Book Review: Susie Dent's Larpers and Shroomers

1 January 2005

This is the time of year for lists of words (and other things) of the year and assorted retrospectives on the past twelve months. In this vein, Oxford University Press and author Susie Dent have come out with the second annual version of their “report” on the state of the English language, Larpers and Shroomers: The Language Report.

I place the scare quotes around the word “report” because the book is not a formal study of the language and how it fared in the past year. Rather it is a collection of short essays and observations about the language, particularly about slang coinages and usage, at the end of 2004. Dent draws upon the archives of the Oxford English Dictionaries vast collection of citations to produce a collection of current British slang terms. (While there are some Americanisms to be found, the book has a distinctly British bent.) And while the book is the report of 2004, it does not strictly limit itself to this past year. Dent wisely interprets her topic to be the language as currently used in 2004, not just words and phrases that were coined in that year or relate to events of the year. So her coverage of slang includes words of the past few years.

Dent starts out with a list of slang terms of the moment. These include the title term LARPer (one who engages in live-action role playing, in other words dressing up as characters and playing fantasy scenes), as well as chugger (charity mugger, one who stops passers-by to collect money for charity), phishing (operating a fraudulent website to collect credit card information), and Googlewhacking (a game where one enters a two-word phrase into the Google search engine in hopes of getting a single hit).

The next essay is even more interesting; a comparison of words coined in 1904 with those coined one hundred years later. From a century ago, we have the words lollapalooza (something that is excellent), teletype, and Randlord (the manager or owner of a South African gold mine). The 2004 words include spim (spam sent via instant messaging), hiving (basing one’s entire existence in one’s home, similar to the earlier cocooning, but including work and contacts with the outside world via the internet), and alcolock (a device that tests a driver’s breath for alcohol before starting the engine). Dent’s point with the two lists is that words can provide a snapshot of society, the things that people consider important at given time, the state of technology.

The next few chapters are on various sources of neologisms. Dent treats us to neologisms from the worlds of business (vice investing: to invest in producers of tobacco, alcohol, and arms), politics (Hispandering: appealing to the Hispanic vote), cuisine (body sushi: eating sushi off the body of a naked woman), fashion (eye jewels: jewelry that is implanted under the cornea), sports (doosra: cricket term for an illegal type of bowl), high tech (poddie: an iPod user); and street slang (shroomer: a user of hallucinogenic mushrooms).

Larpers and Shroomers also contains several chapters on trends in grammar, punctuation, and pronunciation. Dent details the flap in the US over the inclusion of the sentence “Toni Morrison’s genius enables her...” on the SAT test. This rather silly episode of hypercorrection occurred in 2003 (presumably to late to make it into last year’s book) when a high school teacher objected to the sentence because “her” could not take an antecedent in the possessive case. The teacher was wrong, but succeeded in getting the question removed from the test. She also discusses the (inexplicable in my opinion) popularity of Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots & Leaves and the rise of Estuary English pronunciation.

These are followed by an excellent chapter on terms and trends in various forms of English spoken around the world. Dent gives use India (yatra: from the Sanskrit for pilgrimage, now used to describe a politician’s campaign journeys), Singapore (commuter: light rail transport), Australia (barbecue stopper: an issue of great importance), South Africa (lekgotla: Sesotho for council, a strategy planning meeting), and East Africa (matatu: a minibus used as a taxi, from Swahili).

Dent also includes chapters on the changing taboos of profanity and the uses of euphemism, as well as some chapters making general observations about the processes of language change.

The book finishes with a bang. In what is perhaps the best chapter in the book, Dent gives a list of words that were coined in the last hundred years, one word a year for each year since 1904. Many are obvious, for example 1916 gave us U-boat and 1917 tailspin; 1972 gave us Watergate. But some are surprising in how early or late they appear. Some of the more surprising ones:
1904:  hip (meaning smart or stylish)
1911:  gene
1921:  pop (as in pop song)
1929:  sex (as a noun for the act of sexual intercourse)
1931:  Mickey Mouse (as an adjective meaning worthless or silly)
1938:  cheeseburger
1944:  DNA
1947:  Wonderbra
1953:  hippy
1963:  peacenik
1979:  karaoke
1982:  hip-hop
1994:  Botox
2004:  chav (British slang for a delinquent or member of the underclass)

(The inclusion of this last term confused some journalists who, reading a review of the book, took it to mean that this was the Oxford English Dictionary’s “word of the year.” The OED does not declare a word of the year.)

