Friday February 22, 2008
As honest as a thief
By LYNNE McGREADY
MANY people have written about the purity of the English language. As well, many debates have been had about the different “Englishes” around the world, but when was the last time you stopped to ask yourself, “How did English become what it is today?”
How many of us can identify English words that have been imported from elsewhere? For example, either during invasions of England by the Romans, the Vikings from Norway, the Normans from Northern France or even the Germans; or when the English “discovered” other countries such as Australia, America, India, etc. (Note: We use discover here as the English polite form for invaded and conquered. Ha!)
“The problem with defending the purity of the English Language is that English is about as honest as a thief. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.” – James D. Nicoll, 1990.
When I read this the first time (and I confess to having made a minor change to it to avoid offending the more sensitive reader), it was almost like a light bulb had exploded in my head. Not because I was oblivious to the history of the English language but because I had taken the ongoing theft of words (or shall we be kind and say “borrowed” words) for granted! I used many of them regularly – paying little mind to the origins of the enormous amount of borrowed words from other languages.
So, I then started to search for borrowed words. I introduced some of these words to my students and I watched them suddenly become more interested in learning vocabulary, particularly when these “borrowed” words came from their own mother tongues.
There are websites that you can access if you would like to learn more about the history of the English language and sites that list borrowed words from the various languages spoken across the world.
One site I enjoy is www.fun trivia.com because it has loads of quizzes on borrowed words from such languages as Arabic, Latin, French, Japanese, etc.
While I accept that borrowed Latin words may be of little interest to our students, how about finding words that originated in Asia and how they are used in English?
Which of the following words in the table above came from Mandarin, Cantonese, Tamil, Hindi or Malay?
Some may be obvious, but some, I’m sure, will surprise.
In the end, though, it’s really about accepting that language – particularly English – evolves. It doesn’t take a wild stretch to believe this.
Note that some American audiences needed subtitles for the first Harry Potter movie, since they couldn’t understand the British speaking. Standing between an Australian, Scotsman, American and Londoner would give you a full scope of how only a few hundred years have seen such a variation in the English language (and likely give you a migraine as well.) If only a few hundred years have allowed this, imagine how English evolved.
With that said, I think it’s truly fair to say we now have one more word which can be pluralised – English, since our world is now filled with different Englishes!
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