Purists and English teachers alike contend that the Internet is contributing to the degradation of our mother tongue, if not outright ruining it. But if these caretakers of English knew a little bit about the storied history of our language, they’d see that the digital age – the age of email, texting, blogging, and Twitter – is merely the beginning of the next phase.
If we do the math, we see that our English words undergo a cataclysmic shift every 300 years. During those 300 years the language enjoys a time of relative peace and stability. But language, like other phases, can be forever altered. In the case of language, inventions and new governments are the catalysts.
Modern English
Those who groan that 2 now represents to, too, and two don’t realize that Modern English (which gave us these distinctions) is just the latest phase. Early Modern English is marked by the 18th century writings of Jonathan Swift and Daniel DeFoe. Hence a sentence from Gulliver’s Travels, although a little stiff, can easily be read by any Internet-addicted teen: “I had now made good Progress in understanding and speaking their Language.”
Middle or Medieval English
Set the time machine back 300 more years, and we arrive at the 14th century to the Middle English phase. This phase was marked by the Great Vowel Shift and the end of the Norman Conquest. With vowels scurrying toward the back and top of the mouth and with the French sailing back across the Channel, English began sounding more Anglo and less Franco. English’s most famous muscle-flexing during this time occurred in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. The result is Middle English with just a dash of Middle French. With a little work and help, we can read the following from The Tales’ Prologue. Read the lines below phonetically, don’t fret the word order, and substitute the word go for pace:
But nathelees, whil I have tyme and space,
Er that I ferther in this tale pace
Similar to Modern English, but certainly not the same.
Old English
Jump back into the DeLorean to the 11th century and the end of the Old English period. Old English, also known as Old Low German, sounds like someone has spent too much time at the Biergarten. The letters are a cross between druid runes (think Tolkien) and our familiar Roman alphabet, brought to you by the Holy Roman Empire. But phonics rule once again as we read this famous reference to the monster Grendel from Beowulf:
“feond on helle.”
What have we learned from this short overview? Since Beowulf, the spelling has varied but the phonics remain the same. Change, it is acomin’. And the more crowded our brains become with which social network to join, the less apt we are to remember which to/too/two to use. It would behoove us instead to recall Jeff Goldblum’s Final Jeopardy answer from a famous parody on Saturday Night Live:
“It’s the letter 2.”
Tracey McCormick is Managing Editor at GreatHistory.com
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Frank Chadwick said:
But OMG I do H8 it!
April 24th, 2009 at 6:58 am
From Old English to Panglish « SheSpoke. Find out what she said said:
[...] has written about how change is inherent in the English language here. [...]
April 24th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Gerald D. Swick said:
There’s long been a division between “formal” and “informal” writing, and English teachers have struggled to convey that to students since long before any of us were born. However,it’s only been a little over a century since English spellings were standardized.
The Feb. 4, 1882, Wheeling (West Virginia) Intelligencer repeated a plea it had made earlier for all newspapers in the state to standardize spellings, saying, “First reform the newspaper spelling, and next will follow a school book … Thus, gradually, the English language will conform its letters to their true relation to sound.” The Chicago Tribune was among other newspapers championing the cause. The publication of the Oxford English Dictionary finally accomplished it. And that was a blessing to society, as anyone knows who’s tried to decipher the free-form spellings found in pre-20th century writings.
The English language, which is screwy enough to begin with because it is a 60 percent Germanic language on which a Latin rule base was imposed (a lot like Microsoft’s early attempts to overlay the Windows format on a DOS base, for those who remember how frustrating that was), will always be evolving. That is true, and perhaps one day U B GR8 2 will be considered formal English.
But for now, outside of instant messaging, it communicates a message the writer doesn’t intend: I 2 stpid & lazy to lrn 2 rite gud.
April 28th, 2009 at 4:30 pm