Language change Archives

Dictionary of Modern Slang

May 28, 2010 by Roy Johnson

street-speak, vulgar language, swearing and obscenities

As the editors say in their introduction to this latest edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang, ‘A year, to paraphrase Harold Wilson, is a long time in slang’. In fact the principal difficulty in compiling lexical resources of this type is what to leave out – because a great deal of slang is very evanescent. Oxford University Press have the advantage of compiling their dictionaries from the huge ‘Corpus’ of recorded language use which makes up the data base from which their publications are compiled. This is a collection of examples of how the English language is actually being used, drawn from the printed word – from literary novels and specialist journals to everyday newspapers and magazines, and from Hansard to the language of chatrooms, emails, and weblogs. The database contains over two billion words, and expands at the rate of 350 million words a year.

So this assembly of what’s current has a better chance than most of being directly relevant – though you should remember that in order to qualify for inclusion in a dictionary, words have to be written down, not simply spoken. OUP also stipulate that they have to remain there for some time before they are considered for inclusion in dictionaries

The entries of this compilation run from abso-bloody-lutely and Acapulco gold via manky and meeja to wuss, yuckie, and zonker. As you can perhaps detect from this random selection, it’s rather polite in tone. There’s little of the ribaldry of Roger’s Profanisaurus or the scholarly rigour of Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English

There are lots of very dated references such as Ally-Pally (BBC) and Andrew (the navy) which I seriously doubt are in general circulation now – except with people over retirement age. But I was glad to see that it includes rhyming slang, as well as street language from other English-speaking cultures such as America and Australia, so the book could be useful if you’re thinking of emigrating.

There are also some linguistic curios in the form of words for which the etymology is simply not known – such as eighty-six (to refuse to serve someone in a restaurant) and others which just seem genuinely unusual and very entertaining – such as copacetic (outstanding) and gamahuche (cunnilingus or fellatio).

There is a certain respect given to lewd slang. The editors don’t balk at including carpet-muncher and mantee, but these entries are noticeably brief, and ladies in sensible shoes doesn’t get listed. They offer bristols and boobs, but not headlamps or hooters. I also looked in vain for the expressive rack, the amusingly faux-naive front-bottom, and the very well known Ugandan discussions. Entries on some less contentious issues are almost embarrassingly passé – such as goggle box (television) and knuckle sandwich (a punch).

There’s also a thematic index – because many of the terms are drawn from the worlds of drugs, sport, youth culture, and television, as well as traditional slang topics such as sex, money, and bodily functions. I always think that compilations of this kind are quire good fun, but all in all, there’s not much here that your maiden aunt could object to.

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John Ayto and John Simpson, Dictionary of Modern Slang, Oxford: Oxford University Press, (second edition) 2010, pp.408, ISBN: 0199232059

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Gallimaufry

July 15, 2009 by Roy Johnson

a hodgepodge of our vanishing vocabulary

Michael Quinion is a word nerd. He’s an expert on obscure terms, word etymologies, and the origins of strange expressions. His last book Port Out, Starboard Home discusses myths and false explanations for the meanings of well known sayings, and he runs an excellent compilation of lexical back-history at World Wide Words. Gallimaufry is his latest collection of notes on ‘disappearing language’ – terms that are vanishing from common usage for a variety of reasons.

Some go because the object they describe no longer exists (liberty-bodice and sixpence) and some are meanings that disappear because the word is now used to describe something quite different (chaperone was in medieval times a sort of cap.) Mercifully, he splits up his offerings into themed chapters – on food and drink, health and medicine, entertainment and leisure, transport and fashion, then family names and communication.

In explaining the meaning of terms such as lamprey-pie, hog’s pudding, and flummery, he takes you into the realms of medieval cooking practices, the relationship of Latin and French to English linguistic development, and the eating habits of kings and commoners as they struggled to add nutrition and flavour to their diet of boiled wheats and gruel.

In no time this leads in its turn to the worlds of medicine, naval history, and eighteenth century nutrition. It’s unlikely that anybody will need to bring many of these terms back into general circulation, but it’s interesting to realise that spalling-poppy, biting assmart, and alexipharmic contain lexical elements which are still alive and well today, even though we have stopped using the herbal remedies to which they refer.

