The Adventure of English (36 page)

If we skip a thousand years of successful hanging on to the language of the Celts, we arrive at the Acts of Union in 1536 and 1542, ostensibly made to ensure equal rights for the Welsh and English under the Tudors. Welsh people, it said, could speak as they liked,
provided that
“ . . . all Justices . . . shall proclaim and keep . . . all . . . Courts in the English Tongue; . . . all Oaths shall be given . . . in the English Tongue . . . no Person or Persons that use the Welsh Speech or Language shall have . . . any . . . Office within this Realm of England, Wales or other of the King's Dominions . . . unless he or they use and exercise the English Speech or Language.”

If this tight rein was thought an improvement by the royal Welsh Tudors, it implies that the subjugation of the Welsh pre-Tudor was very severe. English ruled. Yet the Welsh language held on, went into poetry and song, did not surrender.

Neither was the oppression relaxed. In 1847, a Royal Commission declared that:

The Commission was published in two volumes bound in blue and the Treachery of the Blue Books, as it became known in Wales, established a nineteenth-century policy to marginalise even further the Welsh language in favour of English.

This was reinforced by the Education Act in the late nineteenth century which demanded that all Welsh children reach a certain level of ability in English. Teachers were responsible for this and many of them are still remembered to this day as having been particularly harsh. There were those who would not allow Welsh to be spoken at school in any circumstances. Children who broke this rule and spoke their native language had a halter put around their necks and a notice suspended which read “WELSH NOT.” The WELSH NOT became a symbol of resistance.

For resist it did; eventually through politics, terrorism and a liberalising of official attitudes, it clawed its way up the social scale and although it still has a fight on its hands there is now Welsh radio and Welsh television; Welsh literature, of course, has a long history; there are Welsh road signs and street signs; it has survived the Frisian, the Norman and finally the English yoke. Yet it still has the problem of an overmighty neighbour who also provides it with otherwise unavailable opportunities. There is still the fear that it exhausts its resources in the fight for preservation rather than progression and might become more a heritage language than a vital tongue. And more and more Welsh people speak English. In 1921, thirty-seven percent of Welsh people spoke Welsh; in 1981, it was nineteen percent. But over so many centuries its tenacity and its revival have been and are remarkable. And today the number of Welsh speakers is slowly increasing.

Welsh, having been the first casualty, is now a good early example of coexistence. English coexists with Welsh as it does in the far northern islands with Gaelic. It coexists with many other languages. Sometimes other nations replace it: the burgeoning call centres in India, for instance, are staffed by Indians speaking perfect English and replacing English people as once the English replaced Indians in the textile trade. Australia now looks forward and has well lost what was called the “cultural cringe”; indeed, in some areas it is some of the English who are inclining to that position vis-à-vis their antipodean namesakes now ploughing an independent line. And yet, as in India, and as in the West Indies where, for example, in Jamaica, there are strong moves to make Patwa as socially acceptable as English, the formal mother-ship of English remains. In these countries it is increasingly a tale of two Englishes.

There are many different ways in which to describe the arrival of English in foreign lands. A disaster, an oppression, a misfortune, a cultural massacre — these and even stronger terms have been used and will be used again. But it was also, for many who have and still do take advantage, an opportunity.

Britain now is a place in which many of the nations, groups, peoples it once ruled have come to live. On the streets and in plays, poems and films, languages from the West Indies, Africa, India and Pakistan find their space. American English has been a very strong influence for many generations. Other Englishes are now elbowing their way in. The pot is being stirred yet again and languages once thought of as “inferior” have come to the mother country of English bringing with them vocabulary and ways of speaking undreamed of even fifty years ago.

W
e as a species must have begun speaking one language. There are linguists who believe that one basic breeding language will eventually be discovered behind every language we now speak. There is a yearning for it among some of us. There have been several attempts artificially to create a one-world language. Esperanto is probably the best known. Invented in 1887 by a Polish oculist called L. L. Zamenhof, it was based on Romance language vocabulary and aimed to provide a universal second language. It has about a hundred thousand speakers in fifty countries. For instance, the sentence, “It is often argued that the modern world needs a common language with which to communicate,” appears in Esperanto as “Oni ofte argumentas ke la moderna mondo bezonas komuna linguon por komunikado.”

