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The English language begins with the phrase ‘Up Yours Caesar!’
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as the Romans leave Britain and a lot of Germanic tribes start flooding in,
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tribes such as the Angles and the Saxons – who together gave us the term Anglo-Saxon
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and the Jutes – who didn’t.
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The Romans left some very straight roads behind,
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but not much of their Latin language.
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The Anglo-Saxon vocab was much more useful
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as it was mainly words for simple everyday
things like
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‘house’, ‘woman’, ‘loaf’ and ‘werewolf’.
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Four of our days of the week were named in honour of Anglo-Saxon gods,
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they didn’t bother with Saturday, Sunday and Monday
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as they had all gone off for a long weekend.
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While they were away, Christian missionaries stole in
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bringing with them leaflets about jumble
sales and more Latin.
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Christianity was a hit with the locals
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and made them much happier to take on funky new words from Latin like
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‘martyr’, ‘bishop’ and ‘font’.
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Along came the Vikings, with their action-man words like
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‘drag’, ‘ransack’, ‘thrust’ and ‘die’.
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They may have raped and pillaged but there were also into ‘give’ and ‘take’
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– two of around 2000 words that they gave English,
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as well as the phrase ‘watch out for that man with the enormous axe.’
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True to his name, William the Conqueror invades England,
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bringing new concepts from across the channel like the French language,
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the Doomsday book and the duty free Galois’s multipack.
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French was de rigeur for all official business,
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with words like ‘judge’, ‘jury’,‘evidence’ and ‘justice’
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coming in and giving John Grisham’s career a kick-start.
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Latin was still used ad nauseam in Church, but the common man spoke English
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able to communicate only by speaking more slowly and loudly until the others understood him.
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Words like ‘cow’, ‘sheep’ and ‘swine’ come from the English-speaking farmers,
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while the a la carte versions - ‘beef’, ‘mutton’ and ‘pork'
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- come from the French-speaking toffs
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– beginning a long running trend for restaurants having completely indecipherable menus.
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All in all the English absorbed about 2000 new words from the Normans
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but they still couldn't grasp the rules of cheek kissing.
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The bonhomie all ended when the English nation took their new warlike lingo of ‘armies’,‘navies’ and ‘soldiers’
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and began the Hundred Years War against France.
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It actually lasted 116 years, but by that point no one could count any higher in French
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and English took over as the language of power.
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As the dictionary tells us,
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about 2000 new words and phrases were invented by William Shakespeare
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He gave us handy words like ‘eyeball’, ‘puppy-dog’ and ‘anchovy’
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- and more show-offy words like ‘dauntless’, ‘besmirch’ and ‘lacklustre’.
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He came up with the word ‘alligator’, soon after he ran out of things to rhyme with ‘crocodile’.
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And a nation of tea-drinkers finally took him to their hearts when he invented the ‘hobnob’.
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Shakespeare knew the power of catchphrases as well as biscuits.
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Without him we wouldnever eat our ‘flesh and blood’ ‘out of house and home’
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– we’d have to say ‘good riddance’ to
‘the green-eyed monster’
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and ‘breaking the ice’ would be ‘as dead as a doornail’.
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If you tried to get your ‘money’s worth’you’d be given ‘short shrift’
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and anyone who ‘laid it on with a
trowel’ could be ‘hoist with his own petard’.
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Of course it’s possible other people used these words first,
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but the dictionary writers liked
looking them up in Shakespeare
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because there was more cross-dressing and people poking each other’s eyes out.
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Shakespeare’s poetry showed the world that English was a language as rich vibrant language
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with limitless expressive and emotional power.
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And he still had time to open all those
tearooms in Stratford.
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In 1611 ‘the powers that be’ ‘turned the world upside down’ with a ‘labour of love’
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– a new translation of the bible.
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A team of scribes with the ‘wisdom of Solomon’
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- ‘went the extra mile’ to make King James’s translation ‘all things to all men’,
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whether from their ‘heart’s desire’ ‘to
fight the good fight’ or just for the ‘filthy lucre’.
