The Birth of Speaking "Proper"

 I went upstairs and decided to watch something on the old DVR.  Some of the stuff on there was recorded in 2008. No, I'm NOT kidding! I had, in 2008, recorded the whole series "The Adventure of English" on History International.  I remember watching 2 or three episodes and then the others just stayed on there and never got watched.  Very fascinating stuff! The series covers the birth of our language all the way up to current day.

 I put on the episode about changes from the Age of Reason (late 17th century) to the Industrial Revolution.  Before this, English was like a rogue language running a muck. There were no standards at all; no grammar was in place, words had no set meaning, proper pronunciation hadn't been determined. What a mess! I can't imagine communicating like that. We think we have problems understanding each other now!

During the Age of Reason, scholars were insistent on creating standards for the language. Prior to this time, Latin was always used for scholarly writing.  English was not deemed suitable.  John Locke and Isaac Newton were key players in this movement.

In Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he said that better use of language could end disputes and factionalism. If definitions for words could be agreed upon, peace was sure to follow.  Well Mr. Locke, that was a nice, cuddly thought. But we have agreed upon definitions for most words and peace does not appear to be on the horizon.  It is farther away than ever. Maybe the opposite is true.  We have such distinct specific words for emotions and feelings that by using the correct words, insults and injury are now much worse than they were in the 17th century.  Maybe we need to go back to a state where no one knows what the hell anyone else is talking about!

The first scholarly publication in English according to the show was Optiks by Newton. In this book about the refraction of light, Newton coined many new words such as indistinct and well-defined.  Prior to this book many words had completely different meanings.  Opaque had meant 'unlit' and Newton changed its meaning to "not allowing light to pass". 

During this time newspapers were starting to be circulated and it was popular to hang out in coffee shops and read and discuss them.  For the first time, written English was a part of everyday life.  But, the same thing was written with so many contrasting words that you had to read a few versions of an article to gain its meaning.

Samuel Johnson decided to put an end to this by creating the first English Dictionary. In seven years he plotted out 43,000 words in 2 volumes.  Sounds great, right? Well, lets just say it was a nice first effort.  He left out all proper nouns but put in obsolete words. If he didn't understand a word, he just left it out rather than ask others.  This includes most medical, legal, and trade terms. And of course the definitions provided are pretty useless. Some of the definitions used multiple long and pretentious words that no one understood. Others were ridiculous or just plain wrong.  Of those mentioned in the show my favorite was this:

Tarantula: An insect whose bite can only be cured by music. 

 Besides trying to get definitions in order, the fabulous easy to remember grammar that we all know and love was invented. There was also a big emphasis on vocabulary and standardizing spelling and pronunciation. Seeing that there are 7 ways to spell the sound "ee", they did a FABULOUS job of that!  Many common words were banned such as fib, bigot, flimsy, and nowadays. Don't you wish the word bigot was STILL banned? 

Subscription libraries came on the scene, making reading more accessible, especially to women.  With women reading, the market for novels grew.  Jane Austen came on the scene.  There was such an emphasis on speaking and acting properly.  Talking about the human body was considered very rude.  Thousands of lines of Shakespeare were removed due to their crudeness.  The belief was that if the word was gone, the thought was gone. It was from this that the first English slang was born.  I got quite a laugh out of the list they provided of words for "the male organ":  tailpipe, Captain Standish, Silent flute, pike of pleasure, cupid's torch, nimrod, mighty hunter, his majesty in purple cap, beloved guest, pleasure pivot, Dr. Johnson, and others. Obviously the thought was not gone.  They were clearly thinking about it a lot! 

I think that they did the best they could at the time to make some order out of the mess that English was at the time.  Even though we have great dictionaries, why did other areas stay stagnant? Our grammar is so fraught with inconsistencies and exceptions that it is rare for a native speaker to keep it straight.  Somebody better get on that!