Let’s just get on
with (that coalition)
government
The Cafe 2
John McDonald
Routes to
freedom:
2. The politics
Alan Fisher
The tourists desert Egypt
I don’t know who
he is, but Ryan Giggs
deserved his privacy
Rear Window
Arnold Kemp on John Knox
Arthur Bell
Ian Hamilton’s encounter with the two worlds of modern English reminded me of why I walked out of my English degree at Edinburgh at the end of first year.
I entered the crumbling lecture hall late after walking some distance from a psychology class.
The lecture was to be on ‘Romeo and Juliet’. An auld mannie (in a frayed black gown) was prowling about a stage, watched by about 150 youngsters, most keen to learn. In a dessicated voice, somewhat wavering, his slowly delivered words reached my unappreciative ears:
‘We do not know (pause)…the date on which Marlowe’s father (pause)…was born…
(even longer pause)…Nor (pause)…do we know the date on which (pause)…
Marlowe’s mother (pause)…was born.’
‘Bugger this!’ said the young Bell, ‘I’m off to the pub’, and he walked out.
I had had superb English teaching at the Royal High School from the famous Hector MacIver. This stuff was pure padding, and since then I have had grave doubts about many literary critics, university ‘English’ experts, and the like. (Andrew Hook very much excepted.)
I changed faculties and read politics and economics instead. By my final year I edited ‘Student’ newspaper, and was co-writing what became a big selling book: ‘The Complete Edinburgh Pub Guide’. I was thrice voted the UK’s best marketing copywriter during a 30-year business career (instead of the journalism one I had planned); and I won the USA’s top copywriting award too.
Somewhat like Somerset Maugham’s sacked verger, I wonder what I might have become had I continued with English literature at Edinburgh?
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Reflections on the Clyde of the squinty bridge
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
Despite Ian Hamilton,
the English language
still works
Alison Prince
Ian Hamilton QC (25 May) is incorrect to blame the Victorians for fixing the English language in its current form. Our western European islands developed their complex, multi-faceted language as a result of being invaded for many centuries by people who spoke non-ancient-British languages such as Norse and Latin and later, French.
We have squirrelled away words from Arabic and Hindi as we in turn did some world exploring, and to this day continue to add words from the US or that have arisen from our own quirky creativity. As a result, we have the broadest and most subtle means of expression known to the human race – though Russian and Mandarin, and maybe many others, have elements and concepts special to themselves.
Let us not imagine, however, that current English has been purely the result of people encountering other languages, in the same way that a little girl encounters Textese. The written form of the language we have inherited is largely the work of the mediaeval monasteries and of scholars familiar with Greek and Aramaic. Just look at the stushie there was about making the Bible available to the common English-speaking herd – William Tyndale lost his head for it, and Henry VIII floundered about in agonies of religious compromise. Meanwhile, the academics sailed on, unruffled, convinced of the beauty and expressiveness of the classical English they used so fluently.
Shakespeare still works. There have been modern versions that serve to get children interested in the stories underlying the plays, but the mesmerising run of Shakespeare’s own poetry has lost none of its power.
English in its full, traditional form is becoming harder for people to understand because they are not educated to do so. A working knowledge of Latin and a nodding acquaintance with Greek can explain much of how polysyllabic English words are structured. Spelling problems, as I know from years of teaching, are largely resolved once the derivation is understood.
Shaw was wrong. In fact, had he not been Irish and had a certain happy run of words, I’d venture to say Shaw was dull. A good polemicist, certainly, but his sulky view of the English language was absurd. To ignore its subtleties of spelling is to cut out much of its precise meaning. Some would argue that this does not matter, and point to French for its handy precision and its limited vocabulary. It is the international language of the Post Office, where it does a mundane job very well. It has produced some good novels, but it is not the language of poetry. Hugo’s repeated ‘Il neigeait’ in the retreat from Moscow is memorable, Ronsard, though self-congratulatory, had a certain fire and La Fontaine did a natty job at translating Aesop’s fables, but there is nothing to compare with the overwhelming richness of the English literary canon.
Shakespeare still works. There have been modern versions that serve to get children interested in the stories underlying the plays, but the mesmerising run of Shakespeare’s own poetry has lost none of its power. He uses the iambic pentameter, that most natural of spoken English cadences, to express thoughts and feelings that connect with us and move us to this day.
Textese, at the extreme opposite, is one more dialect, useful to its group as rhyming slang was useful to Cockneys and as the Doric satisfactorily baffled strangers. There will always be such games with language, and long may they live. But let us not imagine that they can replace the opulence and glory of the English language. To bring about such destruction would be the ultimate vandalism.
Alison Prince is an author and editor in Arran
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