These are not just terms that have disappeared, but also the remote origins of terms which we still use today. For instance, you would never guess that the term slush fund originated in the mass of semi-liquid fat that floated on the top of boiling up unappetising salt pork on board a ship.

This all passes later into a form of social history when Quinion describes the forms of long-forgotten dances such as the cotillion, the quadrille, and the galliard. He then goes on to explain the distinctions between various nineteenth-century vehicles such as the landau, the barouche, the cabriolet, and the handsome.

It’s a gold mine for people who enjoy both arcane knowledge and the strange linguistic depths of the everyday world. For instance, he discusses old forms of measurement (of the rod, perch, and pole variety) and points out that ell, the old way to measure woollen cloth, gets its length (22-23 inches) as well as its name from the fact that this is the approximate distance from the shoulder to the wrist. The Old English term for the arm is ell, which is why in its turn the place where it bends is called the elbow.

Quinion is certainly a scholar. He gives meticulously drawn sources for his definitions and admits doubt or complete ignorance when supporting evidence is not available. He finishes with a selection of terms which are probably on their way out because of technological change: blotting paper, usherette, gramophone, and bus conductor will probably never be required again, even though they are probably still in the active vocabulary of older people today.

OK – you are either interested in old and possibly obscure words or you’re not. This is a cornucopia for those of us who are not ashamed to be counted amongst the lexical anoraks.

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Michael Quinion, Gallimaufry, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp.288, ISBN: 0199551022

Language change – how to understand it

August 30, 2009 by Roy Johnson

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Language change – definition

The term ‘language change’ refers to the evolution of language.

All languages are in a continuous process of evolution [as are all living phenomena].

Examples

Language change occurs in all of the following areas:

Phonology
[pronunciation] /æ/ as in Harry has become more open in RP

Semantics
[meaning] ‘gay’ meant happy, now it [also] means homosexual

Grammar
[structure] word-order has replaced inflection in importance

Use

An awareness and a knowledge of language change is essential for students of language.

It is a significant topic for linguists, who take a descriptive attitude and accept that change is inevitable. [Value judgements are considered inappropriate.]

However, prescriptive attitudes to language change are quite common. These can be observed in ‘letters to the editor’ complaining about [what is seen as] ‘a serious decline in the quality of the English Language’.

Change and evolution affects all living languages, without exception.

The study of language change falls into two categories – diachronic and synchronic.

Diachronic study focuses on change which has taken place over the whole duration of a language’s existence.

Synchronic study focuses on change which is taking place currently.

Diachronic study has to employ a variety of techniques, because for most of the period of study, sound records do not exist.

Some of the techniques used for assessing language change in the past are as follows:

classifying families of languages
study of manuscripts dating back to 500AD in English
study of ancient poems in which the rhyme no longer applies
representation of animal sounds

Synchronic study is technically easier because of the availability of recordings of spoken English.

One example of a current phonological change is the recent rise in intonation at the end of utterances in English. This is particularly prevalent among teenagers.

There are two main speculative explanations offered for this recent change:

unconscious emulation of the language of Australian TV soaps
desire for approbation similar to the tag question – “you know?”

There are two basic attitudes to language change – descriptive and proscriptive.

A descriptive attitude is one which accepts the inevitability of change in language. It concentrates on describing the way in which language is evolving like any other living phenomenon.

For instance, if ‘disinterested’ is being used to mean ‘uninterested’ by a sufficiently large number of speakers, this is charted as a feature of development rather than a cause for outrage.

Language is seen in this descriptive context as a self-perpetuating and highly functional system. This system adopts and discards terms to suit the communication needs of the people using it.

A descriptive approach to language change is one in which the rules of language are seen as patterns which emerge naturally and historically, and particularly the structural patterns which are crucial to the viability of the language in question.

For example, a descriptive rule of English is that of word order. A representative English sentence follows the sequence Subject–Verb–Object.

This particular rule is specially significant for its role in the development and change of the English language. This is because over the centuries word order has taken the place of inflections, and comprehensibility depends on it.