Before that there was Volapuk, invented in 1879 by the German Johann Martin Schleyer; in 1928, there was Novial, invented by the Dane Otto Jespersen, and there has also been Interlingua in 1903, invented by the Italian Giuseppe Peano, and Ido in 1907, invented by the Frenchman Louis de Beaufort. What is happening today despite the population power bloc of China and the resurgence of Spanish in the Americas, is that English, invented by tens of thousands of people from about AD 500 onwards, is making its way all over the world. And in the last hundred years or so, while British English has maintained its astonishing fertility and Englishes from every continent have laced the mix, American English has added the extra cylinders. That has been the most telling injection of all. They have invented and reinvented words to describe their own society.

We can see American English downtown in any city in the States. We would look up a block of “apartments” to a “penthouse,” be deluged by the “mass media,” go into a “chain store,” breakfast on “cornflakes,” avoid the “hot dog,” see the “commuters” walking under strips of “neon,” not “jaywalking,” which would be “moronic,” but if they were “executives” or “go-getters” (not “yes-men” or “fat cats”), they would be after “big business,” though unlikely to have much to do with an “assembly line” or a “closed shop.” There's likely to be a “traffic jam,” so no “speeding,” certainly no space for “joy-riding” and the more “underpasses” the better. And of course in any downtown city we would be surrounded by a high forest of “skyscrapers.” “Skyscraper” started life as an English naval term — a high light sail to catch the breeze in calm conditions. It was the name of the Derby winner in 1788, after which tall houses became generally called skyscrapers. Later it was a kind of hat, then slang for a very tall person. The word arrived in America as a baseball term, meaning a ball hit high in the air. Now its world meaning is very tall building, as typified by those in American cities.

Then you could go into a “hotel” (originally French for a large private house) and find a “lobby” (adopted from English), find the “desk clerk” and the “bell boy,” nod to the “hat-check girl” as you go to the “elevator.” Turn on the television, flick it all about and you're bound to find some “gangsters” with their “floozies” in their “glad rags.”

In your bedroom, where the English would have “bedclothes,” the Americans have “covers”; instead of a “dressing gown” you'll find a “bathrobe,” “drapes” rather than “curtains,” a “closet” not a “wardrobe,” and in the bathroom a “tub” with a “faucet” and not a “bath” with a “tap.”

All along the way the Americans and the English have hurled mostly genial abuse at each other about their respective tongues. It has its moments. Coleridge raged about the terrible Americanism “talented,” which was in fact an English word. Walt Whitman said that American was a glorious new language reinvented away from the tradition and authority of British English. The British fear that the Americans are mangling “their” language: who needs “the inner child,” “have a nice day,” or “authoring” a book; a lot of us do. Just as we use “cave in,” “flare up,” “fork over,” “hold on,” “let on,” “stave off,” “take on,” “fall for” and “get the hang of” — all fine upstanding English phrases which very likely originated in America.

Sometimes it seems that America has collared modern life. “Photogenic,” “beauty queen,” “beauty parlour,” “beautician,” “nutritionist,” “sex appeal,” “sugar daddy,” “pop songs,” “smash hits,” “a record store.” Financial, computer and slang words show more of a balance. Here are a few terms from the last decade or so: “anorak” (U.K.), “Big Bang” (U.K.), “Black Monday” (U.S.), “car boot sale” (U.K.), “cashback” (U.K.), “ cyberpunk” (U.K.), “cyberspace” (U.S.), “derivative” [finance] (U.K.), “desktop publishing” (U.K.), “enterprise culture” (U.K.), “golden parachute” (U.S.), “hacker” (U.S.), “Internet” (U.S.), “World Wide Web” (U.K.), “laptop” (U.S.), “loadsamoney” (U.K.), “mattress money” (U.S.), “PEP” (U.K.), “scratchcard” (U.K.), “short-termism” [finance] (U.K.), “slacker” (U.S.), “subsidiarity” (U.K.), “trailer trash” (U.S.), “trustafarian” (U.K.), “yuppie” (U.S.).

