"Do You Speak American?" On PBS: English Language Suffering?

Great Debates
1

I watched this show tonight, and thought it was very interesting, especially the opinions of some of the linguists which were interviewed about the state of the English language.

Some of the scholars think that English is metaphorically circling the bowl-- that our grammar (or lack thereof), liberal use of slang, and the increasing informality in written English are destroying the language. A purist cannot help but wince when reading a teen chat log, but others see it as inventive and flexible use of language which does not necessarily spell doom.

My view is that even if the English language is changing, it may not be a bad thing. All languages evolve, after all, not getting “better” or “worse”-- only changing to meet the times. Perhaps in a thousand years or so, this post will be incomprehensible to the average person as Chaucer is to many.

Grammar is much like manners, which evolve as well. What is unspeakably vulgar to one generation is commonplace to the next. Does that make the next generation “wrong”, or merely differentin its perceptions? (Moral relativism aside, of course.)

While I disagree with anything-goes usage on all occasions, it does not distress me to have new words recognized by the OED, or have new usages recognized as correct, especially when they have become commonplace. For example, it was drilled into me as a child never to end a sentance with a preposition, but now I see it so frequently (even in scholarly works) that what used to stick out like a sore thumb hardly even registers. Is this one grammar rule which should be mothballed?

Even if we wanted to, how could we keep the English language static? Given all of the lingusistic influences (especially Spanish) which are increasing, is it possible that English will become the Latin of the distant future-- melding into and influencing other languages, but ceasing to be a seperate entity, becomming a sort of dead tongue to all except scholars?

What do you think the current state of English is, and where do you think it’s going?

2

I didn’t see the show, but I mourn for English sometimes. We are very casual with our language, and we want to say things quickly and concisely, but I really think we’ve lost some of the beauty of the spoken and written word.

“How are you doing?”
“I’m pissed.”

What happened to mad, angry, cross, livid, enraged?

As a user of casual language and random profanity myself, I can’t get on too high a horse here, but I wish our language was growing rather than shrinking.

3

If ending a sentence with a preposition was a crime I would never leave jail. What was that one sketch…was it SNL? Simpsons? I just vaguely remember the dialogue…

Person A: Where is the bathroom at?
Person B: Never end a sentence with a preposition.
Person A: Uh…OK. Where is the bathroom at, asshole?

4

People like you give me hope. I find IM lingo fascinating. High time we got around to some streamlining. “Lite” and “nite” aren’t debased forms – they’re efficient.

Re vulgarity, go back and read some lit crit from the 1700s. I recall one scholar who generally praised Swift, but found his use of the phrase “rowing for all he was worth” inexcusibly vulgar.

Already has been. It was invented by English teachers circa 1800 who considered Greek and Latin inherently superior. Since this construction does not appear in the classical languages, it was thought to be a debased form, and therefore undesirable in English. This nonsense persisted for a couple of centuries, but we are now sloughing it off like an old scab. Same with the split infinitive.

We can’t. I find it truly bizarre to listen to language mavens describe the history of a term through all its changes, then assert that it somehow “means” what it meant in the 1920’s, not what people understand it to mean today.

5

I watched the program too. I wish they had made it a little clearer that there is no standard dialect.

Parts of it were disturbing. I’m an opponent of making any language the “official” language because of natural changes. So I was dismayed to see than an American town has made Spanish its official language.

It was interesting that the movement of Blacks to the North and the segregated neighborhoods fostered the development of a split between Black American English and white American English. I don’t think that is as pronounced in the South and maybe the reverse migration will help to reverse that split.

My jaw dropped about six inches when the crew landed in my neighborhood cafe. When they showed the two non-Southern singers who have adopted a country style of talking and singing, that restaurant is within walking distance of my house. It annoyed me that they would pick those fer-in-ers to demonstrate our dialect.

I’ve also been on that same little street in Mamou, Louisiana. The couple that I knew there spoke only French. Their son, in his fifties, spoke French and English (with a Cajun accent). The grandsons spoke English with no noticeable accent and a little French. It’s changing quickly.

My mother-in-law spoke a plantation dialect. I didn’t know what it was called until tonight. I’ve always referred to it as “magnolia.”

I do think that there was a good point about at least keeping our written communications grounded in some commonality.

6

I don’t see any evidence that it’s shrinking. Check out wordspy sometime.

And why does “pissed” express less than “mad, angry, cross, livid, enraged”? To my ear, “mad” falls much flatter than “pissed”. {Note to international dopers – “mad” and “pissed” = “angry” in US, and have nothing to do with insanity or intoxication.} A century from now, “pissed” will likely sound colorful and expressive, not like the commonplace terms being used at the time.

