#264 - death of english... by snoo snoo

haha, this clip is just for fun

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i love studying languages (articulatory phonetics, especially). i totally would have become a linguist if i thought that there was any possible way to make any kind of money at all with a degree in linguistics (besides becoming a computer speech-recognition programmer i mean, which, y'know, no thank you). so with that option out at least i got into the second best field, speech pathology, where i can dip into linguistics, make a living, and flirt with the medical field a little bit as well (if i was a more motivated man i'd have gone for the big degrees in health sciences, neuroscience is the bomb dude, but i'd had enough of school already). so in my wannabe-a-linguist-ness i zoom in on any and everything language-related i come across in everyday life, lately there's been lots of stirrings in the media about the death of the english language.

i know what you're saying... silly matt, languages don't die (although they do disappear sometimes). and they're not static, they're fluid, in motion constantly... like zombies, but quicker, like running zombies... but bigger and farther-reaching, like double-zombies with ape-arms. man, zombies are scary.

anyway, back to the point, so all these research and newspaper articles i've been reading lately about the "death of english" by text-messaging and twitter are complete hoo-ha (i was gonna write "bologna," but something made me want to spell it "baloney," which would more accurately convey my thought, but would look weird, so i wrote "hoo-ha" instead, which is funny because that's not a "word" i would ever use when talking... huh, so what do you think about that?). all these up-pity journalists think they've got a breaking story by supposing that text messaging will doom the english language? bitch please (haha, again something i would never say in real life, but in fitting with this post, and my mood right now at 11:18 pm on a sunday night at the computer). they think that just because people have found a less effort-ful mode of communication through technology that we're all just going to abandon all other forms of language? geez, over-speculate much?

on snl weekend update seth meyers said: Astronaut Mike Massimo, who is aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis, became the first person to Twitter from space when he sent the message, "Launch was awesome!" So in forty years we went from "one giant leap for mankind," to "launch was awesome!" I assume if we ever encounter intelligent life from the cosmos, this is how we'll be notified:

obviously although people use text-shortcuts on their phones, they're not going to use it in print (although i did hear one of my friends say that they had to grade a student's term paper with a whole bunch of "wtf" and those kinds of things in it... well, that's just a dumb kid, don't blame texting for stupidity). but my point is that even if people do start switching to use things like "ttyl" in everyday speech, then that's just the english language evolving. hey, as long as you're a native speaker of english, anything you say is correct, you can't ever be wrong.

that being said, there are of course more commonly accepted norms and those that make the native speakers squirm (the cool thing is that it's completely innate, as a native speaker you know when something doesn't sound right, even if you can't describe why... like you know that "brage" could possibly be an english word but "fgral" can't). and so, although the linguist in me accepts the following as "things that i really shouldn't get on people's cases for," the slp in me wants to slap them whenever someone says:

1. "students-es" like they're trying to say "the students' books" but they add an extra (and retarded sounding) syllable
2. when they try to explain something they use the phrase "what that is is..."
3. anything said by a local police officer on the news... seriously, i understand you guys want to sound menacing on the job or whatever, but flip the switch when the red light on the camera turns on, geez

seriously, i don't mind the pidgin and the slang, but know when to use it. it's called code-switching, know when to use your formal language and when the informal is okay (like in the blog, haha). i'm not saying that everyone needs to speak the same way, that would be totally boring (just ask joss whedon), but let the english language evolve as it will... for all those grammar purists out there, man, what if we were still all speaking "middle english" like chaucer? that would suck right? how inefficient. i could totally go on forever about the evolution of languages and endangered languages (like eyak... only one old alaskan guy as the native speaker of that language left in the world), but i'll stop there and leave you with a little bit of lingual goodness and a lot of totally embarrassing crap.

in high school we had to memorize the beginning of chaucer's canterbury tales and at the time i thought it was pretty stupid as a literary exercise, but it became a much more useful piece of memorized knowledge when i started studying linguistics, not for the literature, but for the middle-english-ness of it. click on the video and then read below... ignore the retarded non-IPA transcription on the video and the modern english translation's attempt at making the passage rhyme... tsk tsk

Prologue from The Canterbury Tales by Geoffery Chaucer:

Original in Middle English:
Whan that Aprill with his shoures sote
the droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe course yronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen al the night with open yë—
So priketh hem Nature in hir corages—
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,
The holye blissful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke.

Translation into Modern English:
When in April the sweet showers fall
And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all
The veins are bathed in liqueur of such power
As brings about the engendering of the flower,
When also Zephyrus with his sweet breath
Exhales an air in every grove and heath
Upon the tender shoots, and the young sun
His half course in the sign of the Ram has run
And the small fowl are making melody
That sleep away the night with open eye,
(So nature pricks them and their heart engages)
Then folk long to go on pilgrimages,
And palmers long to seek the stranger strands
Of far off saints, hallowed in sundry lands,
And specially from every shires’ end
Of England, down to Canterbury they wend
The holy blissful martyr,* quick
To give his help to them when they were sick

and so while i was online searching for that, i found this little gem.


wait, wait... it gets worse... this guy totally thinks he's the shit. how embarrassing.


it doesn't stop either... each video i click on links to like 5 more just like it.


i'm in physical pain now... my heart is crying.