press when it was first introduced were legion and wide - place . Johannes Trithemius thought that copying texts by hand built character and that the print press was a threat to the monastic way of life . Many religious leaders reverence its ability to disseminate dissident ideas .
William Caxton , who enclose the printing press to England , had to make do with a very particular trouble when it get to printing process : there was no one English language . A undivided word in English might have a dozen radically unlike spellings and pronunciations , and as shortly as he started printing , Caxton receive criticism from hoi polloi who find that he was n’t print their version of English .
But Caxton was a rather scheming businessman . For one matter , he knew when to bear a fudge factor without argument , such as when Lady Margaret , the sister of King Edward IV “ find a default option ” in Caxton ’s English . For another , he was careful to be humble about his English . In the prologue of the first book print in England , The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troy , Caxton is humble about his English , apparently assuring the lector that he is not trying to lay claim the English in his book is the best English , only that it is his English .
Printing did have a profound force on English , in the end . Printers run to be a chip arbitrary with come in the letter “ e ” at the ends of words , worrying less about coherent spelling than the length of the line . And Dutch setter introduced their own spellings . Many former defenders of the language felt that handwritten books were more cautiously copy than printed books , but of trend the printed Christian Bible eventually reigned .
4. Classical Words
Not everyone was pleased with this modification in the spoken communication , however . The Inkhorn Controversy uprise , with opponents of these novel words fiercely claiming that they were counterfeit English , tainting the sinlessness of dependable English . Sir John Cheke , Provost of King ’s College , Cambridge , publish :
I am of this opinion that our own tung shold be written cleane and utter , unmixt and unmangled with borowing of other tunges , wherein if we not heed by tiim [ by time ] , ever borowing and never payeng , she shall be fain to keep her home as belly-up .
assistant of the new words , on the other hand , felt that the raw words enrich the voice communication . Sir Thomas Elyot called it “ the necessary augmentation of our language . ” finally , this argument sort out itself out by nature . While many of the words coined during this period survived , others , like “ fatigate , ” “ nidulate , ” and “ abstergify , ” fall out of usage .
5. Shakespeare
The Elizabethan and Jacobean era were an exciting time for the English language . You had playwright like Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare coining parole left and right and showing off both the major power and the malleability of the English words . But in the 1600s , some writers on English felt that the poet had gone too far , making English too ornate and unwieldy . While many today maintain the epoch of Shakespeare as the gold age of the English spoken communication , Thomas Sprat , who would finally become Bishop of Rochester , spell in 1667 that English was deteriorating precisely because it was filled with magniloquence and metaphor ( he was n’t a fan of the new classical Word , either ) . He beg the freshly make Royal Society “ to return back to the primitive purity , and shortness , when men deliver’d so many things , almost in an adequate number of words . ”
A few yr later , the poet and critic John Dryden would take aim at Shakespeare specifically , but for unlike reason : because Shakespeare had , in his estimation , piteous grammar . Dryden feel that the English of the late seventeenth hundred was plainly more grammatic than Shakespeare ’s English . Like so many people , Dryden believed that he spoke the dear version of English .
10 Grammar Mistakes People Love To Correct ( That Are n’t Actually Wrong )
6. Affordable Paper
People today may claim that texting and Twitter makes faineant typists of us all , but George Abbot , Archbishop of Canterbury , was certain that cheesy theme meant risky matter for the written discussion . To be reasonable , the Archbishop was respond to a particularly unfortunate typo in what is now screw as the“Wicked Bible . ”Some typesetter made a mistake in the Ten Commandments , omitting the word “ not ” so that one teaching read , “ Thou shalt commit adultery . ” Oops . Abbott was sure that this was all because report was getting brassy and the typesetters less cultivate :
https://gizmodo.com/the-most-disastrous-typos-in-western-history-1615643250
I jazz the metre when great tutelage was had about printing , the Bibles especially , sound typographer and the upright correctors were aim being solemn and learned man , the paper and the alphabetic character rare , and faire every way of the best , but now the paper is nought , the composers male child , and the correctors unlearn .
That was in 1631 . I ’m sure he things the state of amour has only gone down from there .
7. The Lack of a Central Academy for English
In 1635 , Cardinal Richelieu established the Académie française , a body for making conclusion about the French linguistic communication . There were a few break down attempts to bulge a like mental hospital for English , with a particularly impassioned movement coming from the satirist , essayist , and poet Jonathan Swift . Much like Thomas Sprat before him , Swift cogitate that the English language was in a state of fall , though his complaints were a second different . In his 1712 “ Proposal for Correcting , Improving and check the English Tongue , ” Swift compose that English :
is extremely imperfect; … its day-to-day advance are by no way in proportion to its daily Corruptions ; … it offends against every Part of Grammar .
western fence lizard railed against the poets , the spelling reformers , the untried academics who find fault up new phrases . He worry that English speakers would forget the history of their row . He felt that English needed protecting , and that some prescribed body was postulate to arrange it back on its right course and ensure that it was n’t further corrupt .
8. Abbreviating Words
Once again , we see that there is nothing quite raw when it do to the English speech — and complaining about the English language . While people may gnash their teeth over reduce words on the Internet or in textbook messages , abbreviating is nothing fresh . David Crystal points outthat the abbreviation IOU , for instance , has been around since 1618 . He also take note that quetch about abbreviated words has also been with us for centuries , compose in the Guardian :
In 1711 , for deterrent example , Joseph Addison complained about the way words were being “ miserably cut short ” – he mentioned pos ( itive ) and incog ( nito ) . And Jonathan Swift thought that abbreviating words was a “ cruel customs ” .
9. French Spellings
English folks are often accusing Americans of ruining the language , but lexicographer Noah Webster felt that the English ( by way of the Normans ) destroy it first . Webster was one of a number of orthographers who feel that English should look more , well , English and less French . He finally became a strong advocate of dropping the “ u ” from words with -our endings and change the -er ending to -re . In his dictionaries , Webster used his own favored spelling , which finally caught on in the United States , resulting in the current disruption between American and British English spellings .
Americanize , Anglicise : Why Do Brits And Yanks Spell Words other than ?
10. Changing Pronunciations
If anyone has ever decline the way that you say “ inquiry , ” telling you that you place the emphasis on the incorrect syllable , just have it away that pronunciations come up and go . The English poet Samuel Rogers kvetch in a work published after his death in 1855 :
The now fashionable orthoepy of several Word is to me at least very offensive : cóntemplate — is bad enough ; but bálcony makes me ghastly .
At various times in the story of modernistic English , writer have praised the speech of hoi polloi who degenerate the “ yard ” in -ing words when speaking and have care over the fade of the letter “ gas constant ” in the pronunciation of wrangle like “ harm ” and “ gird . ” Much like changing spelling , new musical phrase , and lurch grammatical style , these pronunciation have n’t ruined English , as far as we can tell . They ’ve only changed it .
Sources :
Melvyn Bragg , The Adventure of English : The Biography of a Language .
David Crystal , The Fight for English : How Language Pundits eat , Shot , and Left .
Henry Hitchings , The Language Wars : A story of Proper English .
Jack Lynch , The Lexicographer ’s quandary : The Evolution of ‘ Proper ’ English , from Shakespeare to South Park .
Ammon Shea , Bad English : A History of Linguistic Aggravation .
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