The English Language — On Its Way To Hell In a Handbasket?

The English language is taking a twenty-first-century battering — in England.

LIE BACK AND THINK OF ENGLISH?

Lynn Truss, John Humphrys, Gyles Brandreth et many al, all champions of English English, will just have to lie back.

Rearguard actions almost inevitably fail and immediately precede defeat, but they do produce heroes determined to fight to the last, and the Truss Tendency are heroes indeed. In their efforts to preserve the grammatical niceties of written and spoken English, they write and rail, but I suspect that even they realise how nigh the end is for so much of the English they cherish. However much they, and I, hate it, here are some examples of how English is changing and will stay changed.

Glottal stops will be everywhere, in all regional accents and a new symbol for them will emerge as an addition to the alphabet. Perhaps a ~ or even ^. So, “bu~~er”,“ be~~er”, “shu~~er”, “wa~er”, and much else besides. And the poor overworked glottis has more to do; it is now to be heard at the end of words too. As in “wha~”, no~”, and “the ca~ sa~ on the ma~”. At the moment, with politics taking up far too much time, hoi polloi are heard to talk about “the par~i (party).

“Bored of” will replace “bored with”. This is happening already, and I even heard that bad tempered old sod Brian Moore say “bored of” in a Six Nations rugby commentary recently. Nothing is sacred. Not even rugby. Hilariously, I watched/saw as a bimbette in a period drama say “bored of”. Ye Gods.

“Isn’t it?” will become “innit?” even when used outside the inner-city gang-speak milieu.

The “th” sound will be replaced, everywhere, by the “F” sound, and sometimes, by “V”. Fings won’t be what vey use ta be.

“However”, instead of taking its correct position as a conjunction, will be used all over the place, most often to replace “but”. In the middle of sentences. At the end. Its meaning will depend entirely on interpretation.

“I don’t know anything” will become “I don’t know nothing” (the double negative of which is already lost to most of the English-speaking world). Actually, it will be “I dunno nuffin.”

“Yeah” will replace “yes”.

“Nah” will replace “no”.

Words which start with the letter “H” will drop it altogether, and the letter “H” will be called “Haitch”, by everyone.

“Fuck” and all its derivatives will be in accepted usage, much as “bloody” is now. No shock value left at all, but used gratuitously all over the place.

The final “g” as in “effing, doing, going, barking” and so on, will disappear, so that they and thousands of words like them end up as “goin’ barkin’ nuthin’” etc.

The “ow” sound as in pound will be replaced by “ah” as in “pahnd”, “rahnd”, “sahnd”.

“So fun” will be heard and written instead of “so much fun” or “such fun”. There really is no hope. My daughter in law, a very senior teacher, says it.

“Narmean?” will replace “know what I mean?”.

“Narmsain?” will replace “know what I’m saying?”.

“I’m not” will be replaced by “I ain’t”.

“Going to” will become “gonna” , “want to” will be “wanna”, “have to” will become“ hafta”.

“Those” will disappear entirely, as it is now replaced by “them”. As in: “Do you want vem fings pu~ away or left ou~?”.

The normal order of personal pronouns is now reversed, and such piffling things as cases have gone too. Instead of “my brother and I went to the football match”, we now have “me and my brother …etc”.

“Hello” will disappear and its place taken by “hi” or something that sound increasingly like “ha”.

Several words and phrases will take on text spelling. E.g. U R 2 L8 — and I don’t need to transl8 that, do I?

In written English, the splice comma will be in general use and no-one will care. Splice comma? For example: “We wen’ ta France frahr oliday, it rained all effin week. Full stop needed, but comma wrongly used.

The Capital “I” will have given way to lower case “i”, thanks to texting.

“I (he, she, they, we) was like” replaces “I (he, she, they, we) said”.

The subjunctive will have all but disappeared. For example: No more “if I were you”. Instead, “if I was you”. And its reverse form, equally wrong, as in, “They never went to the beach if it were raining.”

I must not overlook “like”. This is a true mystery, as it appears to have arrived out of thin air, but is now used by people of every age and every social class as a redundant and vastly irritating non-word which adds zero to the sentence with which the “like-er” is struggling. “I were like standing at the like corner when a like truck like came and like smashed into the like lamp-post.” Don’t like it? Me neither. Er, sorry. Nor do I.

Then there are certain words and phrases that are constantly in the mangle. Highly educated people, among them presenters of otherwise good TV documentaries and writers of columns in “quality” newspapers and magazines, do not understand the meaning of enormity, which they think conveys size when it actually means something like “horror”.

Virtually no-one can see the difference between “wriggle” and “wiggle”, so they refer to “wiggle-room” when suggesting room to manoeuvre, when “wiggle” is what Marilyn Monroe did in “Some Like it Hot”. One does not wiggle out of commitment or a tight spot. One wriggles.

Instead of a proper English phrase such as “a real challenge”, many people are now referring to “a big ask”. When I first heard this, I thought that the speaker was talking about a big arse, and I found myself wondering … whose, where?

And thanks, possibly, to the invasion of Antipodeans everywhere, the upward inflexion at the end of ordinary statements is now ubiquitous? Which turns everything into a question? They are also responsible for “no worries” and I suspect for causing so many TV and radio presenters to start every damned sentence with “So” or “Well”. They have much to answer for.

But whence cometh this stuff? TV is mostly to blame, because the things that people hear and see on TV are taken as gospel. TV presenters/actors/musicians/reporters/anchors are role models, whether we or they like it or not. As are barely literate and certainly inarticulate footballers. But the problem is multiplied manifold when teachers start to ape their increasingly grammar-averse charges, and are so badly trained that they don’t know much grammar and care even less about it.

So far, I seem to have been attacking the language of hoi polloi, but the upper classes have their own modes of odd speech. All “ow” or “ou” sounds will still be pronounced as “eye”, as “brine, cride, fined” (brown, crowd, found). Words ending in …“y” or “ey” will still be mangled so that the final syllable manages to sound as if it were spelled “…ear”. As in “lovelear, shortlear, clearlear, reallear” (lovely, shortly, clearly, really, in case you haven’t quite got it). Having spent their lives castigating the lower orders for dropping their haitches, they drop the “g” as in “huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’”. But they claim that they were doin’ this yonks before the lower orders started it. So va~s orlri~ ven.

P.S. Even the most apparently erudite refer to “the hoi polloi”, never having been taught that “hoi” in Greek means “the”. “Hoi polloi” literally means “the many” which is hardly derogatory, but has come to mean “the great unwashed”. “The hoi polloi” is almost as bad a something I have seen on menus in the United States, referring to “prime rib of beef with au jus”. But why would Americans know that the French “au” in this context means “with”? The the polloi. With with jus. Excellent.

The tsunami of change to English is unstoppable, and will swamp us all in time. It was ever thus but it is happening a great deal more quickly now, given that English is the world’s language and global linguistic dynamism will trump everything, in the end. Trump as in defeat. Not as in, well, you know. And believe it: the examples I have given in this piece are ice-berg tips. The solecisms and worse being committed in the name of English are legion. Far too many to mention here.

In some ways, the worst thing is that awful English neologisms, increasingly in daily use, still manage to convey with reasonable accuracy the meaning of the communication. Who, barely a few years ago, would have dared to send the equivalent of a telegram saying “Sory m L8 4 Lnch u 2 go a☺c u ltr ♥”. Any doubt about the meaning? None. It might look like Chinese or Hieroglyphs but it is English. Sor~ of.

So, relax Dear Lynne T, John H, Gyles B et al. Yer on a ‘idin’ 2 nuffin’.