EP 6: Speaking Proper

The Age of Reason began, and English scholars of mathematics and science like Isaac Newton
started publishing their books in English instead of Latin. Jonathan Swift would attempt to save
the English language from perpetual change, followed by Samuel Johnson who would write the
A Dictionary of the English Language, made up of 43,000 words and definitions, written in
seven years and published in 1755.

Though the upper and lower classes found no reason to change or improve their grammar, the
middle class used it to their advantage in joining polite society. William Cobbett, a son of the
lower middle class and writer of Rural Rides, advising those who wish to rise above their station
that writing and speaking properly was essential.

As English began to replace Gaelic in Scotland it took on its own character, using "bonnie" from
the French "bon" and "kolf" from the Dutch for "club", the probable origin for "golf". Several
other words came from Gaelic, including "ceilidh", "glen", "loch", and "whisky". Pronunciation
became an issue all over the United Kingdom, as some sounds could be spelt in several different
ways, while one spelling could have several articulations. Irish actor Thomas Sheridan wrote
British Education, a book that attempted to educate all English speakers in the proper
pronunciation of words. However, some Scots were offended that their speech might be
considered second-class and the Scottish poet Robert Burns, son of a poor farmer, became the
hero of the Scottish language. William Wordsworth also became a champion of the ordinary
peoples' English, suggesting that poetry need not be written using haughty vocabulary.

The turn of the 19th century marked a period when women were more educated and their speech
and literacy improved. Novels were thought to be a frivolous occupation for females until Jane
Austen wrote about the capabilities of such works in her own novels; her works were highly
proper, often using words like "agreeable", "appropriate", "discretion", and "propriety".

Then came the Industrial Revolution and the language that came along with it. The steam engine
changed the meaning of words like "train", "locomotive", and "tracks" to be associated with the
new technology. Along with this age came a change of social situation; the term "slum" came
into use, and Cockney rhyming slang became a new form of speech for those in the lower class.

REVIEW:

One of the things I find most appealing about this series is the host's not simply describing --
dryly, academically -- the changes undergone by the English language, but his reeling off a list of
words and phrases from earlier periods that we still find in daily use today. Here, in an offhand
reference to the English Civil War -- Cromwell vs. the King -- we get, among other tidbits, "keep
your powder dry" and "warts and all." Isaac Newton brought us "lens" and "apparatus." In 1680
they invented "mob", from Latin "mobile vulgus," the fickle crowd.

Early on, Bragg, the benign host, brings up a brief description of the Enlightenment and John
Locke's argument that words need to be carefully defined, otherwise we will wind up arguing
about words that have different meanings. One that comes to mind at the moment, a word over
the definition of which several sides are currently clashing, is "terrorist." Locke was a
philosopher, educated at Christchurch College, Oxford, and he lived in the 17th century, but
we're still arguing indirectly over some of his words today. Where Locke wrote that all human
beings are entitle to "life, liberty, and property," the good people who wrote the Constitution
used "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." What does the word "liberty" mean in that
context?

Mostly this episode, "Between You and I," deals with attempt to fix (or "ascertain" as the taste
makers of the period would have it) the pronunciation, definition, and grammatic forms of
English words. The various writers differentiated between "different from", which they
considered correct, and "different to", the common English usage of today. "Shall" and "will"
were fixed, although I have to admit the difference between the two seemed nonexistent to me in
grammar school. (I had -- and still have -- trouble with "farther" and "further".) Strangely, they
allowed a sentence to end with a proposition. I don't know when that practice was banned.
Certain pronunciations did become fixed -- the vowel sounds in "bath" or "last" turned into
"bahth" and "lahst", a process I think linguists call back gliding. In the South Pacific, American
Samoa is only eighty miles from the former British possession that is now Samoa, but the
differences persist. You can tell on which island a speaker was born, because on Samoa it's
"bahth" and on American Samoa it's "bath."

Thomas Sheridan, an Irish playwright, wrote a book designed to teach everyone to speak alike --
elocution -- while thinking that it would eliminate the class differences that were emerging. It
didn't work, it only distinguished between those who spoke "properly" and those who copied
proper speech. This is funny stuff. Bragg has a dry wit. Very British, don't you know? Not
everyone accepted the idea of universal rules. There was also considerable effort put into using
the speech of the common people, including regional dialects. In Britain, William Wordsworth
resisted. In Scotland, Robert Burns wrote in the local dialect and some of his stuff has come
down to us, either raw or refined. "Auld Lang Syne." And what Burns put down as "Tae a
Moose" has reached us as "To A Mouse." Here's one verse, about "the best laid plans of mice
and men."

But Mousie, thou art no thy lane, in proving foresight may be vain: The best-laid schemes o'
mice a' men Gang aft agley, An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promis'd joy!