While you probably won’t find any fundamental insights into the nature of language or truths about the English language, Larpers and Shroomers is a fun read and you will doubtlessly encounter words and facts of which you were unaware. The chapters are short enough to make excellent commute reading.

Hardcover; 165 pages; Oxford University Press; December 2004; $16.95

Language Death, Part 3

1 January 2005

The issue of language death is a hot topic among linguists. Language death is the disappearance of dialects from the globe, the reduction in the number of dialects that are spoken worldwide. Most linguists agree that we are in the midst of an era where languages are disappearing at an extremely rapid rate and that this will result in various unfortunate consequences for humanity and culture.

In the last two months, we have examined the question of language death, how large a problem it is, and what the consequences of language death are. This month we look at what can be done to address the problem.

Political, Social, & Economic Development
The best way to protect endangered languages is to reduce or eliminate the causes of their decline, to treat the cause and not the symptoms, as it were. One of the biggest causes of language decline is that a language used by a dominant majority kills off the language of a minority community. There are many different ways that a dominant language can drive out a minority one, but they fall into three broad categories, political, social, and economic.

Political causes of language death range from the extreme of genocide to comparatively milder policies designed to discourage use of minority languages. Cases in point are the native languages of the Americas and Australia, where Indians and Aborigines were actively discouraged from teaching their children their native tongues, preferring English, Spanish, and Portuguese instead. The policies of the Soviet Union are another example, where languages throughout the Soviet empire were suppressed in favor of Russian. And of course, the Nazi genocide of the Jews dealt a near-fatal blow to Yiddish.

In the western world, at least, the more extreme forms of political suppression of minority languages has largely ended (although there are some holdouts still, in the Balkans for example). These extreme forms are widely recognized as evil for many reasons, not just as causes of language death. But the subtle forms are still widespread. The movement to make the English language the official language of the United States is one such example. The movement deliberately targets minority dialects, such as Spanish (a minority in the United States) and African-American Vernacular English (AAVE or Ebonics) for extinction.

Political causes alone are unlikely to kill off a language with a sufficiently large enough community of speakers. Most of the minority languages of the Soviet Union, for example, were never seriously endangered. And the political policies in the Americas and Australia against native languages would have had relatively little effect if the native populations had not been decimated by disease. (Despite the claims of some, genocide was never a serious factor in either the Americas or Australia. While isolated atrocities did occur, deliberate policies of extermination were never in place—and those who committed atrocities were often brought to justice.) But conversely, if a population is small enough, political factors can wipe out a language.

This is not to say that encouraging the use of a lingua franca for communication is not a good thing. In the United States, for example, the standard American dialect of English should clearly be the common language of communication and all should be encouraged to speak it fluently. But this does not mean that speakers have to give up their native dialect. It is not an “either/or” question.

Social causes of language death are similar to the political ones, except they are not deliberately enacted. The view that certain dialects are socially inferior or rustic can cause speakers to abandon them in favor of the dominant language. A good case in point is AAVE. There is considerable social pressure in the United States forcing black speakers of this dialect to abandon it in favor of “proper” English.

Examples of social causes include the absence of minority dialects from radio and television, discrimination against those that have speech patterns that reflect their minority status, and difficulty in getting literature published in minority dialects.

While social causes are more difficult to correct than the political causes, they can still be addressed. Again, AAVE provides some constructive examples. In recent years, more black television and radio programs have appeared. AAVE speakers are not absent from the airwaves. There are also serious attempts to publish AAVE literature. The promotion of AAVE speakers as a vibrant community with something to contribute to the larger society is valuable. This can be replicated elsewhere, where the minority language is truly in danger.

The third class is economic causes. These are the largest and most expensive to solve. A leading cause of language death is the migration of peoples in search of economic opportunity. The lack of jobs in the village forces a migration of the young to the cities, losing their native dialects in a generation or so. The communities left behind become depopulated shells of what they once were. This pattern can be seen throughout the world, from the Gaelic communities of Ireland and Scotland, to Africa, to India, to native communities in the Americas.

By encouraging economic growth in the minority communities, this problem can be ameliorated. If there are legitimate economic opportunities at home, people will have less incentive to leave. Ireland provides a good example. The diaspora of the Irish people has been a significant factor in the decline of Irish Gaelic. But in recent years Ireland (both the Republic and Northern Ireland) has seen an economic reversal. The Irish economy is booming and people are actually coming to Ireland to seek jobs. This reversal in population trends is a good sign for Gaelic (although in and of itself probably not enough to save the language).