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This sexy new Bible went ‘from strength to strength’,
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getting to ‘the root of the matter’ in a language even ‘the salt of the earth’ could understand.
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‘The writing wasn’t on the wall’,
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it was in handy little books and with ‘fire and brimstone’ preachers reading from it in every church,
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its words and phrases ‘took root’ ‘to the ends of the earth’
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– well at least the ends of Britain.
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The King James Bible is the book that taught us that ‘a leopard can’t change its spots’,
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that ‘a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’,
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that ‘a wolf in sheep’s clothing’ is harder to spot than you would imagine,
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and how annoying it is to have ‘a fly in your ointment’.
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In fact, just as ‘Jonathan begat Meribbaal; and Meribbaal begat Micah
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the King James Bible begat a whole glossary of metaphor and morality
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that still shapes the way English is spoken today. Amen.
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Before the 17th Century scientists weren’t really recognised
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– possibly because lab-coats had
yet to catch on.
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But suddenly Britain was full of physicists – there was Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle
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– and even some people not called Robert, like Isaac Newton.
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The Royal Society was formed out of
the Invisible College
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– after they put it down somewhere and couldn’t find it again.
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At first they worked in Latin.
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After sitting through Newton’s story about the ‘pomum’
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falling to the ‘terra’ from the ‘arbor’ for the umpteenth time,
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the bright sparks realised they all spoke
English
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and could transform our understanding of the universe much quicker
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by talking in their own language.
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But science was discovering things faster than they could name them.
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Words like ‘acid’,‘gravity’, ‘electricity and ‘pendulum’
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had to be invented just to stop their meetings turning into an endless game of charades.
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Like teenage boys, the scientists suddenly became aware of the human body
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– coining new words like ‘cardiac’ and ‘tonsil’, ‘ovary’, and ‘sternum’
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and the invention of ‘penis’ (1693),
‘vagina’ (1682)
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made sex education classes a bit easier to follow.
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Though and ‘clitoris’ was
still a source of confusion.
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With English making its name as the language of science,
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the Bible and Shakespeare, Britain
decided to take it on tour.
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Asking only for land, wealth, natural resources,
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total obedience to the crown and a few local words in return.
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They went to the Caribbean looking for gold and a chance to really unwind
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– discovering the ‘barbeque’, the ‘canoe’ and a pretty good recipe for rum punch.
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They also brought back the word ‘cannibal’ to make their trip sound more exciting.
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In India there was something for everyone.
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‘Yoga’ – to help you stay in shape, while
pretending to be spiritual.
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If that didn’t work there was the ‘cummerbund’ to hide a paunch and
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- if you couldn’t even make it up the stairs without turning ‘crimson’ – they had the ‘bungalow’.
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Meanwhile in Africa they picked up words like ‘voodoo’ and ‘zombie’
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– kicking off the teen horror film.
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From Australia, English took the words ‘nugget’, ‘boomerang’ and ‘walkabout’
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and in fact the whole concept of chain pubs.
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All in all, between toppling Napoleon (1815) and the first World War (1914),
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the British Empire gobbled up around 10 millions square miles,
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400 million people and nearly a hundred thousand gin and tonics,
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leaving new varieties of English to develop all over the globe.
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With English expanding in all directions, along came a new breed of men called lexicographers,
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who wanted to put an end to this anarchy
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a word they defined as ‘what happens when people spell words slightly differently from each other’.
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One of the greatest was Doctor Johnson,
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whose ‘Dictionary of the English Language’ which took him 9 years to write.
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It was 18 inches tall and 20 inches wide – and contained 42,773 entries
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meaning that even if you couldn’t read, it was still pretty useful if you wanted to reach a high shelf.
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For the first time, when people were calling you ‘a pickle herring’, a ‘jobbernowl or a ‘fopdoodle’
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– you could understand exactly what they meant –
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and you’d have the consolation of knowing they all used the standard spelling.
