Author Topic: Current English spellings may not survive as word explosion rages  (Read 6862 times)

Joe Carillo

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We have a bumper crop of interesting readings on language to start the year off—no less than six, fact. The first is about a forecast by noted linguist David Crystal that traditional spellings of English words could be killed off by the Internet within decades; the second about writer Jacqueline Maley’s dismay over the selection of “tweetup,” “staycation,” “defriend,” and similar such words as candidates for inclusion in the Oxford English Dictionary; the third about “Word Warriors,” a movement in Michigan in the United States seeking to recall some of the most expressive English words that had fallen out of use but that deserve to return to conversation and prose, such as “antediluvian” and “bamboozle”; the fourth about a campaign for the banishment from the English language of certain often misused, mal-used, and overused words; the fifth about a Turkish-English dictionary that doesn’t just give a translation of Turkish words into English but also gives a story, a meaning, some fascinating facts, a quotation, a poem, and a few useful sentences to help foreign learners in a practical way; and the sixth about a new English translation of the Holy Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek, and one that attempts to render its stories in the original voice of the persons who wrote them—not in the voice of the religious commentators and academics who had muddled the originals over the years.

The end of traditional English spellings. In “Internet words form the language of 2moro,” an article he wrote for the January 3, 2020 issue of The Age in Australia, Martin Beckford reports on a speech by the British linguist David Crystal during the recent 20th anniversary conference of the International English Language Testing System. “The advent of blogs and chat rooms meant that for the first time in centuries printed words were widely distributed without having been edited or proofread,” said Prof. Crystal, who then predicted that such a development could kill off traditional spellings within a few decades.

Read “Internet words form the language of 2moro” in The Age now!

Coping with an explosion of new words. In “OMG, tweetup is a candidate for the dictionary (LOL),” a report for the January 2, 2010 issue of The Sydney Morning Herald, writer Jacqueline Maley describes the efforts of lexicographers to keep track of the English language as technology expands its vocabulary on such a huge scale never experienced before. She asks: “How can we determine which neologisms are passing fads and which should be included in dictionaries, our lexicological gift to the next generation? How to decide which words are worthy of being anointed official representatives of our language?”

Read “OMG, tweetup is a candidate for the dictionary” in The Sydney Herald now!

Resurrecting expressive words from the linguistic graveyard. “Bring Em Back Alive: These Words Deserve Wider Use,” an article released through PR Newswrite-USNewswire, focuses on the efforts of Wayne State University in Michigan to bring back into fashion highly expressive words like “antediluvian,” “bamboozle,” and “bloviate,” which had fallen out of use but that it feels deserve to return to conversation and prose. Says Jerry Herron, dean of Wayne State University’s Irvin D. Reid Honors College: “The English language is a spectacularly supple and precise, rich and capacious means of expressing ourselves, which is to say we’ve got plenty of great words… What Word Warriors aims to do [through its website] is to enlist the aid of everybody who cares about words, to make sure we are not letting essential parts of our language fall silent.”

Read “Bring Em Back Alive” now!

Consigning troublesome words to oblivion. In contrast to the efforts of the Word Warriors in Wayne State University, the Lake Superior State University in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is compiling a “Word Banishment List.” Journalist and blogger Kate Forgach writes that she is urging people to submit their own suggested English words and phrases that should be eliminated from the language because of misuse, mal-use, and overuse, and she reports that the response has been “so overwhelming.” Among the words already compiled for banishment are “sexting,” “guys,” “app,” “Google it,” “friend” as a verb, and “too big to fail.”

Read “Try never using these words again” in Coloradoan.com now!

A dictionary that’s delicious to read. In “A dictionary of ‘one of the oldest cities in the world’,” an article in the Sunday Zaman in Istanbul, Marion James reports about a Turkish-English dictionary compiled by İstanbulian Ali Akpınar, a trained language teacher. Akpinar says he hopes that the reader will take away from The İstanbullu—Dictionary of İstanbulians more than just Turkish vocabulary, and that with the wide variety of the dictionary’s information and insights about Istanbul, the reader “will want to read it [for its own sake] while drinking tea or coffee by the Bosporus.”

Read “A dictionary of ‘one of the oldest cities in the world’” in the Sunday Zaman now!

A Bible that’s recognizable as living speech. In the January 3, 2010 issue of The New York Times, Frank Kermode reviews Rhonda and David Rosenberg’s A Literary Bible, a new English translation of the Holy Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek. According to Kermode, “Rosenberg expressly does not want his characters to speak a plain, familiar modern English like, for instance, that of the New English Bible. By the ‘literary’ of his title, he means to say that he is looking for modern readings [that are] recognizable as living speech.” Kermode says the results are disconcerting and confusing at times, but that on the whole the authors succeed and emerge “with honor” from their long wrestling match with some of the most difficult parts of the original material in Hebrew and Greek.

Read Frank Kermode’s review of The Literary Bible in The New York Times now!

Read excerpts from A Literary Bible and a conversation with David Rosenberg

« Last Edit: January 09, 2010, 02:35:42 AM by Joe Carillo »

maxsims

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Re: Current English spellings may not survive as word explosion rages
« Reply #1 on: January 09, 2010, 06:57:04 AM »
"...Prof. Crystal, who then predicted that such a development could kill off traditional spellings within a few decades...."

His prediction is a bit late - it's already happened.    It's called the Webster's...!      :D