Damn you, Jane Austen.

Honor · Post by **Honor** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 5:24 pm

*sigh*

I've just taken a much needed respite from my work in order to enjoy, yet again, the A&E version of Pride & Prejudice... And doing so always leaves in me such a profound state of longing that I can scarcely contain it.

There are, of course, the minor and expected desires... Of course I should very much wish that I were exsisting in such a time and place as to enjoy a properly stratified society as is idealized and represented in the English country gentry of Ms. Austen's works. Of course I should very much wish to have the run of such lovely and stately homes and estates as those in which her stories take place. Of course, living as I do in a great desert, I should very much like to find myself once again in such a perfect garden of the world as is the English countryside. And of course the deeply resonant romance and emotion of her work has an almost tidal pull upon my spirit...

But the one thing that I pine for perhaps more than any other will surprise no one who knows me... Dear god, the language.

It must be something between amusing and disturbing to observe me watching a well and faithfully represented Austen film or reading one of her stories. The outright ecstasy I experience to see such a rich and beautiful language used properly... Deftly and effortlessly managed with care and grace, as might a virtuoso employ a fine violin, or a fencer an exquisite and perfectly balanced sword.

When this lofty ideal, this all but lost art is held in comparison to the heavy-handed and careless way so many people wield language today, like a palsied oaf wildly flailing about in starts and fits with a clumsy and misshapen club, it causes me to lament the fall of a very significant and substantial part of what makes us civilized and refined.

It moves me simultaneously to both anger and despair to see such an insurpassable, if sadly ephemeral, quality of mankind alternately hacked to dying bits by laziness, ignorance, and stupidity, and then left to die of neglect by those who cannot ken even how great a thing they are losing.

It's fallen so low that even the complaint of it is too prone to be misunderstood... I do not speak here of such trifling matters as spelling and grammar, individually important as they may be. No, it is the richness, diversity, and colour of the lexicon as a whole, and the respectful but lovingly enthusiastic useage of it's abundance that I mourn.

Of what small consolation is the inacheivably perfect placement of vowels, consonants, and punctuation marks when the pallette itself has been reduced and tainted in turn by such great measure...? Of what joy is a perfectly painted picture, when all must be painted only in a few bland and distemperous shades of the most meek brown?

How can we count ourselves as being in any way engaged in the advancement and exhaltation of that which should be most dearly cherished in our spirit and nature when the one best vehichle we have for making contact between what is truely noble and significant in human beings - our minds and our hearts - is slowly and relentlessly pruned rather than nurtured, amputated and cauterized rather then exercised and expanded, willfully infected with consumption and blight, through careless misuse, slothful contraction, and an inexscusable unwillingness to expend any effort toward enlarging, or even maintaining the status quo?

And how can we cling to any hope of extending the reach of those rare and noble qualities throughout the ages, when we mortgage for such a pittance any capability to even keep them alive...?

Use language, my friends. Employ it fully and artfully and in good measure. Only you can save the grace of language, and you cannot do so by force... Not by use of guilt or shame or coercion or cajoling.

The only way you can ever engender in another a love for expressive and beautiful language is by causing some other person to think "She said that so beautifully."

Putaro · Post by **Putaro** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 6:03 pm

u r so right!

Sorry, couldn't resist - I have a bad case of irony. You waxed eloquant in praise of our shared tongue and it was marvelous. English has the largest lexicon of any language and it is brutally truncated in common usage. We have the option of indicating subtle shades of meaning and nuance by using our language perspicaciously but instead we fall back on smiley faces and slang.

We dash off our correspondence with no regard for anything except haste. Linger to savor the texture of what you're writing! But, I must make haste; it is time for the baby's swimming lesson.

Tellner · Post by **Tellner** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 7:39 pm

I enjoy or suffer in similar measure when reading the simple but finely-crafted prose of the Enlightenment, whether from the pen of Voltaire or that of Thomas Jefferson. What is the profit in easy communication if the arts of conversation and writing have been lost?

JohnnyTwoEyes · Post by **JohnnyTwoEyes** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 7:57 pm

Wow, that's hot.
...
Poorly stated, I know, but there is something infinitely comforting to know that there are others who mourn the slow and painful death of the English language. It's delightfully sanguine.

