Chapter One 1:
Anglo-Saxon or whatever happened to The Jutes? The English Language begins with the phrase ‘Up yours, Caesar’, as the Romans leave Britain and a lot of Germanic tribes start flooding in. Tribes such as the Angles and the Saxons, who together gave us the term Anglo-Saxon and the Jutes who didn’t. The Romans left some very straight roads behind, but not much of their Latin language. The Anglo-Saxon vocab was much more useful, as it was mainly words for simple everyday things, like ‘house’ ‘woman’ ‘loaf’ and ‘werewolf’. Four of our days of the week were named in honour of Anglo-Saxon gods, they didn’t botherwith ‘Saturday’ ‘Sunday’ and ‘Monday’ as they’d all gone off for a long weekend.While they were away, Christian missionaries stole in, bringing with themleaflets about jumble sales and more Latin. Christianity was a hit with the localsand made them much happy to take on funky new words from Latin like ‘martyr”Bishop’ and ‘font’ along came the Vikings with their action-man words like ‘drag”ransack’ ‘fast’ and ‘die’. They may have raped and pillaged, but they were also intogive and take, two of around 2000 words they gave English, as well as the phrase’watch out for that man with the enormous axe.
Chapter Two 2: The Norman Conquest or excuse my English. 1066, true to his, name William the Conqueror invades England bringingnew concepts from across the channel like the French language, the DoomsdayBook and the duty-free Gauloise multi-pack. French was de rigueur for all officialbusiness, with words like ‘judge’ ‘jury’ ‘evidence’ and’justice’, coming in and giving John Grisham’s career a kick start. Latin wasstill used at nauseam in church, but the common man spoke English, able tocommunicate only by speaking more slowly and loudly until the others understoodhim. Words like ‘cow’ ‘sheep’ and ‘swine’ come from the english-speaking farmers,while the a la carte versions, ‘beef’ ‘mutton’ and ‘pork’ come from the french-speakingtops, beginning a long-running trend for restaurants having completelyindecipherable menus. All in all, the English absorbed about 10,000 new wordsfrom the Normans, though they still couldn’t grasp the rules of cheekkissing. The Boname all ended when the English nation took their new war-likelingo of ‘armies’ ‘navies’ and ‘soldiers’ and began the Hundred Years War againstFrance. It actually lasted 116 years but by thatpoint no one could count any higher in French and English took over as thelanguage of power.
Chapter Three 3: Shakespeare or a plaque onboth his houses. As the dictionary tells us, about 2,000 new words and phraseswere invented by William Shakespeare he gave us handy words like ‘eyeball”puppy dog’ and ‘anchovy’, and more show- offy words like ‘dauntless’ ‘besmirch’ and lacklustre. He came up with the word ‘alligator’ soon after he ran out ofthings to rhyme with ‘crocodile’. And a nation of tea drinkers finally took himto their hearts, when he invented the hobnob. Shakespeare knew the power ofcatchphrases as well as biscuits, without him we would never eat our flesh andblood out of house and home. We’d have to say good riddance to thegreen-eyed monster and breaking the ice will be as dead as a door nail. If you tryto get your money’s worth you’d be given short shrift and anyone who laid it on with a trial could be pushed with his own petard. Ofcourse, it’s possible other people use these words first but the dictionary writers liked looking them up in Shakespeare, because there was more cross-dressing and people taking each other’s eyesout. Shakespeare’s poetry showed the world that English was a rich, vibrantlanguage with limitless expressive and emotional power, and he still had time toopen all those tea rooms in Stratford.
Chapter Four 4: The King James Bible or letthere be light reading. In 1611, the powers that be turned the world upsidedown with a labour of love, a new translation of the Bible.A team of scribes with the wisdom of Sullivan went the extra mile to makeKing James translation all things to all men. Whether from their heart’s desire, tofight the good fight, or just for the filthy lucre. This sexy new Bible went fromstrength to strength getting to the root of the matter in a language even thesalt of the earth could understand. The writing wasn’t on the wall, it was inhandy little books with fire and brimstone preachers reading it in everychurch. Its words and phrases took root to the ends of the earth, well at least theends of Britain. The King James Bible is the book that taught us that a leopardcan’t change its spots, that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,that a wolf in sheep’s clothing is harder to spot than you would imagine,and how annoying it is to have a fly in your ointment. In fact, just as Jonathanbegat Maribel and Maribel begat Myka, the King James Bible begat a whole glossaryof metaphor and morality that still shapes the way English is spoken today. Amen.
Chapter Five: The English of Science or how to speak with gravity. Before the 17th Century scientists weren’t reallyrecognised, possibly because lab coats had yet to catch on. But suddenly Britainwas full of physicists, there was Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle, and even some people not called Robert, like Isaac Newton. The Royal Society was formed out of theinvisible college after they put it down somewhere and couldn’t find it again. Atfirst they worked in Latin after sitting through Newton’s story about the ‘Pomum’falling to the ‘Terra’ from the ‘Arbor’ for the umpteenth time, the bright sparksrealised they all spoke English and they could transform our understanding of theuniverse much quicker, by talking in their own language. But science wasdiscovering things faster than they could name them, words like ‘acid”gravity’ ‘electricity’ and ‘pendulum’ had to be invented just to stop their meetingsturning into an endless game of charades. Like teenage boys, the scientistssuddenly became aware of the human body, coining new words like ‘cardiac’ and’tonsil’ ‘ovary’ and ‘sternum’ and the invention of ‘penis’ and ‘vagina’ made sexeducation classes a bit easier to follow. Though clitoris was still a source ofconfusion.