Globalization, often criticized as being the cause of such problems, can be a savior of languages by encouraging local economies. Jobs can be brought to the minority communities, as opposed to the people of those communities leaving to find jobs. But of course it must be done right. Indian minority languages, for example, will benefit little if all the high-tech jobs are located in Bangalore and Irish Gaelic won’t benefit if all the new jobs are in Dublin.

Education
This solution is rather obvious; if a language is to survive it should be taught to the next generation. Formal instruction in a minority language is essential to the survival of that language. A case in point is Irish Gaelic, which is alive almost solely because of the educational system and the deliberate encouragement of the Irish government.

But it is not enough to just teach the language. Teachers who speak the minority language should be present in the educational system as role models, regardless of what subject they teach.

Internet Use
In the early-to-mid 1990s many feared that the internet would serve to cement English as the world language and would be instrument of destruction for many minority languages. They pointed to the fact that a disproportionate number of web sites and email and newsgroup postings were in English and concluded that to take advantage of this resource, people would have to use English. This perception was skewed by three facts. One is that the initial surge of growth in the internet occurred in the United States. The second was that a disproportionate amount of the content was technical and scientific—subjects that are predominantly discussed in English regardless of the country of origin, English being the lingua franca of technical and scientific communication. The third was that in the early years, there were no standards for non-Latin characters. Languages that did not use the Latin alphabet were at a disadvantage in cyberspace.

But as the internet grew, both geographically and in scope of subjects, this changed. More and more websites and discussion groups cropped up using different languages. More and more email traffic was written in languages other than English. Finally, the adoption of Unicode and other standards for a bewildering variety of font sets, including double-byte fonts, opened the floodgates for minority language usage of the internet.

As a result, the internet is rapidly becoming a savior of many endangered languages. It effectively increases the pool of “speakers” by connecting those who have left their home communities with each other and with those left behind. And unlike the formality of written communication, electronic communication is more prone to slang and variety, the engines of language growth and change.

Literacy
Literacy comes in two components. First, the language must have a written form. Second, people must know how to read and write.

Many of the world’s endangered languages are oral languages. They do not have written forms or their writing is limited to ritualistic uses and not much used in daily life. Any oral language is just one generation away from extinction. Also, those who leave the community find it difficult to communicate with those back home unless they can write. Without literacy, letters and the internet are useless, leaving only the telephone and for most of these languages, telephone service to the home communities is problematic at best.

Without literacy, there can be no dictionaries or teaching materials, and literature can be too easily lost if it is only an oral tradition. This complicates revival and reconstitution of a language.

And even if there is a written form of the language, people must know how to use it. Often, people learn their minority dialects at home and the dominant language in school. Written communication is done in the dominant language and the minority dialects are used orally with friends and family.

Study & Documentation
The final step, and often it is the final step before a language disappears into oblivion, is for linguists to record and document the language and its literature. While this does little to stave off language death, it can ameliorate some the effects, preserving the language and its literature for others.

Resurrecting Languages, Can It Be Done? The case of Hebrew
If a language has passed on, can it be brought back? There have been attempts with truly dead languages, none really successful. There is, for example, an active attempt to revive Cornish, but other than creating something for tourists to listen to, it hasn’t been very successful. The grammar is highly formal and rigid, there is no slang development, and the vocabulary is limited.

But there have been a few examples of languages plucked from the brink of extinction and returned to a healthy and vibrant status. One such is Hebrew, a language which combined most of the above remedies to revive itself.

By the late-19th century, Hebrew was on the brink of distinction. Like Latin, it endured an existence as a liturgical language and for theological commentary, but few spoke or wrote it colloquially. There were some small groups of Jews who did use it, however, and there was a small, but active, body of literature in Hebrew. But it was clearly on the brink of extinction as a living language. Today it is alive and well with over five million speakers.

The Hebrew revival movement began in 1881 when Eliezar Ben-Yehuda emigrated to Palestine from Russia. Ben-Yehuda concluded that the Zionist movement needed a language to unite the Jewish peoples from different nations and that Hebrew, for historical and religious reasons, was the natural choice. Ben-Yehuda based his Modern Hebrew on the ancient language, but added vocabulary and some grammatical forms. He borrowed from Russian and other languages to update the archaic forms and words.

Modern Hebrew received political encouragement, first from various Zionist groups, then after 1948, from the Israeli government, which made it one of the official languages of Israel (Arabic being the other). In Palestine and later Israel, Hebrew was not socially threatened. There was no dominant language that threatened assimilation of the Jewish people. Arabic had economic allure, as did various European languages, but the desire to promote a Jewish community helped keep Modern Hebrew alive.