If I wasn't in the middle of reading something else I'd dig out my battered copy of Pride and Prejudice.

Swordsman3003 · Post by **Swordsman3003** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 8:26 pm

Sadly, being one who has never experienced his native language in it's proper context, I cannot say whether I truly mourn it's absence in the present day. To me, it is as fictional as my interpretation of the Grecian times; a concept that exists as an interpretation within my imagination.

HireTheCatches · Post by **HireTheCatches** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 8:42 pm

Oh, such a finely crafted soliloquy, with the tumbling and uncorseted language of old! What I would give for these turns of phrase, so delicately and gently constructed, to be penned in today's language.

Then again, my teachers hate when I write like that––they seem to think that metaphors and cloudy allusions are obstructions to arguments instead of supporters. And my friends seem to embody a loathing of all Shakespearean work, if I judge their complaints of "unreadability" correctly.

tellner wrote: the pen of Voltaire

Mais ça c'est le français, monsieur, bien sûr. It's not only our language that's going down the drain, it's all of them: when you compare today's French to, say, Guy de Maupassant's, it's excruciating to look at. All the beautiful phrases and gentle evocativeness of his work is completely ignored for the sake of a quick and easy dash off.

I think it's a global problem, really, stemming from the current obsession with efficiency and time saving. The more we move, the less time we have to stop and smell the roses, much less write a good essay about them. Quick and ugly is now far more praised than long and lovely, because that's what's going to make the most profit at the marketplace.

Squidflakes · Post by **Squidflakes** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 6:44 am

All language evolves, until there are none around to use it on a daily basis. Even Latin, when used in classrooms and legal diction has evolved from the addition of terms to cover things not seen in the Roman empire.

Honor · Post by **Honor** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 10:31 am

squidflakes wrote:All language evolves, until there are none around to use it on a daily basis. Even Latin, when used in classrooms and legal diction has evolved from the addition of terms to cover things not seen in the Roman empire.

I hesitate to re-broach the conversation about the distinction between evolution and de-evolution. The addition of terms to cover things not seen is (obviously, I feel) not the problem I'm talking about here.

I'm talking about the removal of words and layers of depth of meaning... Through laziness, because "discrimination based on the criteria of race" is just soooo cumbersom and laborious, so we'll just say "discrimination" instead. That's fine for the first year or two, because everyone knows what you mean by context... But as you introduce new people to the idea, they don't have that advantage of functional knowledge from wich to slothfully digress... So, to them, "discrimination" itself becomes the bad word, and the vast majority of the word's meaning and utility is carelessly pruned away. A word that describes a very beneficial and valuable trait becomes a bogyman because the adults never gave the children the benefit of an understanding of the full meaning of the concept. Ask ten people today... "Is discrimination good or bad?"

I'm talking about the removal of words and layers of depth of meaning... Through sloppiness, because nuance and subtlty is harrrd, and makes the poor stupid people's brains hurt. Big and large and gigantic and massive and huge and gargantuan and colossal and stupendous and expansive and vast and endless all mean the same thing now, because we're training each other to be too bovine to even imagine depth of meaning... Let alone actually expend effort to look for it. That's not the addition of new words. That's not evolution. That's just ten words less than the language had some several years ago. Show someone a five inch square block of lead and ask them if it's massive. How can a super-store be gigantic...? It's proportioned for normal human beings, not giants... It's not gigantic, or gargantuan. it might be stupendous, if you've never seen one before, but mostly it's just it's vast or immense.

Waiters not knowing the difference between substitue with or substitue for is not evolution. Not being able to divine the painfully obvious linguistic distinction between "for all intents and purposes" and "for all intensive purposes" is not evolution. Limiting the conceptual vocabulary to the smallest operable size by homogenizing rafts of similar words and concepts as "synonyms" is not evolution.

Kingofthemorlocks · Post by **Kingofthemorlocks** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 11:04 am

Honor...I wanna have your babies.

Nithos · Post by **Nithos** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 2:53 pm

You can have them; I want to concieve them.

