Serious publications naturally adopt a conservative stance toward language choices, or diction. At the same time, language inexorably evolves, so that the Latin of Caesar’s time turns into the French, Italian, Spanish and so on of 1,000 years later.
I am fascinated by the ways change comes to different languages — and how communities consciously try to control the change. People who read Modern Greek can understand a 2,500-year-old text pretty well. The Icelandic of today differs little from the Old Norse of 1000 AD that changed to become Swedish, Danish and Norwegian. For English the break-off point comes a little before Shakespeare.
And I will come back to the Académie Française in a later blog.
It happens bit by bit. The Associated Press recently decreed that the venerable “e-mail” must now appear as “email,” and cell phones are now “cellphones.” Both demonstrate the common progress of compound nouns: first two words, then hyphenated, then one word.
I don’t particularly like “email,” but I won’t fight AP on this one.
Americans have brought several logical improvements to the language, including “plow” for “plough” and “today” for “to-day.” Phonologically, “centre” versus “center” is a toss-up.
Some reforms didn’t make it. I think it was the old Chicago Herald that tried to give us “thru” instead of “through” in a crusade to save three characters worth of ink.
Professor Strunk (pictured above) suggested one of my favorite failures. He wanted “studentry” to replace the awkward “student body,” by analogy to “faculty” and “peasantry.”
Eminently sensible, and stylistically strong, to boot.
Even more sensible would be to drop the biologically silly term “crab fishery” in favor of “crabbery.”
I don’t really think I’ll win this one, either, so here is another of my ideas for reform:
The word “elsewhere” is so tidy and useful, why not also “elsewho,” "elsewhen” and "elsewhat”? Much neater than “somebody else,” etc.
And of course, when I am king, “snaze” will become the official past tense of “sneeze.”
The complementary category consists of words and phrases that clearly do not deserve to survive. Some people call them “buzzwords,” but I say that’s one of them. This week two that have long outlived their time came over my desk. Please immediately and permanently retire “no-brainer” and “man up.” Other candidates?
Ceterum censeo “utilize” esse delendam.
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