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Archive for the ‘Development of English’ Category

Words for our times

Posted by Catie Holdridge

The latest version of the Collins English Dictionary has just been published, with some interesting new additions, including ‘iPlayer, ‘mankini’ (after Borat’s legendary garment), and ‘Twitter’.

The words that officially enter the language no doubt reflect the influences and preoccupations of our times. So, after looking over this year’s new entries, I couldn’t help but wonder: is the future of English completely ruled by television and technology?

Well, not completely. The explosion of the social media trend definitely makes its mark: from the names of key sites to phonetically spelled words and phrases (surely more likely to be instant messaged than looked up) such as ‘heh heh’, ‘mwah’ and ‘soz’.

However, our culture’s growing bent towards greener living is also represented, so we find out that an ‘ecolodge’ is a sustainable hotel, and to be ‘carborexic’ is to be ‘a person obsessed with reducing their carbon footprint’. Our fascination with celebrity-inspired trends combines neatly with the reality of living in the current economy in the word ‘frugalista’: ‘a person who tries to stay fashionably dressed on a budget’.

This does beg the question: does anyone actually use these words? Or have the writers at Collins just been having fun making them up?

Still, the question of technology’s power over the way we write (and speak) could be greater than we realise. As a society increasingly melded to our PCs, iPhones and MacBooks, our use of grammar could come to be ruled by Microsoft Word’s occasionally erratic placing of squiggly lines. But that’s another story…

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Posted September 24th, 2009 in Development of English | 1 Comment »

Hullo! What a useful invention

Posted by Catie Holdridge

When you consider the concept of inventions, anything from the wheel to the iPod might spring to mind. You’re probably less likely to think of a word; particularly not one you may take so completely for granted as the word of greeting, ‘hello’.

Yet it is believed to be just that – the invention of Thomas Edison. He is credited with advocating ‘hello’ as the best way of answering the telephone, from where it gradually moved into the general use it has today.

It may be more accurate to say, he adapted and perfected a pre-existing invention (much as he did with the electric light bulb).

Before Edison’s influence, you might have exclaimed ‘hullo!’ in surprise, hailed a ferryman with a resounding ‘hollo’, or even led a hunting party to their quarry by crying ‘halloo’ (if you were in the habit of doing these things).

Of course, words frequently enter the language through utter invention. Shakespeare coined an incredible 2000 or so new words, including ‘jaded’, ‘bedroom’ and ‘obscene’; plus numerous phrases we now take for granted, such as ‘vanish into thin air’, ‘flesh and blood’ and ‘to be cruel to be kind’.

Edison’s choice of answering utterance was based on its clarity – and for that sentiment we naturally approve. And that’s not the only call for us to owe him a debt of gratitude. Had it been left to Alexander Graham Bell, our typical salutation could well be ‘ahoy’.

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Posted September 23rd, 2009 in Development of English | No Comments »

On the origin of speaking

Posted by Catie Holdridge

Last Thursday marked the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin: an event that did not go uncelebrated at Emphasis HQ. And even as we hung the streamers and tied up the balloons we were silently thanking the birthday boy for explaining the opposable thumbs that allowed us to do it.

I mean, of course, his theory of natural selection: that particular cause of evolution that pits genes in competition with each other so that organisms can win the reproduction war, becoming increasingly sophisticated in tiny increments along the way.

The roots and evolution of language have proved trickier to reconcile with Darwin’s magnum opus.  The fact that humans happily chat away from an early age while chimps – our closest relatives in the animal kingdom – stay stoically silent has led to doubts on the subject.

Possible suggestions for our capacity for communication are as varied as Divine bestowment or a coincidental by-product of some other adaptation process. (For example, bones are white not for aesthetic reasons but because they are strengthened with calcium. Which is white.)

But there’s hope yet for hard-line Darwinist linguists. Steven Pinker suggests humans have a ‘language instinct’, * which has been gradually honed for 200,000 years: this explains why children begin to pick up pretty complex grammar before they even go to school; why every community and tribe ever discovered has a stable language with regulated grammar and syntax; and why even people deaf from birth include these features in their sign language. And we can’t possibly learn it by rote since it is virtually limitless: we can use it to form endlessly innovative combinations of words.

There’s no reason to expect chimps to have this innate ability (tea adverts aside) because we are not descended from them directly: we share a common (extinct) ancestor. Developing our brains in this unique way is no odder, Pinker points out, than an elephant developing a trunk.

In business, out-performing your rivals is still vital for survival. So we’re here to help your writing evolve: we like to think of ourselves as the winning gene. And – hopefully – that Darwin would be proud.

* For more on this see Steven Pinker The Language Instinct (Penguin Books Ltd 1994)

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Posted February 18th, 2009 in Development of English, Psychology/linguistics | 2 Comments »

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