For example, the utterance ‘The dog bit the man’ comprises the same content as ‘The man bit the dog’ but the meaning is totally altered by the reversal of the position of the two nouns ‘man’ and ‘dog’.

A prescriptive attitude to language change is one which supports the desire to impose linguistic rules rather than to observe developing patterns.

Prescriptiveness is shown in attempts to fix or mend the language, which is thought to be in constant danger of erosion or demise. This deterioration is usually perceived as the result of contamination from foreign influx, or from lazy use by some of its native speakers.

Prescriptive rules are those superficial prohibitions which speak more of etiquette and prestige than of linguistic functionality.

An example of such a rule is that which forbids the use of a preposition at the end of a sentence – as in ‘Who did you go with?’

Winston Churchill’s well known utterance ‘Up with this I will not put’ demonstrates the ridiculous result of following such a rule.

This and many other prescriptive rules originally belonged to Latin. They were spuriously imposed on English during the eighteenth century when Latin was thought to be a perfect language and therefore a suitable blueprint for English grammar.

Many of the irregularities of English grammar have their origins in this imposition of Latin. However, linguists take the descriptive view that although this influence was artificial and forced, it was just one of the means by which English has evolved.

The foreign influences creating language change in English occurred chronologically as follows:

Native Celts invaded by Angles, Saxons, and Jutes.
Celts driven out, along with the Celtic language.
Angles, Saxons, and Jutes settle in England (Angle-land).
They use Anglo-Saxon of various dialects.
Scandinavians invade and settle alongside Anglo-Saxons.
Their languages eventually merge.
Norman conquests and French settlement create diglossia.
English and French co-exist for separate functions.

Language changes according to the changing needs of its users. It adapts to fulfil any linguistic function demanded of it. In this respect it can be seen as a highly efficient system.

The essential character of language as a universal human system does not change, but the intrinsic mechanisms within it allow individual languages to respond to the triggers for change.

Some triggers which have resulted in changes in English language:

political – foreign invasion by Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Scandinavians, French in the period AD 500—1400
socialforeign influences from Latin, French, American, Australian, Indian, Afro-Carribean
cultural – exposure of one language group to another via television, radio, and films
geographical – proximity between different language groups, such as Black and Asian immigrants
technological – rapid advances in information technology and genetic engineering
moral – recent developments in anti-racism and environmentalism

Grammar, because it is the structure of a language, is very slow to change compared with vocabulary which can be seen as fairly superficial and ephemeral.

Two significant grammatical changes have occurred during the history of the English language – the loss of inflections, and the transition of verbs and nouns from ‘strong’ to ‘weak’.

The loss of inflections. English, up to and during the Anglo-Saxon period, had word-endings which indicated the function of individual words in any utterance.

Word order has replaced the inflections in English in indicating the function of the components of an utterance.

For example, in the utterance “Faeder ure swa eart in heofenum” [Our Father who art in heaven] the words ‘father’ [subject] ‘our’ [adjective] ‘art’ [verb, present tense] and ‘heaven’ [adverb] all have endings which indicate their grammatical function.

As the modern English version demonstrates, these inflections are no longer in existence. The only remaining inflection in English is the possessive ‘s’ in a phrase such as ‘Jennifer’s Diary’.

The transition from ‘strong’ to ‘weak’. During the Anglo-Saxon period, most English verbs were ‘strong ‘ which means that the word changed radically when expressed in the past tense.

The technical definition of a strong verb is ‘one which changes its stem vowel in the preterite.’

Currently, English has a few remaining strong verbs: ‘ride’ which becomes ‘rode’ in the past; ‘strive’ which becomes ‘strove’; ‘come’ which becomes ‘came’; and ‘lie’ which becomes ‘lay’.

The majority of English verbs are classified as ‘weak’. Weak in this context is a purely grammatical term and it relates to the fact that most verbs can be expressed in the past tense by the addition of a dental ending – the final sound in ‘slept’, ‘jumped’ or ‘mended’.

It seems that eventually all verbs will follow the same trend and that all strong verbs will become weak.