Chapter Six: English and Empire or theSun never sets on the English language. With English making its name as thelanguage of science, the bible and Shakespeare, Britain decided to take iton tour, asking only for land, wealth, natural resources, total obedience to thecrown and a few local words in return. They went to the Caribbean looking forgold and a chance to really unwind, discovering the barbecue, the canoe and apretty good recipe for rum punch. They also brought back the word ‘cannibal’ tomake their trip sound more exciting. In India, there was something for everyone.Yoga to help you stay in shape while pretending to be spiritual. If thatdidn’t work there was the cummerbund to hide the paunch, and if you couldn’t evenmake it up the stairs without turning crimson, they have the bungalow. Meanwhile in Africa, they picked up words like ‘voodoo’ and ‘zombie’ kicking off the teenhorror film. From Australia, English took the words ‘nugget’ ‘boomerang’ and ‘walkabout’ and, in fact, the whole concept of chained pubs. All in all, between topplingNapoleon and the First World War, the British Empire gobbled up around tenmillion square miles, four hundred million people, and nearly a hundredthousand gin and tonics. Leaving new varieties of English to develop all overthe globe.
Chapter Seven: The Age of the Dictionaryor the definition of a hopeless task. With English expanding in all directions,along came a new breed of men called lexicographers who wanted to put an endto this Anarchy, a word they defined as what happens when people spell wordsslightly differently from each other. One of the greatest was Dr. Johnson, whoseDictionary of the English Language took him nine years to write. It was 18 inchestall and contained forty two thousand seven hundred and seventy three entries,meaning that even if you couldn’t read, it was still pretty useful if you wantedto reach a high shelf. For the first time when people were calling you a pickleherring, a jobbernowl or a fopdoodle you could understand exactly what theymeant, and you’d have the consolation of knowing they were all using the standardspelling. Try as he might to stop them, words kept being invented, and in 1857 anew book was started that would become the Oxford English Dictionary. It tookanother seventy years to be finished after the first editor resigned to be anarchbishop, the second died of TB and the third was so boring that half hisvolunteers quit and one of them ended up in an asylum. It eventually paid in 1928and it’s continued to be revised ever since, proving the whole idea you can stop people making up words is complete snuffbumble.
Chapter 8: American English or notEnglish but somewhere in the ballpark. From the moment Brits first landed inAmerica they needed names for all the new plants and animals, so they borrowedwords like ‘raccoon’ ‘squash’ and ‘moose’ from the Native Americans, as well as most oftheir territory. Waves of immigrants fed America’s hunger for words, the Dutchcame sharing coleslaw and cookies, probably a result of their relaxed attitude todrugs. Later the Germans arrived selling pretzels from delicatessens and theItalians arrived with their pizza, their pasta and their mafia, just like mamaused to make. America spread a new language of capitalism, getting everyoneworried about the break-even and the bottom line, whether they were blue chipor white collar. The commuter needed a whole new system of freeways, subways and parking lots, and quickly, before words like ‘merger’ and ‘downsizing’ could beinvented. American English drifted back across the pond, as Brits got the hang oftheir cool movies and their groovy jazz. There are even some old forgotten Englishwords that lived on in America, so they carried on using ‘fall’ ‘faucets’ ‘diapers’and ‘candy’, while the Brits moved on to ‘autumn’ ‘taps’ ‘nappies’ and NHS dental care.
Chapter Nine: Internet English orlanguage reverts to type. In 1972, the first email was sent, soon the internet arrived: a free global space to share information, ideas andamusing pictures of cats. Before the Internet, English changed through peoplespeaking it, but the net brought typing back into fashion and hundreds of casesof repetitive strain injury. Nobody had ever had to download anything before, letalone use a toolbar and the only time someone set up a firewall it ended witha massive insurance claim and a huge pile of charred wallpaper. Conversationswere getting shorter than the average attention span. Why bother writing asentence when an abbreviation would do and leave you more time to blog, poke andreboot when your hard drive crashed. In my humble opinion became IMHO, by the way became BTW and if we’re honest that life-threatening accident was prettyhilarious, simply became FAIL. Some changes even passed into spoken English,for your information people frequently asked questions like how can LOL mean’laugh out loud’ and ‘lots of love’, but if you’re gonna complain about that, thenyou U’v Go 2 Be Kidding.
Chapter 10: Global English or whoselanguage is it anyway? In the 1500 years since the Romans left Britain, Englishhas shown a unique ability to absorb, evolve, invade and if we’re honest, steal.After foreign settlers got it started, it grew into a fully-fledged language allof its own, before leaving home and travelling the world, first via the highseas then via the high-speed broadband connection, pilfering words from over 350languages and establishing itself as a global institution. All this, despite awritten alphabet that bears no correlation to how it sounds, and asystem of spelling that even Dan Brown couldn’t decipher. Right now, around 1.5billion people speak English. Of these, about a quarter are native speakers, aquarter speak it as their second language and half are able to ask fordirections to a swimming pool. There’s ‘Hinglish’ which is Hindi English, ‘Chinglish’which is Chinese English and ‘Singlish’ which is Singaporean English and notthat bit where they speak in musicals. So in conclusion, the language has got solittle to do with England these days it may well be time to stop calling things.If someone does think up a new name for it, it should probably be in Chinese.
