Various linguists examine 21 common "myths" about
language, and in clear
non-technical essays of ten pages or so, demonstrate that they are not
true, or at least are more complicated than the sound-bite title would
have you believe. Charges of language decay have been going on for
centuries. In many cases the criticism of the language being used is
merely a covert criticism of the people using the language in that way.
One language myth not covered is Eskimos have hundreds of
words for snow -- but that has been adequately demolished
elsewhere. These essays make a
refreshing change from rants about split
infinitives, ending sentences with prepositions, and other language
decay woes.
Contents
- • Peter Trudgill. The meaning of words should not be allowed to vary or change. 1998
- Rather, language change is a natural process -- words have always changed their meaning
- • Ray Harlow. Some languages are just not good enough. 1998
- "... Maori was no good as a
language because it had to borrow words from English in order to
express new ideas. English [was] a very flexible and vital language
because it had throughout its history been able to draw resources
from all over the place to express new ideas."
- • Jean Aitchison. The media are ruining English. 1998
- Rather, journalists reflect the changing use of language, and use it with great clarity
- • Anthony Lodge. French is a logical language. 1998
- Au contraire, the French language is an important part of the French national identity
- • Edward Carney. English spelling is kattastroffik. 1998
- Although English spelling is
not phonetic, it exhibits many regularities that make the spelling
similar for related but differently pronounced words (so it is electric
and electricity, rather than *electrik and *electrisity,
for example)
- • Janet Holmes. Women talk too much. 1998
- Rather, men speak more than women most of the time, especially in formal and public contexts
- • Lars-Gunnar Andersson. Some languages are harder than others. 1998
- Some languages have harder spelling, or more difficult sounds, or more complicated grammar, or more involved forms of address -- but they are not all the same languages for each
- • James Milroy. Children can't speak or write properly any more. 1998
- Rather, children are more literate now than at any time of the past -- there never was a Golden Age of literacy
- • Michael Montgomery. In the Appalachians they speak like Shakespeare. 1998
- Rather, there are a few anachronisms used, but the myth is actively (if maybe unconsciously) perpetuated to help counter the "hick" myth
- • Winifred Bauer. Some languages have no grammar. 1998
- Rather, all languages have grammar, but different kinds of grammar (such as word order rather than word endings)
- • Howard Giles, Nancy Niedzielski. Italian is beautiful, German is ugly. 1998
- Rather, how a language or dialect is perceived to sound depends on the hearer's value judgement of the group of people who speak it.
- • Lesley Milroy. Bad grammar is slovenly. 1998
- Rather, what is considered to be 'bad' grammar is merely a different grammar from the one the hearer uses -- but is just as grammatical in its internal structure
- • Walt Wolfram. Black children are verbally deprived. 1998
- Rather, black children (who are considered to be verbally deprived) merely speak a different dialect of English and are penalised when tested relative to "standard" English, and actually come from a richly verbal culture
- • Jenny Cheshire. Double negatives are illogical. 1998
- Rather, the rules of natural language grammar do not follow the same
rules as mathematical logic; double negatives such as "I don't know
nothing" or "je ne sais rein" have a long tradition in
many languages of emphasising the negation; double negatives such as "not
untrue" and "not illogical" show that language has more
distinctions than simply true and false
- • J. K. Chambers. TV makes people sound the same. 1998
- Rather, regional dialects continue to diverge, and TV reflects change but does not lead it
- • Laurie Bauer. You shouldn't say 'it is me' because 'me' is accusative. 1998
- Rather, English is not Latin, and does not necessarily follow the
same rules -- after all, French is closer to Latin, but c'est moi,
not *c'est je, is good French
- • Dennis R. Preston. They speak really bad English down South and in New York City. 1998
- Rather, the prejudice against the speakers manifests as a prejudice about the language
- • Peter Roach. Some languages are spoken more quickly than others. 1998
- Rather, it all depends how you measure speed (including pauses, per sound, per syllable or per word), and speed varies with speaker and with social context
- • Nicholas Evans. Aborigines speak a primitive language. 1998
- Rather, there are 250-600 different Aboriginal languages, varying as much from each other as English does from Bengali, each with its own complex vocabulary and grammar
- • John E. Esling. Everyone has an accent except me. 1998
- Rather, everyone has an accent, we just notice the ones that are more different from our own
- • John Algeo. America is ruining the English language. 1998
- Rather, both American English and British English have changed and are continuing to change, and change can be healthy
