How English is
English? Will we ever know why an editor
deleted several words of foreign origin from the Oxford English Dictionary? Was
he a racist? Or a purist? In the socio-historical context, both these words have
been used interchangeably a few times. Nazism and apartheid do believe they
uphold purity of a race.
How does
language fare as far as this is concerned?
There is a touch
of espionage in the manner in which OED’s editor Robert Burchfield went about
the process of erasing. Sarah Ogilvie, a former OED editor, writes in her book
'Words of the World' that he started a rumour that the earlier editors were resistant
to outside influences. Her research revealed quite the opposite:
"I observed a pattern, that actually it was the earlier editors who were dealing with words in a really enlightened way. They certainly weren't these Anglocentric, judging kind of editors – they were very sensitive to cultural differences and they seemed to be putting in a lot of foreign words and a lot of words from different varieties of English, which must have been amazing for that day when colonial varieties of English were just emerging.”
I’d like to
interject here. Foreign words are not the same as different varieties of
English. A foreign word may or may not be used in an English context, but has
been absorbed into it. Therefore, these are not “loan words”; they are
borrowed, or more appropriately, absorbed words. Do they make the English
language richer?
As someone from
a country that was once colonised, but who has benefited from an education
where English was the primary language, I used to try and stick to Anglo-Saxon
words when writing, unless they were snatches of conversations. I did make a
departure in my columns when I used Hindi headlines occasionally. The bold
typeface in 24-point would stare defiantly at the reader. It may sound strange,
if not cheesy, but the titles usually come to me first when I mull over the
topic I am to write about. I discovered that it connects. Of course, overdoing
it would not work.
I still avoid
using common Latin and French phrases, but where would our courts be without
suo moto and how would we explain that something is the raison d’être? We can
indeed go on with several examples. The question here is: how malleable should
language be? Let us not forget that it is not merely a literary tool.
When the OED was
in its liberal phase, Ogilvie quotes a reviewer who wrote: “There is no surer
or more fatal sign of the decay of a language than in the interpolation of barbarous
terms and foreign words.”
Can we talk
about these two in the same breath? Barbarous, says the OED, means “coarse and
unrefined” in the context of language. It could include slang and curse words;
they might be seen to degenerate the language. Do foreign words do the same? Is
not slang based on specific colloquialisms? Swear words too, which Ogilvie
states were in fact introduced by Burchfield, may have varied ethnic roots. If they are not included in a dictionary, it
could well mean they are not seen as polite or do not fit into the politically-correct
paradigm. Are they, then, reliable? I discovered that William Gladstone had
written a letter to The Times and found this word that we use so regularly as “vile”.
Reliable is American. Ain’t that groovy?
Burchfield
deleted 17 per cent of the words included by his predecessors and they were all
of foreign origin. However, from the reports, they don’t seem to be particularly
ripe for plucking out. Is it where they came from rather than what they are
that bothered him? If he was so convinced, then why did he lie that those words
were removed earlier?
Ogilvie said:
"The only way I can explain him doing it is that, in the scholarly word of linguistics, the 1970s was when the first work on varieties of English started to come about. Maybe he wanted to be seen as part of all that."
It is
interesting that while he had problems accepting other words, he led a
dichotomous existence that stood up for those words because it was trendy to do
so.
Can we not say
the same about ourselves? We often use words that are ‘in’, even if we might
not have any sympathy or understanding of their origins or what they mean to
the societies they come from. Such words are demonised in the course of their
literary and political usage. The N word is not uttered, but does it end
apartheid towards Blacks? Why has every war become a jihad, when a jihad in its
purest sense is not even an external war? Is fatwa really understood for what
it is– an opinion passed as an edict by a group/leader that does not have universal
sanction and is not binding upon all? Should languages where these words
originate from object at their misuse? Even nirvana is employed casually, as
though each time a person sits in the lotus yoga position s/he has attained the
ultimate freedom from the Self.
However, the
English language would be poorer if foreign words did not embellish it,
particularly in symbolic form. Some might wish to pronounce a fatwa against
them, but for those who strive to better themselves it is time for linguistic
jihad. We may or may not produce a magnum opus but, to use a couple of
Americanisms, wouldn’t it be fab if it turned out to be awesome?
(c) Farzana Versey
(c) Farzana Versey