Some even feared — wrongly — that English's “innings” on its home ground was about to come to an end. In 1995, the Prince of Wales expressed the anxieties of many of his contemporaries when he told the British Council that “we must act now to ensure that English . . . and that, to my way of thinking means English English . . . maintains its position as the world language well into the next century.” Clearly he feared that the home team would be “caught on the back foot,” even “hit for six”; however you cut it, he saw us on “a sticky wicket.” But we “kept a straight bat” although some of us became so fanatical about using the right word that we banned the flamboyance that had once been a mark of the language. When Rupert Brooke's mother saw it reported that her dashing young son, poet-hero of the First World War, had left Cambridge “in a blaze of glory,” she put her pen through the phrase and substituted “in July.”

Nothing is alien to the appetite of English. In the First World War, English English brought us “shell-shocked,” “a barrage,” “no man's land” (re-charged from the fourteenth century), “blimp” (an observation balloon). Aerial combat gave us “air ace,” “dogfight,” “nose dive” and “shot down in flames.” “The balloon goes up” is a signal for the artillery to begin firing. “Over the top” is from the moment you clambered out of the trenches to attack. You muffled a gramophone trumpet by “putting a sock in it” and the phrase “at the eleventh hour” stems, via the Bible, from the precise time the Great War ended.

In America the language of the southern blacks moved north as they were sucked up-country to man the booming factories. (In the last thirty years of the nineteenth century, for instance, U.S. steel production rose by over eleven thousand percent.) In the 1890s over ninety percent of African Americans lived in the rural south; sixty years later, ninety-five percent had moved to the urban north. They discovered that they had not left behind the “colour bar.” Where they settled was invariably on “the wrong side of the tracks.” But their language took over those for whom they worked. It was often language associated with pleasure. People began to dance the “cake walk” and then the “hootchy-kootchy” and “the shimmy,” they started to “jive” and “boogie-woogie.” “Jazz” and “blues” arrived at the beginning of the twentieth century and changed music for ever. “Hip” probably came from the African word “hipikat,” meaning someone finely attuned to his/her environment. “Jazz” later came to mean having sex, as did “rock'n'roll.” “Jelly roll,” “cherry pie,” and “custard pie” were all words for female genitalia. “Boogie-woogie” was a euphemism for syphilis — “boogie” was a southern word for prostitute. “Shacking up,” meaning living together in common-law fashion, also came from black speech at this time.

As the twentieth century rolled on, the English-speaking youth of the world adopted “black” American English as a mark of their generation. You wanted to be “cool,” “groovy,” “mellow” and certainly not “square.” Then there's “to blow your top,” “uptight,” “right on,” “hassle,” “far out,” “bread” (for money), “make it,” “put down,” “ripped off,” “cop out,” “no way.” “Man” is very early, first recorded in 1823 as black English. “Out of sight” and “kicks” are also from the nineteenth century.

Language has its own force and works, I think, to demands and impulses which cannot always be slotted into the received idea that economic and military superiority alone produce linguistic dominance. Pressure groups and revolutionaries can play a part. African American English came from a minority, mostly poor, often oppressed, all of whom were descended from a different language pool than English, and yet their expressions colonised the English language and not only of youth. Even President Nixon said “right on” and gave the “thumbs up.”

A characteristic of English throughout is the ease with which it can borrow or steal words from other languages. By the end of the sixteenth century, there were words from fifty different languages being used as “English.” The flow of immigrants to America had the same result. On to the bone of Puritan English so tenaciously nurtured by the
Mayflower
families and others who followed from England, came Irish and Scots, especially on the frontier, together with words from Native American, and words from other European languages. “Ouch!” came in less than a hundred years ago from the German word “autsch.” German also gave us “hamburger” and “frankfurter,” “wanderlust,” “seminar” and the game “poker.” “Bum” in its meaning as “tramp” comes from the German “Bummler,” a good-for-nothing, “hold on!” from “halt an!” and “so long” from “so lange.”