Orwell has a great essay on the subject of language and its degredation, I'm assuming you've read it, if not, you must. Hell, 1984 is almost as much about newspeak as it is big brother.

Situation double-plus ungood.

Ctholhic · Post by **Ctholhic** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 3:59 pm

'Flowery' conversation was the sacrifice for increased social mobility, international communication and cheap immigrant labour. These required or contributed to the reduction of the common set of language to a smaller portion.

Cheap immigrant labour does not necessarily have the wide variety of language that is possessed by some upper echelons of society, social mobility introduces the idioms of the lower classes to the upper classes ("new money" families risen from Middle class) and international communication requires a set of the langauge everyone understands.

Speedful social move and longful talk knifed oldspeak. Situation ifful.

JohnnyTwoEyes · Post by **JohnnyTwoEyes** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 4:19 pm

If you really want to see degradation of language, read The DaVinci Code. This is the only time where you will ever hear me recommend something by Dan Brown, but he commits atrocities of the word. It is language holocaust.

I've never made it past the first few pages. It warps the mind; you have whispers in ears from fifteen feet and people in silhouette who have features easily seen. People become so accustomed to their language being defaced that they cease to see the errors of it.

Honor says it well when describing the decline of meaning in the word discrimination. Rarely now will you hear somebody speak proudly of having a discriminating taste. It's very saddening. It's getting to the point where being well spoken is seen as being pretentious or putting on a pedantic act.

To put it personally, I was once assulted for using the word "niggardly."

Queenhank · Post by **Queenhank** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 5:07 pm

While I tend to agree on most everything said here, "niggardly" is a word which just should not be used anymore. I mean, come on, people. Sure, it has a different meaning and origin altogether from "nigger", but the two sound so much alike, that even those who KNOW the meaning and origin cringe to hear it. "Nigger" is, at this point, a word that a lot of ill feelings are associated with, and that isn't going to change because you know that's not really what they said. It's why we say "snicker" and not "snigger" in the US.

JohnnyTwoEyes · Post by **JohnnyTwoEyes** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 5:23 pm

I don't see why vocabulary should be limited just because one word sounds like another. As you said, they do have entirely different meanings and origins. Ignorance is no excuse. If we started limiting ourselves because some words sound too much like others, then soon we will have such a simple vocabularity that expression will become frail.

RavenxDrake · Post by **RavenxDrake** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 5:51 pm

All of my views have largely been mentioned by most of the members so far, so rather than re-assert them, I'll instead touch on something else:

Good Writers versus Good Authors.

I love to read works by Good writers, and I enjoy them on a whole other level than works by good authors. I read them simply for the pleasure of reading them, I enjoy reading them time and again, long past the point of memorization.

A good author's story is good for one time through, maybe twice if it's a really good story, but good writers can be enjoyed with no hesitation anytime you want... And being a good author does not make you a good writer, nor vice versa. One of my favourite writers is Robert Heinlein. Amazing writer, I love to read his work, and a decent author to boot. Same with Harlan Elison. Oh, the man's an ass and I can easily say if I were to ever spend any time with him, we'd hate each other's guts, but he's a superb writer(by my critera, anyway).

HireTheCatches wrote:And my friends seem to embody a loathing of all Shakespearean work, if I judge their complaints of "unreadability" correctly.

Dear god, don't get me started on "Ye Olde 'Slick Willie'". He was a popular playwright. Horrid author, but a passible writer, his proliferation is the main thing that saved him from obscurity.

JohnnyTwoEyes · Post by **JohnnyTwoEyes** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 6:04 pm

RavenxDrake wrote: Dear god, don't get me started on "Ye Olde 'Slick Willie'". He was a popular playwright. Horrid author, but a passible writer, his proliferation is the main thing that saved him from obscurity.

I disagree, but you're entitled to your opinion. I enjoy both his style and his stories.

I do share your sentiments on Heinlein, however. He's a credit to his species.

Putaro · Post by **Putaro** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 6:37 pm

Well, that's where we've gone. The tyranny of the stupid. The exhaltation of the common man. Because an uneducated person can't distinguish between two unrelated words and one is offensive you can't use either. Because an uneducated person might not understand a word you can't use it. If something is commonly enjoyed it is good.

