MORE LINGUISTIC MUSINGS

This article, about the Italians voting for their least favourite English incursions into their language, has amused me.

I have always rather admired the French for their fervour in trying to protect their language but the Italians, though concerned, do not take themselves so seriously: “OK” or “buon weekend” are shorter and snappier than the Italian equivalents, so that is “OK” with them! All languages have their fascinating characteristics and the genius of English often lies in its economy. Perhaps the Italians have an inner confidence , too, knowing full well that the language of Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio and of most opera would be hard to eradicate.

It is, of course, utterly mad to attempt to control language: the Dante Alighieri Society, which commissioned the poll, ironically exists precisely because what we now recognise as modern Italian evolved from Latin. These days, language is changing so fast that dictionaries have to be updated every 2 years.

Esperanto and other “invented” languages never really took off because “real” language contains thousands of cultural overtones which they cannot hope to reproduce: English, for instance, is full of references to Shakespeare which most of us do not realise we are using on a daily basis.

A friend of mine back in old Cardiff disapproves entirely of “text” language, though I keep trying to persuade her that this is just an adapatation of language for a specific purpose. What else are all abbreviations, codes and job-specific jargon? [I would agree, though, that it all gets a bit much when teachers have to “instruct” students not to use “text style” in their GCSE English exams!]

Language, as I am always telling my students, is a living form, always changing and evolving with its users. It changes first and later – usually much later – someone writes the rules! No one just “decided“ that a “book” would be “masculine” and a “pen” “feminine” in Italian and French: people started using whichever definite or indefinite article seemed easier to them and afterwards the grammatical rules were written as a way of explaining the usage.

Incidentally, long ago my Italian professor told me that his favourite English word was “conglomeration”!