"The Standard of Usage in English," by Thomas R. Lounsbury (page three)
Yet the belief that the vocabulary of any particular time can meet the requirements of the users of speech for all time is a fallacy that is brought to our attention by having been frequently proclaimed and occasionally acted upon by men of eminence. The well-known resolution of Fox to admit no word into his History of the Reign of James II that did not have the authority of Dryden is a signal example of this particular absurdity.
Even Dr. Johnson, whose work on his Dictionary gradually impaired his faith in many popular linguistic delusions, continued to entertain or at least to express a belief not essentially dissimilar. According to his view, a speech adequate to all the purposes of use and elegance might be formed from the authors who sprang up in the time of Elizabeth. "If," said he, "the language of theology were extracted from Hooker and the translation of the Bible; the terms of natural knowledge from Bacon; the phrases of policy, war, and navigation from Raleigh; the dialect of poetry and fiction from Spenser and Sidney; and the diction of common life from Shakespeare, few ideas would be lost to mankind for want of English words in which they might be expressed."
Whatever was Johnson's real belief as to what could be drawn from the sources he enumerated, his practice was far from conforming to it. To express his own ideas he resorted to words which had never been used by any author of the time he specified, for the all-sufficient reason that they did not then exist.
If views such as these could be put forth by scholars like Bentley and Johnson, who presumably studied language as a science, nothing more rational was to be expected from men of letters who were familiar with it merely as an instrument of expression. The desirability of fixing the speech was not only widely held, but earnestly proclaimed. It was not merely held and proclaimed, too, by some of the best and wisest who wrote in the English tongue, but by those of similar character who wrote in the various cultivated tongues of Continental Europe.
It is, however, our language alone that concerns us here. The experience of the past furnishes a most significant corrective to those who look upon the indifference manifested by the public to their warnings and to the awful examples they furnish as infallible proof of the increasing degeneracy of the speech. It would save them hours of unnecessary misery were they to make themselves acquainted with the views of the prominent men of former times, who felt as did they and talked as foolishly.
Jonathan Swift on the Corruption of the English Tongue
Of beliefs of the sort just indicated, Dean Swift is in our literature far the most eminent representative. The desire for what he deemed the purity of the language amounted with him almost to a passion. To securing it he devoted no small share of thought and attention. One of his earliest utterances upon the subject--perhaps his earliest--appeared in the Tatler of September 28, 1710. In it he deplored the general ignorance and want of taste exhibited by the writers of the age. These were bringing about the steady corruption of the English tongue. Unless some timely remedy was found, he declared that the language would suffer more by the false refinements of the twenty years which had just passed than it had been improved in the foregoing hundred. If other means failed, he wished the editor of the Tatler to make an Index Expurgatorius in order to expunge all words and phrases offensive to good sense, and to condemn the barbarous mutilations of words and syllables then going on.
Swift's essay was largely taken up with the exemplification of these asserted barbarisms which had been steadily creeping into and corrupting the speech. They were of three kinds. The first were abbreviations, in which only the first part of a word was used. The result was to add a further number of monosyllables to a language already overloaded with them. As illustrations of these he gave phiz for phisiognomy, hyp for hypochondria, mob for mobile, poz for positive, and rep for reputation. Incog for incognito, and plenipo for plenipotentiary, he expected to see still further docked into inc and plen.
Swift was of opinion that the abundance of monosyllables is the disgrace of our language. Accordingly, it might be supposed that he would look with favor upon the polysyllables which, according to his account, the war then going on--that of the Spanish Succession--was bringing into general use. But no one who has once taken the language under his care can ever again be really happy. That way misery lies. To these long words Swift exhibited the same hostile front which he did to the short ones. Among them he specifically mentioned speculations, operations, preliminaries, ambassadors, palisadoes, communication, circumvallation, battalions. These, he thought, would never be able to live many more campaigns, though, even in the special sense of them which he had in mind, most of them had been in existence before he was born.
Concluded on page four
Even Dr. Johnson, whose work on his Dictionary gradually impaired his faith in many popular linguistic delusions, continued to entertain or at least to express a belief not essentially dissimilar. According to his view, a speech adequate to all the purposes of use and elegance might be formed from the authors who sprang up in the time of Elizabeth. "If," said he, "the language of theology were extracted from Hooker and the translation of the Bible; the terms of natural knowledge from Bacon; the phrases of policy, war, and navigation from Raleigh; the dialect of poetry and fiction from Spenser and Sidney; and the diction of common life from Shakespeare, few ideas would be lost to mankind for want of English words in which they might be expressed."
Whatever was Johnson's real belief as to what could be drawn from the sources he enumerated, his practice was far from conforming to it. To express his own ideas he resorted to words which had never been used by any author of the time he specified, for the all-sufficient reason that they did not then exist.
If views such as these could be put forth by scholars like Bentley and Johnson, who presumably studied language as a science, nothing more rational was to be expected from men of letters who were familiar with it merely as an instrument of expression. The desirability of fixing the speech was not only widely held, but earnestly proclaimed. It was not merely held and proclaimed, too, by some of the best and wisest who wrote in the English tongue, but by those of similar character who wrote in the various cultivated tongues of Continental Europe.
It is, however, our language alone that concerns us here. The experience of the past furnishes a most significant corrective to those who look upon the indifference manifested by the public to their warnings and to the awful examples they furnish as infallible proof of the increasing degeneracy of the speech. It would save them hours of unnecessary misery were they to make themselves acquainted with the views of the prominent men of former times, who felt as did they and talked as foolishly.
Jonathan Swift on the Corruption of the English Tongue
Of beliefs of the sort just indicated, Dean Swift is in our literature far the most eminent representative. The desire for what he deemed the purity of the language amounted with him almost to a passion. To securing it he devoted no small share of thought and attention. One of his earliest utterances upon the subject--perhaps his earliest--appeared in the Tatler of September 28, 1710. In it he deplored the general ignorance and want of taste exhibited by the writers of the age. These were bringing about the steady corruption of the English tongue. Unless some timely remedy was found, he declared that the language would suffer more by the false refinements of the twenty years which had just passed than it had been improved in the foregoing hundred. If other means failed, he wished the editor of the Tatler to make an Index Expurgatorius in order to expunge all words and phrases offensive to good sense, and to condemn the barbarous mutilations of words and syllables then going on.
Swift's essay was largely taken up with the exemplification of these asserted barbarisms which had been steadily creeping into and corrupting the speech. They were of three kinds. The first were abbreviations, in which only the first part of a word was used. The result was to add a further number of monosyllables to a language already overloaded with them. As illustrations of these he gave phiz for phisiognomy, hyp for hypochondria, mob for mobile, poz for positive, and rep for reputation. Incog for incognito, and plenipo for plenipotentiary, he expected to see still further docked into inc and plen.
Swift was of opinion that the abundance of monosyllables is the disgrace of our language. Accordingly, it might be supposed that he would look with favor upon the polysyllables which, according to his account, the war then going on--that of the Spanish Succession--was bringing into general use. But no one who has once taken the language under his care can ever again be really happy. That way misery lies. To these long words Swift exhibited the same hostile front which he did to the short ones. Among them he specifically mentioned speculations, operations, preliminaries, ambassadors, palisadoes, communication, circumvallation, battalions. These, he thought, would never be able to live many more campaigns, though, even in the special sense of them which he had in mind, most of them had been in existence before he was born.
Concluded on page four
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