The political and social forces trumped the economic incentives in Israel’s early days and in the case of Hebrew there was a reversal of the trends of economically caused diaspora. Instead of leaving their home communities for economic reasons, Jews were leaving for social and political reasons and emigrating to Israel. They left behind the dominant languages of Europe and adopted Modern Hebrew. Since 1948, the growth of the Israeli economy has militated against widespread emigration to other countries. The youth of Israel have economic opportunity at home and do not need to leave. Israel, unlike many of the nations in the region, has a modern, post-industrial economy. Ironically, a larger threat to the continuation of the language may be the immigration of Arabs seeking economic opportunity.

Finally, the need to know Hebrew for religious reasons as well as the continuous body of Hebrew literature encouraged education and literacy.

In Conclusion
We’ve seen that languages are certainly disappearing from the globe at a rapid pace and are people are increasingly being drawn to speak a small number of languages. The consequences of this may not be as severe as with the loss of biological species, a phenomenon with which language death is often compared, but the negative consequences are significant. The cultural loss that coincides with the death of a language is incalculable.

While some language death is inevitable, part of the natural cycle of language change, it is the current pace of language death that is significant. This is not inevitable, however. There are steps that can be taken to strengthen the communities of minority language speakers and in the process preserve many of these languages. All that is required is the will, and the money, to do so.

2004 Words of the Year

1 January 2005

It seems as if every language publication, web site, and organization comes out with its list of words of the year around this time of year. So, why should we be any different? What follows is a selection of words and phrases that came to the fore in this past year. The selection criterion was simply that the term be important in the past year. These are not necessarily terms that were coined in 2004, and in fact, only one term on the list was actually coined this past year. They are listed in alphabetical order and we have made no attempt to rank which of them is the most emblematic of the year.

The list is dominated by one theme, the war in Iraq. This was the most significant event of the year and many of the words and phrases that kept popping up in the media dealt with this issue. Given this, the list appears a bit grim, but so were the events of the year. Running a distant second is the US presidential election. After that, there are a smattering of terms dealing with other issues, a few more light-hearted, others not so much.

So without further ado, here are the Wordorigins.org 2004 Words of the Year:

avian flu, n., Type A influenza, a type of influenza virus that is passed from birds to humans, also bird flu, cf. swine flu; avian, adj., pertaining to birds, from the Latin avis meaning bird, 1870; flu, n., clipping of influenza, 1839; influenza, n., an acute respiratory disease caused by a type of myxovirus, from the Italian word meaning influence, 1743. In Italian the word had an additional meaning, dating to the early 16th century, of an outbreak or epidemic of a disease, from the belief that the stars had influence over human diseases. In popular usage, the word influenza is often applied to any number of respiratory disorders. Fear of an avian flu outbreak persisted throughout 2004 and late in the year, shortages of flu vaccines in the US were a cause for concern among many.

battleground state, n., in a US presidential contest, a state that both candidates have a reasonable chance to win, a state that is in play. “Just for the record, Missouri is also a ‘battleground state’ so we’re seeing a lot of Clinton ads—as well as a lot of Clinton (Bill and Hillary) and Gore.” (bit.listserv.politics, 11 Oct 1992). While not a new term, the 2004 US presidential election concentrated on just a handful of battleground states, the others firmly in one camp or the other. Also swing state.

blog, n. & v., an internet web site consisting of regular (often daily) updates of news, gossip, commentary, and links to other web sites, to maintain such a web site, short for web log, from 1999. “For those keeping score on blog commentary from outside the blog community.” 28 May 1999, peterme.com (in OED3). Blog has given rise to many variant forms, most notably blogger (1999), blogging (1999) and blogosphere (2002), the totality of all blogs, the culture and world of blogging. While not a new term in 2004, this year saw the term and phenomenon recognized by mainstream media and culture.

Curse, The, prop.n., the supernatural force said to be keeping the Boston Red Sox from winning the World Series, esp. for losing the seventh and deciding game of the series, which they did in 1946, 1967, 1975, and 1986. The curse allegedly dates to 1920 when owner Harry Frazee traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees. Until 2004, the Red Sox had not won the Series since 1918. Also called The Curse of the Bambino. The use of curse to describe the Red Sox’s fate dates to at least 1986.

enemy combatant, n., an individual who takes up arms against a nation during war, originally used as a neutral or inclusive term to avoid categorizing someone as a soldier, insurgent, terrorist, etc. Since 2001, it has been used to blur or avoid making the distinction between a lawful combatant, who has certain rights under the laws of war, and an unlawful combatant, who does not.