There will always be those who use language creatively, and those who go through life saying the equivalent of, “Yeah, uh, it was like, you know, wow, I mean, just like, oh man” and believing they’ve said something. And you can find both types in all classes.

7

Yes, I think that’s what bothers me. The language just doesn’t seem as colorful to me anymore. Your note to International Dopers, and the Britishisms thread in MPSIMS right now, delight me - I just don’t see that kind of variety in everyday American English anymore. It’s worse when I’m reading contemporary literature, where authors seem to have turned into journalists rather than artists working with words.

8

Languages change. They always have and they always will. Humans have an inante sense of language, and whatever the outword form is, the basic instict (and that’s what it is) for communication stays the same.

I didn’t see this episode tonight, but my understanding is that it was a repeat from “The Story of English” which I saw in its entirety when it first aired 20 some odd years ago. English is indeed a fascinating language because it has absorbed so many words from other languages. But the root of it all is simple commuication, and that hasn’t changed for thousands of years.

9

I watched the show, I wish they showed the Chicago accent - well maybe I missed it b/c i had a phone call…

As for the static question, my guess is better education.

10

Much ado about nothing.

11

The accent that they touched on the least is the “North” accent, of which I assume Chicago is one, since according to them it stretches from Minnesota to upstate NY (and while there certainly are a lot of similarities between the speech of a Buffalonian, Chicagoan, and Minneapolis resident relative to the rest of the country, whichi I actually noticed before the program, I’d hardly say Minnesotans speak the same accent as upstaters!)

They touched more on New England, Upland and Deep South, Midland, and Californian accents.

The map they showed didn’t even, IIRC, show a distinctive “Mountain District” accent, which I truly do not recall if that’s correct or not since I only saw a glance of it for a few seconds, but they definitely didn’t touch on it.

Which is a shame because I’ve always wondered if the Mountain Time Zone accent, which definitely sounds a lot like western Native American accents, was influenced by Native American accents, or the other way around, or maybe one or the other doesnt exist and everyone I assume is talking with a western NA accent or Mountain accent is really talking with the other. If you follow me.

W/r/t the OP, I’m a descriptivist, with the one exception that terms need to be meaningful. I do indeed look down on language changes that remove distinctions rather than add them. But most changes do not totally erase the other ways of speaking, merely add to them. If someone is always “pissed” rather than incensed, mad, angry, furious, etc., that shows their lack of breadth of vocabulary rather than being particularly denigrating to the new term.

The odd exception, such as the terms “gay” and “homophobe”, which added confusion rather than clarity to English, exist.

12

It’s interesting to me how many people frequently upper-case “Black” but lower-case “white.”

13

Better not include Shakespeare in that education. Shakespeare invented hundreds of new words. He might set a bad example.

14

This seems more like an IMHO topic; maybe not, but this is an IMHO post.

I remember reading a couple of articles to the effect that English was much more anarchic before Johnson’s dictionary and 19th century grammarians got hold of it. Wish I had cites. They bemoaned the fact that English had been so straitjacketed. I think the show demonstrated that the straitjacket is made out of spandex. I can’t help but think that’s a comforting thing.

One of the things that interested me most in the program were that black English and White English were closer in the past than they are now. The other was the class where black children were translating between their English and standard English. I was just astounded that the separation between blacks and whites is so great that a class is needed. I must live in a bubble.

15

Hmmm, tryin’ t’ make a sucker outta me, huh?

16

Nah, I use the Shift key rAndomly.

17

No, it wasn’t. The host mentioned he had done that show and talked a bit about what he’d discovered while making it. He said he wanted to see how the language had changed since then. This one was sort of an “update.”

18

Also, the story of English was not confined to America. I covered a lot of places, like England. :slight_smile:

19

I was dissapointed that that didn’t recognize an “Appalachian” accent, either. The area in which I live is grouped under the Midland accent group. However, anyone who spends five minutes in this area would tell you that we sound a hell of a lot different than folks in Indiana or Missouri-- a lot different. Actually, we’re a lot closer to the accents one would hear in South Carolina than to the Midwest.

20

I think poor grammar comes with the territory of any language, along with poor spelling. It just hasn’t been as noticable in the past because people have never written so much so informally.

What concerns me more is l337 sp34k, or abbreviation of everything in general, like, “thx m8”… and this is not confined to teenagers IMing each other. My mother sent me an e-mail with “l8r” in the subject line, and she is a very literate business person.

Text messaging isn’t helping the case, either.