Column: Proper English Going Extinct

Published: Friday, November 1, 2002

English is the Frankenstein of languages — a little from here, a little from there; a mandible from Latin, some skin from Old Norse, and brought to life by some energy from French. English, like America, is a melting pot language, a hodgepodge of idioms, a smorgasbord without a sneeze guard, contaminated by all those who partake in the feast. English is the most spoken language in the world after Mandarin Chinese, the language of modern science, the language of travelers, and, as has been noted by many foreigners, very easy to speak and very difficult to read and write. Why then is it one of the most ambiguous and poorly spoken languages in the world?

In the days when honor was more than just a word used in connection to Brewster's Pub, scraggly-toothed Brits knew the difference between thee and you. There actually existed a singular and plural second-person tense. In modern times, nobody cares. If one were to say, "Thou hast punted my knob and bravery medallions," it would be evident that only one person is inflicting pain. Nowadays, "You have punted my knob and bravery medallions," fails to indicate the number of scofflaws doing the violating. Uncivilized plague ridden sod-mongers and witch-hunters spoke a more specific and wholesome dialect than is taught in schools today.

Incidentally, English is becoming the language of international business and Americans would like to think this is because of our booming economic splendor and technological superiority. This may be true, but the fact is that English is a relatively simple language to speak. When dealing with verb conjugations, English has significantly fewer tenses than other languages. For example, the verb to be in the present tense has only two forms: are and is. Most Latin languages, however, have many more. Spanish, for example, has six forms: estoy, está, estás, están, estaís, and estamos. Unfortunately, the vosotros has disappeared in some Spanish-speaking countries.

Assassinating verb tenses is just one of the many travesties that has attacked the weakened immune system of the English language. The disappearance of the word whom, the ubiquity of like — drawing serious doubt that thought precedes speech in all people under the age of 25 — ending sentences with prepositions, not differentiating between further and farther, the lack of formal second-person pronoun, the mistakes continue ad infinitum. Does anyone remember the difference between ought and should? At what point did English become so vulgar and unsophisticated?

English's openness to accepting foreign words has been both a blessing and a curse. Roughly 30 percent of words valid for Scrabble play do not follow English pronunciation guidelines. The word colonel, for example, is one of the most malevolent and pernicious English words. It is single-handedly responsible for a fast-growing chicken enterprise — rumored to foully grow test-tube fowl — and making Elvis popular. Adopted from Old Italian, the word colonel is ludicrous. Along with the Teletubbies, which encourages such nonsensical jargon as "Tinky winky" and the like, words like colonel inhibit English from being taught with greater efficacy. Language is a serious topic, creating the proper linguistic foundation early on is important as it will later dictate how people think. Facilitating this installation should be a top cultural priority.

What English needs is something akin to the French Academy. Founded in the 15th century, the French Academy's primary function is to maintain linguistic purity by conservatively preserving the French language. The French Academy has the authority to determine whether or not words like Internet are to be added to the French dictionary. Such an institution to regulate the adulteration and contamination of English is absolutely crucial if we wish to preserve its integrity. The evolution of English must be reversed even if it means taking on Cro-Magnon characteristics.

In refining English like beet sugar, we've extracted the crude bloody pulp that constituted the livelihood of the language and we're left with a granular pabulum with no personality. What's even more shocking is that by eliminating words, phrases, and grammatical "trivialities", the ability for each rising generation to communicate its thoughts in an articulate manner declines daily.

Words were created to relay thought. If, as the language gets simpler, we still can't speak it correctly, we should recognize the direct correlation between the complexity of a language and the level at which it is spoken. The more complex a language is, the more accurately it will be spoken.

Simplifying English is not a solution, purification is. If the English were defended against, if grammar rules were more rigid, if we celebrated language, peoples would be able to talk gooder. Instead, like, we all have, like, stuff, and stuff. Know what I mean? We all need to be learned a lesson.