The plowman has turned up a mouse's nest and ruined it, and the mouse dashes off in fright. The
same thing happens to people who work hard and plan, only to see everything fall down. Cute,
isn't it? If it was good enough for Steinbeck, it's good enough for us. Only the punch line has
been changed from "gang aft agley" to some version of "go oft awry." Meanwhile, some
novelists of considerable historical import were beginning to write, like Jane Austen, but the
prose was very decorous. Outside her circle, lesser writers were hard at work inventing
euphemisms for unmentionable objects like the male organ -- "Captain Standish" and "the silent
flute."

The beginning of the Industrial Age, around 1850, pretty much put an end to attempts to
"ascertain" English speech. Too many new things required new names, and the now-crowded
cities with their factories, created what the people who had to live in them called "slums."
Cockney speech and its rhyming slang were established among the poor -- "Elephant's trunk"
meant "drunk." I think we can still occasionally run into "Bristol Cities."

EP 7: The Language of Empire

Lately I've heard an expression used in the sense of approval. "Better than a poke in the eye with
a sharp stick." It comes to us from the English used hundreds of years ago by the lower-class
British prisoners that were sent to Australia. They adopted some words from the local aborigines
("boomerang") but mostly the distinctive quality of Australian speech is criminal in its origins.
"Chum," "swag," "lark," "stow it." In the familiar lyric, "You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with
me," a "swag man" or drifter sings. A Matilda is a bag of one's personal effects, waltzing means
walking along a road, and it was written in 1895. All of that is news to me.

This episode deals with the spread of English through India, the Caribbean, and Australia and
illustrates the way English and native languages traded words, grammar, and expressions. From
the various languages of India, we get "bungalow," "khaki," "calico", and "mogul." Not much
from the Caribbean because the settlers quickly disposed of them and brought in slaves from
Africa to harvest the sugar cane. Yet, we still have "canoe", "hammock," and a few others.

Each place the English ruled, the language was considered correct and the use of local languages
discouraged, sometimes bullied out of existence. In Wales, the law required the exclusive use of
English in classrooms. Students caught speaking Welsh were punished, and pupils were
encouraged to squeal on one another, which is where our expression "to Welsh on" comes from.
You didn't have to be born an Englishman to force the preferred language into someone else's
throat. I've spoken to elderly Tlingit Indians in Alaska who'd had their mouths washed with soap
for speaking their own language in class.

The episode gives us a picture of a kind of imperial adventure in history. Now, that particular
history is over. English is established in the former colonies but exists side by side, sometimes
uneasily, with "la parole." Of course, English is about as close to a universal language as the
world has, but changes continue.

Language, regrettably, is also a tribal symbol. Sometimes people don't get along because they
speak different languages, even though they share the same national identity, and sometimes the
clash turns violent -- the English and French in Quebec, the French and Flemish in Belgium. It's
strange how some people can use speech sounds as a peg on which to hang murder.
EP 8: Many Tongues Called English

This is the concluding episode of the series and I wasn't expecting much. The finales to series
like this are too often summaries of what has already been shown. Five minutes of watching air
traffic controllers how easy and workable the universal use of English as a working language is.
Pundits telling us that English is on its way to conquering the world and snuffing out Coast
Salish and so on.

Instead, this is at least as informative, and as pleasant to watch, as any of the earlier episodes.
There isn't much overlap with earlier material. The emphasis is on the interaction between
modern American English and English-English. Jitterbug, anyone?

I was glad to see that he introduced some linguists of the past or, I suppose, philologists, as they
might have been called. They were historians who saw language as part of culture. Jacob Grimm
(of "the Grimm brothers" fame) is mentioned in passing. Half the episode could have been
devoted to his work. He wrote the first non-trivial description of a sound shift in Indo-European
languages. There's no room to get into it, but Grimm's law explains how Sanskrit "sitar", German
"zither" and English "guitar." He alludes to Jesperson too, another Big Name in early linguistics.

They were important figures because before them, the arguments where about which language
was better than others. French was "nasal" and "too complicated". English was "rich" and
"vibrant", and so forth. After them, the study of languages became relative to culture. Each
language did its job equally well within its own milieu. English is booming. About a third of the
world's population is familiar with it.

I don't know that it will replace Mandarin Chinese, which is spoken by more people, but I think
it's apt that, as Latin was once the language of scholarship and French was the language of the
court, English is becoming the language of commerce and consumerism. It's officially used
everywhere. It's the working language of the Association of Baltic Marine Biologists and the
African Hockey Federation. No kidding.

In the last chapter of this final program, Bragg visits several places in England, including a
school in Yorkshire that has a large population from the Middle East and South Asia. Their
natives’ languages are Punjabi or Farsi or Urdu. The kids learn English in school, but they speak
it with a YORKSHIRE ACCENT. There's quite a bit of dry, understated humor in this series.