This is so co book! I'll try to chilax from now on.

Natural development (what Stephen Fry describes as London) is perfectly fine, and I'm all for it. "Inclusive" language is anything but inclusive.

Natural development (as in a child) takes place over time, and is anything but frenetic. The wholesale destruction of our language since I was a lad is not natural. I happened upon a video retelling of the 3 Little Pigs, in Shakespearean English, and found it both quite understandable and humorous. The comic observed that our working vocabulary nowadays is so much smaller than it was in the time of Shakespeare (although he needn't have gone so far to find it!) When the language shrinks as ours has, our ability to express beauty (or ugliness), good (or evil), elation (or utter despair) is reduced. That's the language of newspeak. Imagine if Marty Haugen and Philip Glass were the only musical styles available to us!

Off topic- cgz, loved the Stephen Fry reference as he is himself a purveyor of literal precision, wit and focused accuracy as the Wilde character he once portrayed. Check out his series on American States on Netflix.

The English Language is richer now than ever before, and will be richer still tomorrow. The poverty is not one of the language, but of some of its users. And this is probably as it ever was.

Looking backwards at (for example) Shakespeare doesn't let you notice the vast numbers of illiterate people of his time. Yeah, we still have massive illiteracy (and aliteracy), but this only bothers (some of) us because our ideal has actually risen so substantially.

Or, to put it another way:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves:
that we are overachievers.

Also-
I seriously have to laugh at Wossey complaining about language:
"It's wong! Vewy wong!"

There are more words in the dictionary, perhaps, but that's partly because dictionary writers changed their understanding of their duty.

I think you have a very strange understanding of what those in engaged in the lexicographical arts are up to.

Please see:
http://www.ted.com/talks/erin_mckean_redefines_the_dictionary.html

The very fact that Bible translators feel the need to dumb-down the Biblical text surely should be evidence that our culture and our language are poorer now than they once were.

I also think you have a strange idea of what Bible translators are up to, and what it means to "dumb down" something.

But that aside-

My point is that people can STILL understand Shakespeare. People STILL have access to King James and Coverdale. Hell, they still have access to the Clementine Vulgate if they want it.

And thanks to a multitude of translations, I can now get better access to an understanding of the Bible's original meaning than any non-Greek scholar ever could before now. Is the NRSV or The Message better English than the KJV or DR? Certainly not. But the combined effect of dozens of translations is that I can get a better sense of it all (instead of being limited by the theological predilections of the Church of England during a very strange time).

How ever could more be poorer?

You could say that modern hymnals are poorer than before, because leave out a lot of stuff. But you couldn't say "Hymnody" is poor today- because we have all those treasures available PLUS whatever new, good, or interesting things have come up recently.

Too, with English: I may, peradventure, propose a mutually beneficent period of personal rest. Or I can ask you to chillax a little.

At any rate, I find complaining about the way other people express themselves, or generally bemoaning the current state of linguistic affairs (particularly in comparison to some imagined former time when things were better) to be, at best, fussbudgetly. I also find it to usually be wildly misinformed.

Quote:

Natural development = stuff I like, or stuff that happened in the past

Artificial change and destruction = stuff I don't like and/or which happened in my life time

Isn't it funny how you see vast changes in the English language between Chaucer (Middle English) and Shakespeare (Early Modern English) and say, "That is language change," and then when you see changes in the language between Shakespeare and today you are supposed to say "And this is language decay."

Quote:

The very fact that Bible translators feel the need to dumb-down the Biblical text surely should be evidence that our culture and our language are poorer now than they once were.

Not really. The argument would be that modern translations are more authentic to the style of the original. With rare exceptions, the Bible is written in a straightforward, unadorned style -- to put it simply, un-"literary," in the sense that Cicero, Jane Austen, or William Jennings Bryan are literary -- and that ought to be reflected in the style of the translation. To the people who wrote it (and for whom it was written), the Bible did not highly formalized and centuries out of date.

To give a similar example, here are two versions of the opening lines of Beowulf. First, A. Diedrich Wackerbarth, 1849:

Lo! We have learn'd in lofty Lays
The Gár-Danes' Deeds in antient Days
     And Ages past away,
The Glories of the Theod-Kings
And how the valiant Æthelings
     Bare them in Battle's Day.

Second, Seamus Heaney, 2000:

So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by
and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness.
We have heard of those princes' heroic campaigns.

Is this a "dumbed-down" version evincing a decay of the English language? Heaney's version, it should almost go without say, is far more authentic to the experience of reading or hearing the Anglo-Saxon original.

Ah, if you had stopped at the penultimate paragraph and heeded your own chillaxicational advice, things would have been ever so much better. But it seems that you had to get in a final parry and thrust.

