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| Hearsay: |
Liz Renzetti writes in the Globe about a British effort to “save” the English language from the detrimental effects of people speaking it.
Oddly, the transatlantic creep of Americanisms doesn’t bother the Queen’s English Society as much as it does some other guardians of Britishness. The Daily Mail has started a campaign to maintain linguistic purity, defending crisps against potato chips, flat against apartment, and preferring the James Bond elegance of boot and bonnet to the Detroit pragmatism of trunk and hood. The Mail’s readers are, let’s just say, a conservative lot, and joined in from the get-go. That’s an Americanism they loathe, I should point out, along with “step up to the plate,’’ “guys’’ in reference to mixed company and that Canadian classic of ambiguity, “I’m good,’’ when what is actually meant is: No thank you.The Mail columnist Matthew Engel, who started the whole thing, writes: “People have no idea where American ends and English begins and that’s a disaster for our national self-esteem.’’
Well, that’s a bit bonkers, if you ask me. Mad, in the English sense of the word, though perhaps not deserving of the great British insult, “mad as a box of frogs.’’ In fact, the English are quite bolshie when it comes to defending their cultural identity, and language is the primary way of shaping that. They live on a tiny frozen island in the north Atlantic with only their language – and a time-hardened shield of irony – to protect them from a global onslaught.
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July 13th, 2010 at 11:40 am
People keep peddling alarmist nonsense about English being threatened (by e.g. semantic drift and non-standard forms), but the language doesn’t need saving: it’s doing just fine. The QES’s ideas about grammar and usage are dubious, to put it mildly. Its members seem to mistake variation for inferiority.
I wrote about this a few weeks ago and received some bizarre replies from the Society. [see link above]
July 13th, 2010 at 4:09 pm
“Mad as a box of frogs”? I’ve never heard that and I’m English. “Mad as a bag of snakes”, yes. Frogs. Hmmm.
July 13th, 2010 at 4:10 pm
(That’s not to say that the frogs aren’t an excellent image, by the way…)
July 14th, 2010 at 2:34 pm
David Mitchell, I mean the Queen, cares at least a certain amount.
July 15th, 2010 at 6:13 am
Well, that’s imperialism for you, eh? You pee in everyone else’s pool, and then complain that your pee is being unfairly diluted.
Variation and adaptability will be the keys to the language’s survival, not its demise.
July 15th, 2010 at 9:55 am
A ‘mad’ frog?
July 15th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
whackier than a bag of hammers.
July 15th, 2010 at 2:17 pm
Nice one Monica.
Jumpier than a box of frogs.
Busier than a three-headed cat in a herring factory.
Any others people?…
July 15th, 2010 at 2:55 pm
Anyone offer “jumpier than a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest” yet?