Culture used to be something that people would aspire to. Beauty required sophistication and grace. Now, being shiny seems to suffice.

Sophistication in language does not need to be flowery although it is easy to caricature it that way. Churchill, for example, was a master of the English language and showed it through the well turned, resonant phrase. While simple in form, it was sophisticated in its usage and powerful in its effect. Let me leave you with a prime example:

"I say to the House as I said to ministers who have joined this government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat."

Tellner · Post by **Tellner** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 7:27 pm

About ten years ago I listened to the BBC World Service late at night when the skip was just right. Two pieces about the English language particularly caught my attention.

The first decried the loss of British control over the language. Britons are a tiny minority of English speakers. By some measures a plurality lives on the subcontinent. American media reach everywhere. English is the auxiliary language of commerce. The commentator did not go so far as to suggest a French-style Academie to regain dominance over the tongue.

The second moaned and wailed over the terrible state of British English. What did the BBC decry? Was it coarsening of the language or its simplification? No. It was its democratization. The worst thing about broadcasting and increased mobility was the loss of those distinctions that allowed one to classify others as to ethnicity, class and wealth within the first sentence. Britons would be forced to, whisper it, please, treat people according to what they said and did rather than their inherent social position.

I looked a little into English accents and dialects. This is more than a decade ago, but I still remember a bit of the reading. English used to be much more diverse. A hundred years ago a Yorkshireman, a London thief and a New Yorker - besides being the beginning of a good ethnic joke - would have trouble understanding each other at all. Hs dropped or added, the choice and variety of words and the amount of Latin seasoning added to the mixture were a carefully maintained set of caste markers. It isn't for nothing that essays and novels of the period mocked those of humble origin who "aped the manners of their betters". The lesser physical mobility of earlier ages guaranteed further divergence. The railway, the automobile and the invention of radio began to break down those distinctions.

It is important to note that what we see on the literature shelves is a tiny and eccentrically selected remnant of what saw print. I've seen a few penny dreadfuls, romances and travelogues. The quality of the prose was no better than today, perhaps even worse. What has survived in the halls of academia has become the standard for proper use of language. Many times this justified. Many times it is not. We speak glowingly about the rich and abundant use of language in Tom Jones or Dickens' novels. Much of this was an artifact of the publishers' custom of paying by the word.

What other factors have contributed to the evolution of language or its putative degeneration? Rhetoric, poetry, correspondence and, America and delay come to mind.

In times past written communication was slow. A letter took significant time to get from one place to another. One could not telephone for clarification, so the author had to make his message clear and convincing the first time. Rhetoric was a highly developed art or even science. Along with grammar (or grammarie

?) and logic it made up the trivium upon which all serious education was based. Poetry was a significant part of culture both high and low into the nineteenth century. It is difficult to overestimate the effect of the loss of poetry from everyday consciousness.

And then there is America. There are certainly upper- and lower-class accents, vocabularies and modes of usage. But the American conceit that we a society without classes had an influence. So did our deep seated anti-intellectualism.

Gengar003 · Post by **Gengar003** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 8:26 pm

tellner wrote:And then there is America. There are certainly upper- and lower-class accents, vocabularies and modes of usage. But the American conceit that we a society without classes had an influence. So did our deep seated anti-intellectualism.

That is an excellent, intriguing lead-in to a point, or sounds like it... but where's the point?

Your post... it must be made complete. Please?

Nithos · Post by **Nithos** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 8:26 pm

Churchill wrote:"I say to the House as I said to ministers who have joined this government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat."

Now that's beautiful rhetoric. Flowery language more often than not is simply a lot of wasted words. Imagine the famous painting of The Last Supper done like a "Where's Waldo?" book, only with Jesus and six hundred others in the frame. It might still be a beautiful piece, but a lot stands to be lost by filling your artwork, visual, literary, or otherwise, with clutter. This isn't to say verbose writing can't be good writing, or that they're even related at all. I'm just emphasising the fact that long, complex sentances and abundant metaphores are an entirely different issue than quality of language.