It's a sickness.

But I do trust that cgz can adequately handle it. I only attack people I respect.
(I should get a button made that says, "If I didn't like you, I wouldn't bother arguing.")

Natural development = stuff I like, or stuff that happened in the past

Artificial change and destruction = stuff I don't like and/or which happened in my life time

As I recall way back when Fr. Chepponis was asking for advice in transliterating Latin pronunciation, I came to grips with all the great vowel merges happening in American English right now. I'm from Philadelphia, where it seems we have different, distinguishing vowels for everything. In a world of increasing homonyms, I still say "Mary," "marry," and "merry," each with very distinct vowels.

I personally think this is good because one can be more clear about what one means, but I'm not naive enough to say that what's happening is the decay of English pronunciation! That would be absurd. Many European countries try to guard their languages artificially. By all means give the young a good education, but trying to control the colloquialism and development of a language is a complete waste of time. It's like trying to control the tides of the ocean.

such as the rule of agreement for pronouns like "everyone" - that rule was a latecomer and it's following a LIFO (last in, first out) pattern for attrition of usage rules.

and it never went away in normal conversation

Off topic:

If you've never seen the three part Human Language Series (1986), it is worth watching. I found Part I online.

wow... i didn't mean to take my finger out of the dike.

Anyone who doesn't think language has changed, and not for the better, hasn't taught any middle schoolers lately. I had to insist that no text-speech would be allowed on class assignments, and that all the rules I learned from my heavy-set English teacher with a bun, would be observed, or grades would suffer. That teacher, now enjoying her great reward, knew what she was doing.

And altar/alter.

Get some bifocals. You will type words you never knew existed. ;-)

But seriously, folks, because language changes, it is wise to keep recent changes in language use out of the liturgy.

Another good reason the Church uses Latin as her language.

@CharlesW

I had to insist . . . that all the rules . . . would be observed . . . .

You mean, insist that all the rules be observed. I take it proper use of the subjunctive was not one of those rules that was handed down to you. ;-)

Language decay! Language decay!

Seriously though, the near-complete disappearance of the English subjunctive, even in educated and formal writing, over the past 150 years or so is a perfect example of language change at work. Does it make language poorer? Likewise, we have lost the grammatical function of here/hither/hence and where/whither/whence, but I don't think most of us feel impoverished when we ask "Where did he come from?" instead of "Whence came he?"

"Language is living and ever-changing"

Expand on that and OCP might put it in "Breaking Bread" next year.

Language living, ever changing,
Over God's wide earth is ranging.
    As with spelling, so with grammar,
Changes to our way of thinking,
Meanings new cast old ones sinking,
    Lost to but a few who clamour,
"Why? O Lord, are we decrying:
Lain there laid, their lay? They're lying."

I agree, Adam. But bringing the two closer together is every teacher's hope.

Phew.

Language living, ever changing,
Over God's wide earth is ranging.
As with spelling, so with grammar,
Changes to our way of thinking,
Meanings new cast old ones sinking,
Lost to but a few who clamour,
"Why? O Lord, are we decrying:
Lain there laid, their lay? They're lying."

...but you can sing it to The Water Is Wide (Dare I add the O Salutaris Hostia tune?).

Today, one reformer, London investment banker Jaber George Jabbour, is trying to straighten out the chaos of our spelling.

That's been done. Generally attributed to Mark Twain -- who served on the Carnegie-funded, blue-ribbon Simplified Spelling Board -- is this Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling:

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.

Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

I can't say I agree with the use of 'x' for 'th'; better would be to reintroduce the eth (ð) and thorn (þ) for voiced and voiceless 'th', respectively.

There iamb not,
here am i not?
But some do seem, it seems to me,
are slightly touchy with trochee.

I was hearing about simplifying spelling 40 or more years ago

It's been around rather longer than that...in the US some of Noah Webster's changes stuck but others didn't and the Simplified Spelling Board had brief success in the early years of last century

Language living, ever changing-
What 'the hell' is that you're saying?
Sing a NuChurch into being?
Peace'n justice is believing?
Can't you just use plain ole' Latin,
Chant the old church; use the patten?
Why the need to wave your puppets,
Change the words and act like muppets?

"Get behind me" said the Saviour
When his "good friends" tried to change her-
"Let's remake the bride's adorning
Which The Christ is now forlorning
Wrought with death and sad depiction;
Sacrifice and crucifixion-
We can make it fun and happy;
We can dance and make it snappy.

No more talk of eating manflesh
That is just so canniblish;
Why the talk of sin and blight
Hoping we will see the light?
We just want to "Gather In"
Light some candles, greet the kin;
Sing some songs'n hug'n chat;
What can be the harm in that?