Love that Orwell

[garote]

In (4), the writer knows more or less what he wants to say, but an accumulation of stale phrases chokes him like tea leaves blocking a sink.

I started reading this from the bottom up, because I was most interested in the short list of rules that Orwell presents at the end. I've been really into critiques lately - of movies, of scientific studies, of Miss America contestants - and now here's one of language-mangling writers and speakers from Orwell's time. The advice is excellent of course, but I also find it amusing that some of the "vast dump of flyblown metaphors" he derides have passed out of style and could actually be resurrected. "Ride roughshod" for example, or "fishing in troubled waters". ... Well, on second thought, ...

He also makes several points that I agree with but am also certain would drive my high-school teachers crazy:

"The defense of English language [...] has nothing to do with archaism, with the salvaging of obsolete words and turns of speech, or with the setting up of a "standard English" which must never be departed from. ... It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one's meaning clear."

He's also particularly irritated by the use of foreign phrases to give "an air of culture and elegance". The question I have now is: How is this all going to work when half the population of my home state speaks Spanish? Are we really just going to keep jamming Spanish and English together until they become Spanglish, and go from there?

Comments

[ex-zeugma416.livejournal.com]

And about the Spanish/Spanglish/English continuum, I think that bemoaning the incursion of Spanish into English is probably a waste of time; moreover, I think it ought to be welcomed as the clearest possible sign of overall mutual comfort between the two groups. For instance, you don't find anywhere near the level of Arabic that you would expect in modern French, despite much more than a century of Arab presence in the country -- intensified sharply since 1960 -- and that can portend only bad things. You remember the riots the other year -- there is massive alienation from French culture. But that's another story...

[garote]

I think the reason the Spanish vs. English question is so interesting to me is that I have an ingrained sense of the cohesiveness of English, and of Spanish, and can't see their mixing as anything but a mess.

But another part of me knows quite well that the cohesiveness of the two languages is an illusion. ... Especially with English.

Even so, I don't know how the two languages are ever going to become comfortable enough with each other that conducting detailed business or producing works of art won't be a matter of choosing one and ignoring the other - or producing two separate (and thus arguably unequal) versions of everything. I can see English absorbing a whole pile of Spanish nouns, sure, but what about the grammar and syntax? Will adjectives casually migrate around to the other side of nouns? ¿Will punctuation change? Will the commonly spoken tongue become a mash of sentences and fragments from both languages? Or will we only keep the grammar that the languages have in common?

See, to me, it's either we merge languages (or half of us migrate to one) - or we become two separate nations, perhaps even two separate classes. I really think it's that important. And call me an uncouth American, but I'd rather not see the US fumble the whole "melting pot" phenomenon and turn into France - or Europe in general. I'm working on my Spanish because I find it very disturbing that I can't have a conversation with half my neighbors, or the people who clean my office building... But I'm worried still that somehow bilingualism isn't the answer...