The King’s English

One of the reasons, of course, that English is such a marvelous vehicle for communication and has become omnipresent around the world is that it borrows, often and constantly, from other languages. We are not talking about “slang”, which is ephemeral and comes and goes with the style ion mode, often so parochial that it is understood in one small region or a single country.
That means, again obviously, that the language must be flexible. As any dictionary can tell you, most words have several meanings, often tied to earlier eras or a whole physical system that has long since departed. We are thinking of
“hang up the phone!” for example. Why “up”? Because there was a time when all telephones were on the wall and the receiver hung from a hook alongside it and had to be replaced at the end of a call by hanging it …up. As landlines disappear [and after all the name “landline” only came into use relatively recently as mobile ‘phones, not telephones, proliferated], we are likely to be stuck with a number of phrases that no longer have original meanings. We have already seen how mobile phones, superseded by “smart phones”, have blossomed ahead of fixed line telephones in the underdeveloped world. [In Africa, between 1998 and 2008 only 2.4 million landlines were added but the number of mobile phone lines t skyrocketed. between 2000 and 2008, cell phone use rose from less than 2 in 100 people to 33 out of 100.]
Okay, so we are stuck with language that no longer reflects reality. But what has bothered us recently is the growing misuse of language, not only by the ordinary conversationalist but by people in the words business. Recently a commentator on a large National Public Radio station covering eastern Virginia, remarking on the death of a prominent state political figure, sent her “condolences”to him. That’s a good trick if she can do it.
We guess we have long since lost the battle of “such as” against “like” when comparing two subjects; they don’t mean the same thing but “like” seems to have taken over to add to the general confusion. Then there is “reach out to” someone or other. Does that mean they have grabbed the individual by his private parts, to be vulgar, or that he has sent him an internet message or talked to him on the ‘phone, or sent him a signal by sign language. It wouldn’t take more words and would be much more specific to give the means of communication – or in the unlikelihood that secrecy was necessary, why not say so since it is obviously important in the whole logic of the anecdote..
We won’t belabor the point further.
. If you were schooled in the use of the language – as so few students are these days [remember the old practice of parsing, {diagramming} a sentence as a drill?], it is not only annoying but a sign of the growing failure to communicate. And that is one of the many ironies of the current scene for it occurs at a time when the instruments of communication have never been more efficient nor economical to operate. That parallels, of course, another anomaly: at a time when research has never been easier [our hats off to google whatever its shortcomings and insidious plots], we find fewer and fewer people are stopping long enough to check a spelling, a definition of a word, or whether the usage is going to be understood by a wider audience.
Granted that there is something of “the old __ syndrome” in all of this. [A few years back, we wouldn’t have even hinted at this well-known cliché either.] Still, here is a very small voice in a whisper calling for a return to teaching “English” to our children as they mature in the early years of formal education. If not, we are all paying a high price, ecnomically, in efficiency, and in cultural debits.
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