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Try as he might to stop them, words kept being invented
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and in 1857 a new book was started which would become the Oxford English Dictionary.
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It took another 70 years to be finished
after the first editor resigned to be an Archbishop,
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the second died of TB
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and the third was so boring that half his volunteers quit and one of the ended up in an Asylum
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It eventually appeared in 1928 and has continued to be revised ever since
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– proving the whole idea that you can stop people making up words is complete snuffbumble.
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From the moment Brits landed in America they needed names for all the plants and animals
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so they borrowed words like ‘raccoon’, ‘squash’ and ‘moose’ from the Native Americans,
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as well as most of their territory.
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Waves of immigrants fed America’s hunger for words.
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The Dutch came sharing ‘coleslaw’ and
‘cookies’
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– probably as a result of their relaxed attitude to drugs.
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Later, the Germans arrived selling ‘pretzels’ from ‘delicatessens’
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and the Italians arrived with their ‘pizza’, their ‘pasta’ and their ‘mafia’, just like mamma used to make.
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America spread a new language of capitalism
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– getting everyone worried about the
‘breakeven’ and ‘the bottom line’,
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whether they were ‘blue chip’ or ‘white collar’.
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The commuter needed a whole new system of ‘freeways’, ‘subways’ and ‘parking lots’
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– and quickly, before words like ‘merger’ and ‘downsizing’ could be invented.
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American English drifted back across the pond
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as Brits ‘got the hang of’ their ‘cool movies’, and their ‘groovy’ ‘jazz’.
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There were even some old forgotten English words that lived on in America.
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So they carried on using ‘fall’. ‘faucets’, ‘diapers’ and ‘candy’,
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while the Brits moved on to ‘autumn’, ‘taps’, ‘nappies’ and NHS dental care.
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In 1972 the first email was sent
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Soon the Internet arrived
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a free global space to share information, ideas and amusing pictures of cats.
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Before then English changed through people speaking it
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– but the net brought typing back
into fashion
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and hundreds of cases of repetitive strain injury.
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Nobody had ever had to ‘download’ anything before, let alone use a ‘toolbar’ -
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And the only time someone set up a ‘firewall’,
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it ended with a massive insurance claim and a huge pile of charred wallpaper.
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Conversations were getting shorter than the average attention span
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– why bother writing a sentence when an abbreviation would do
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and leave you more time to ‘blog’, ‘poke’ and ‘reboot’ when your ‘hard drive’ crashed?
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‘In my humble opinion’ became ‘IMHO,
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‘by the way’ became ‘BTW
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and ‘if we’re honest that life-threatening accident was pretty hilarious!’ simply became ‘fail’.
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Some changes even passed into spoken English.
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For your information people frequently
asked questions
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like “how can ‘LOL’ mean ‘laugh out loud’ and ‘lots of love’?
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But if you’re going to complain about that then UG2BK.
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In the 1500 years since the Roman’s left Britain,
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English has shown an unique ability to
absorb, evolve, invade and, if we’re honest, steal.
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After foreign settlers got it started,
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it grew into a fully-fledged language all of its own,
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before leaving home and travelling the world,
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first via the high seas, then via the high speed broadband connection,
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pilfering words from over 350 languages and establishing itself as a global institution.
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All this despite a written alphabet
that bears no correlation to how it sounds
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and a system of spelling that even Dan Brown couldn’t decipher.
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Right now around 1.5 billion people now speak English.
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Of these about a quarter are native speakers,
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a quarter speak it as their second language,
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and half are able to ask for directions
to a swimming pool.
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There’s Hinglish – which is Hindi-English,
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Chinglish – which is Chinese-English
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and Singlish – which is Singaporean English – and not that bit when they speak in musicals.
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So in conclusion, the language has got so little to do with England these days
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it may well be time to stop calling it ‘English’.
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But if someone does think up a new name for it, it should probably be in Chinese.