feature A crazy language!!
The English language has an extremely diverse history, and its development into a full-fledged tongue has been influenced by many other languages, Celtic, German, French, Spanish, Latin, Indian and Arabic to name but a few. Its ability to adapt, means that it is a language that is constantly changing and growing. Approximately 1000 new entries are added to the Oxford Dictionary Online every year. It is also growing in popularity, as defined by the number of people who speak it. As the official language, English is spoken in 88 countries worldwide, with over 400 million people using English as their first language. Yet they are outnumbered by three-to-one by those for whom it has become their first or second language – and that number is growing. There are estimated to be over 700 million students learning English as a foreign language. These numbers combined, mean there are over 2200 million people speaking English, representing nearly a third of the entire world’s population. Business and trade throughout the world is often conducted in English and in the science world nearly all scientific publications, papers and submissions are in English. With the advent of outsourcing, such as banking, telephone operations and computer services, many companies are now based in India, the Philippines and South America where employees must speak fluent English. Television and films are amongst the biggest influences in English language learning. Often shown with subtitles, they have become one of the biggest educational aids in the modern world. English is a rich and colourful language and is without doubt one of the most expressive languages, yet to some, it is an odd, if not difficult language to comprehend – and it’s not surprising! There are over 2 billion* recorded words and with a vast variety of accents and dialects all offering their own unique words, there are likely to be countless words in use which will never be recorded. However, the average person is likely to know only about 50,000 in their vocabulary. Most native-English speaking countries have their own assortment of accents and dialects. In Britain there are over 60. There are the well known, such as Cockney from London, Brummie from the Midlands and Scouse/Geordie from the North East. Yet in the North East (from Yorkshire, to Cumbria) there are over 15 known different accents. In East Anglia there are the very distinct Norfolk, Suffolk and Fenland accents. Locally we even have the Cambridge accent. This is not the old Cambridge Academic accent, but a mix of Essex (London) and Cambridge, known to some as the ‘posh Essex’. In Scotland there are around 7 known accents and in Wales there are three. In North America including Canada, Central and South America there are at least 80 different accents/dialects. In Asia and Australia there are around fifty. With such a diversity of the accents, dialects and mix
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of words it is easy to see why English is one of the most descriptive languages. In Britain, you would leave your ‘flat’ and put your picnic in the ‘boot’ of your car, whereas in the US, you would leave your ‘apartment’ and put the picnic in the ‘trunk’! In many countries the dialect often includes words from other languages. In Singapore for example ‘Singlish’ is a combination of English, Chinese and Malay. In India there are 11 different accents/dialects including Malay-alee English and it is from India(n) that many words have come to enrich the English language. Every day words such as jungle, tank, bungalow and verandah and Anglo-Indian words such as, tiffin, hill station and gymkhana, all found their way into the English language from the days of the British Empire. As a native-speaker, statements such as ‘the bandage was wound around the wound’ or ’the farm was used to produce produce’, are unlikely to cause us too many problems, but it must be very confusing for those first starting to learn the language. Other examples include: We must polish the polish furniture; The soldier decided to desert in the desert and left his dessert behind; Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present, the present, When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes; I did not object to the object; The insurance was invalid for the invalid; There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row; They were too close to the door to close it; A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line; How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend? And how do we explain why the combination ‘ough’ can be pronounced in nine different ways. For example: ‘A roughcoated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed.’ It must be rather rough to be addressed as Reverend Ough. Or do you politely cough and say, ‘No, I pronounce it Ough’? Yet if you lived in Slough you’d be known as Reverend Ough. While the priest by Irish lough is addressed as Father Ough. But I rather think it, though, that you’re simply known as Ough. Still, I think I’ve said enough Mr. Oh, Ow, Ock or Uff. The two-letter word UP possibly has more meanings than any other two-letter word. It’s easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP or we are asked to speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why continued on page 30