Strong nouns are those which do not become plural by the addition of the sound ‘s’ or ‘es’ in the plural. The plurals of nouns such as ‘mouse’ ‘sheep’ ‘narcissus’ and ‘ox’ are ‘mice’, ‘sheep’, ‘narcissi’, and ‘oxen’. These are all examples of the few remaining strong nouns in English. Speculation has it that these items will eventually follow the trend in which strong becomes weak.

Lexical change. Vocabulary changes much more rapidly than does the grammar of any language.

Grammatical changes have occurred during the course of centuries, whereas a new word phrase or lexical form may enter the language during a matter of only weeks.

This is because of the relatively superficial significance of lexis compared with the radical function of grammar in a language. Grammar is the basic working system or structure, and as such must remain constant for the perpetuation of the language.

Some of the mechanisms for lexical change are as follows:

coinagemaking up new terms, such as ‘wordprocessor’ and ‘skateboard’
ameliorationa word acquires a new positive meaning, as for instance ‘naughty’ used to mean ‘wicked’ but now means ‘mischievous’
pejorationa word acquires a new negative meaning, as for instance ‘wicked’ is now used as a slang term to mean ‘exciting’ whereas it used to mean ‘cruel’
borrowingtaking a word from another language, as for instance ‘restaurant’ [French] ‘patio’ [Spanish] ‘verandah’ [Indian]
eliminationterms being discarded from regular use, as for instance ‘tithing’ [giving a tenth of your earnings to the church]

Language efficiency. Language as a system is very efficient at adapting to new circumstances and incorporating new phenomena.

For instance, information technology has recently developed very rapidly. The English language has generated many terms by which to describe the new phenomena. Terms such as ‘floppy disk’, ‘on-line’, ‘Internet’, and ’email’ did not exist thirty years ago.

In the world of politics, the term ‘doughnutting’ is used to describe the practice of MPs crowding together for the benefit of the TV camera. This is a new term for a new phenomenon.

The term ‘road rage’ is now used to express violence and aggression among drivers. In this case however it is not the phenomenon which is new, but social attitudes towards it. This in itself has been the trigger for linguistic innovation.

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Words Words Words

June 13, 2009 by Roy Johnson

how language arises, changes, is recorded, and used

David Crystal is a world-famous authority on language development, lexicography, linguistics, and anything else which concerns the words human beings use to speak and write. Words Words Words is the latest of his many books – an easy-to-read primer in which he attempts to convey his enthusiasm for all aspects of the subject. His intention is to explore the common fascination with all aspects of language and to answer some of the questions we ask about it. How many words are there in the English language for instance?

He shows why it’s so difficult to answer this question accurately, but settles for ‘over a million’. He also tries to dispel myths. Does the Sun newspaper really use a lexicon of only 500 words? That’s a much easier problem. The answer is no. A sample he took showed the total was nearer to 7,000. He describes how dictionaries are compiled; the origins and history of words; how words are borrowed (stolen in fact) from other languages and rapidly adopted as our own – despite complaints from conservatives; how new words are created by blending (heliport) lengthening (chewing gum) shortening (demo) or simply changing the use of an existing word (gay).

He traces the history of English spelling and explains why it is so complex and irregular. His discussion of accents and pronunciation covers the way the language is spoken, and his argument is that things are changing all the time. It’s no use writing to the Times complaining that the BBC now pronounces controversy with the stress in the middle of the word, because that’s the way it is going.

He’s very good at conveying his enthusiasm for language. He writes warmly and tolerantly on slang, jargon, and even has a good word to say for cliché, and he is more tolerant of children swearing than I am:

In Caernarfon, in North Wales, you hear people calling each other cunt all the time, quite unconcernedly. It just means ‘mate’.

That might be true in Caernarfon, but it would get you a thick ear if you tried it on in Stockport. He finishes with a series of practical suggestions for those people who would like to take the subject further. He recommends dictionaries (buy two); shows you how to find the meaning of names; how to estimate the size of your vocabulary; lists dialect societies to join; and even encourages you to contribute to dictionary building.

All the points he makes are illustrated with examples from both language history and contemporary usage. He throws in lots of amusing anecdotes, and the pages are decorated with side panels showing how to take each topic further. This approach really brings his subject to life and makes the study of language sound very attractive – and certainly within the grasp of the average reader.