Yiddish, of course. Its words include “nosh,” “bagels,” “pastrami,” “dreck,” “glitch,” “schmuck,” “schmaltz,” “schmooze,” “schlock” and “glitzy.” There are phrases too: “Am I hungry!,” “I'm telling you,” “Now he tells me,” “Could I use a drink,” “I should worry.” By the 1950s, the quasi-aristocratic British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, was using a Yiddish phrase when he said, “You've never had it so good.”

It was not only people who fed the resource; culture did the same. From the gangster culture, for instance, we get “racketeers,” “hoodlums,” “goons” and “finks”: you could “take the rap” and end up in “the hot seat,” especially if you'd been involved in a “hijack” with a “submachine gun,” much to the dismay of your “bimbo,” who was always on the “blower.” Would she “spill the beans” or be “taken for a ride”? The smart thing would have been to have avoided all “junkies” and “pushers,” cut out the “hooch” and lead a straight life with no “gimmicks.”

And there was the culture of “the Talkies.” You went to the “movies” at a “movie theater,” to see “the stars” in “close up” in “Technicolor.” The movie could be a “weepie,” a “tear-jerker,” a “spine-chiller,” a “cliff-hanger” or just plain old “slapstick” with some “ham” actors. The “usherette” would be in uniform. You'd be obliged to sit through “trailers” and you might well dream of going for a “screen-test” on some distant day.

When the movies went east to Britain they were gobbled up by millions who absorbed the vocabulary and the phrases as eagerly as they copied the hairstyles and had a go at the American accents. The democratic cultural vote was overwhelmingly pro American English. The British flattered it by imitation. This did not deter the objectors. “Twenty years ago, no one in England ‘started in', ‘started out' or ‘cracked up.' We did not ‘stand for' or ‘fall for' as we do today” (
New Statesman & Nation,
1935). “Those truly loathsome transatlantic importations ‘to help make,' ‘worthwhile,' ‘nearby' and ‘colourful' are spreading like the plague” (
Daily Telegraph,
1935). “The words and accent were perfectly disgusting and there can be no doubt that such films are an evil influence on our society” (press interview given by Sir Alfred Knox, Conservative MP).

The Americans are more polite about the English than the English are about Americans. The British feared that “their” English had been taken from them; that its new owners were not looking after it as it deserved; and a deeper fear that they were at the cutting edge now: it was not the British who propelled the adventure. But the mother-tongue country was not really daunted, as its leading minds prove to this day. British scriptwriters, songwriters, playwrights, novelists and poets were and are generally delighted with America's words, pillaged them, turned them into English-English and added their own new images ceaselessly. Sometimes it is very difficult to see the joke. That most English of writers, P. G. Wodehouse, lived in America for about half a century. His plays, musicals, songs and novels enjoy many American characters, and who can tell whether some of his more idiosyncratic usages came from this or that side of the Atlantic? “Vac” for vacation, “caf” for cafeteria, could be U.K. or U.S.; “gruntled” as the opposite of “disgruntled” is pure Wodehouse, but was the influence English or American? It can be very clear as “In the matter of
shimmering
into rooms the
chappie
[ Jeeves] is
rummy
to a degree.”

Wodehouse went to Dulwich College in south London, as did the American-born Raymond Chandler. Chandler named his leading character, Marlowe, after his house at Dulwich College. For many readers and writers his lean prose epitomises an enviably modern style. In 1949, he wrote: “I'm an intellectual snob who happens to have a fondness for the American vernacular, largely because I grew up on Latin and Greek. I had to learn American just like a foreign language.” There is a thesis waiting for anyone who wants to unravel what could be called the four imperial languages in Chandler — Greek, Latin, English English and American English.