I just finished reading a couple of books on the English
language: Alphabetical: How Every Letter
Tells a Story, by Michael Rosen, and The
Story of English in 100 Words, by David Crystal.
And I know I don’t have to tell you why I’d be reading a
couple of books on language, do I?
The latter picks out words that have appeared in our
language over time and discusses various aspects of each one. It starts with “roe”
in the 5th Century, which is related to an archaeological find of
the ankle bone of a roe deer with some runic letters carved into it. Transformed
into Latin letters, they spelled RAIHAN, which linguists concluded was most
likely to refer to the animal on whose bone the letters were etched.
The entry on “Doublespeak” (originating in George Orwell’s
novel 1984) was interesting to me not
so much because of its beginnings. It’s pretty much standard I should think and
doesn’t require much of a discussion.
But it turns out that there’s an organization called the National
Council of Teachers of English, which gives out an annual award for
doublespeak. “Winners” include individuals, organizations and just general
words. For example, Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel announcing his plan to close 54
elementary schools in the city on account of their “underutilization” or space.
Or the term “aspirational goal”, the concatenation of two words that mean the
same thing (aspirations/goals). But when you combine them you produce “a phrase
that means, in effect, ‘a goal to which one does not aspire all that much’.”
Immediately following Doublespeak is “Doobry”, which is a
variant of dewberry, meaning something-or-other. My preferred version of this
term is “duflunkio”, which I picked up from one of my classmates in the seventh
grade.
(If you’re interested, but not enough to actually check
out the book, numbers 99 and 100 are “Unfriend” and “Twittersphere”. Duh.)
Rosen’s book takes a different approach, using the building
block of words, the 26-letter alphabet, to examine a number of elements of our
language. One in particular I enjoyed was the letter K, in which he discussed
the alphabet that was created by (or under the auspices of) King Sejong in the
15th Century for the Korean people. A couple of interesting things
to me:
There are actually two (very similar) alphabets in use
today—“Hangul” in South Korea, “Chosun” gul in North Korea. I’ve always thought
of it as the Hangul alphabet, but then I learned it in Seoul, so…
But here’s why Sejong either invented the alphabet or
caused it to be invented. The only alphabet in use came from China, but spoken
Korean didn’t match up with Chinese letters. Sejong saw this as a barrier to
illiterate people ever learning to write. “[E]ven if illiterate people want to
communicate in writing, many of them in the end cannot state their concerns.
Saddened by this, I have had 28 letters newly made. It is my wish that all the
people may easily learn these letters and that this will turn out to be
convenient for daily use.”
In other words—everyone in the country basically had the
right to communicate their concerns in writing, and it was his duty as the king
to create the means for them to do this.
As I understand it, the Hangul alphabet (now comprising
24 vowels and consonants) is a highly efficient method of building words
through syllables and sounds. It runs rings around English in this regard.
(Think “thought”, “through” and “though”, just for starters.) What an amazing gift
for a ruler to give his people.
On the whole, Rosen really entertains with his approach.
But I had to take issue with one of his statements.
“In Britain people do the ‘hokey-cokey’ but in the US
they do the ‘cokey-cokey.’”
I don’t know where he got that last part, but I have never heard of a “cokey-cokey”. Surely
he meant “hokey-pokey”?