exit poll, n., an unofficial survey of voters as they leave the polling place, used to predict the results of the election, 1980. In the 2004 US presidential race, exit polls falsely predicted Kerry would win by a large margin.

flip flop, n. & v., a reversal of a political position, to reverse positions on a political issue. The term has been in US political slang since at least 1971. The use of flop in this sense dates to 1880. John Kerry was repeatedly accused of being a flip-flopper by Republicans in 2004.

gay marriage, n., a legally sanctioned homosexual union, from at least 1984. In earlier use to refer to long-lasting cohabitation by members of the same sex. Gay marriage was a major US political issue in 2004, with Massachusetts becoming the first state to legalize them and local officials in many other states performing gay marriage ceremonies (later all declared legally invalid).

Green Zone, prop.n., the area of Baghdad housing the US civilian and military authorities of Iraq. A relatively, but not completely, safe area in that city, 2003. The year 2004 saw US officials increasingly restricted to the Green Zone for safety and sporadic attacks within the Green Zone itself.

humanitarian catastrophe, n., a disaster where political forces prevent the adequate distribution of food, water, or medical supplies and results in many more deaths than should have happened, since at least 1992. In 2004, the situation in the Darfur region of Sudan had become a humanitarian catastrophe.

hurricane, n., a tropical cyclone with sustained winds of 73 mph (65 knots, 12 on the Beaufort Scale) or greater. 2004 saw four major hurricanes make landfall in the state of Florida, causing extensive destruction.

insurgent, n., one who revolts against the constituted authority of a state, 1765, after the Latin insurgere, to rise up. 2004 saw isolated attacks against US and Iraqi authorities in Iraq develop into a full blown insurgency.

intelligence, n., knowledge of events or situations, esp. those of political or military import, the obtaining of such information, the agencies and their staffs engaged in collecting and analyzing such information, c.1450, from the French, ultimately from the Latin intelligentia, meaning understanding. The latter half of 2004 saw much political debate on how to reform and restructure US intelligence in the wake of 9/11 and the discovery of no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq—the putative cause for the war in that country.

martyr, n., a person who dies or greatly suffers in a cause for which they believe deeply, esp. a religious cause, to die or cause the death of such a person. Usage dates to the Old English period, from the Latin and ultimately the Greek word for witness. In 2004, martyr was the word most often selected to translate the Arabic word shahid, which is used to denote suicide bombers, but which also has the senses normally associated with the English word.

political capital, n., the power to influence policy and decisions derived from popular support, this US political term dates to 1842. The end of 2004 saw George W. Bush preparing to expend the political capital he garnered from his election victory on behalf of the issues and policies he wants passed by Congress in the coming year.

quagmire, n., a situation from which is difficult to extract oneself, 1775, from the literal sense of a bog or swamp, quag + mire. Quag, meaning a bog or marshy place, has cognates in Dutch and Low German, and appears in the 16th century. It is related to quake, to shake, which can be traced back to the Old English cwacian, but which does not have cognates in the other Germanic languages. Mire, which also means a swamp or bog, is from the Scandinavian myr and appears in the 13th century. The term quagmire was used in the Vietnam era to refer to that war and was again applied in 2004 to the situation in Iraq, evoking not only a swamp but that earlier conflict as well.

roadside bomb, n., an explosive device placed alongside a road in order to destroy or damage vehicles and their occupants as they pass, 1979. Roadside bombs became a standard weapon of the insurgents in Iraq in 2004.

sovereignty, n., of a nation, the quality of self-rule, free of the dominion of others, the exercise of supreme political power over a territory, c.1340, after the Norman-French sovereyneté. The passing of political power from the US occupation to the Iraqi provisional government in 2004 was an important step in returning that country’s sovereignty.

steroid, n., a class of organic compounds containing a 17-carbon, 4-ring system that, among other effects, builds muscle mass and affects sexual characteristics in humans, used by athletes to increase strength, 1936. 2004 saw professional baseball rocked with scandal with the revelation that NY Yankee Jason Giambi and San Francisco Giant Barry Bonds had taken steroids.

stop loss, adj., US military term for an order or policy that prevents servicemen and women from leaving the armed forces due to expiration of enlistments, retirement, etc. Since at least 1991. By 2004, morale in the US armed forces was strained due to the continuation of the stop-loss policy that kept soldiers in uniform past their original discharge dates.

swift boat, n., a fast, shallow-draft naval vessel used for patrolling coasts and rivers, esp. those boats that patrolled the Mekong River during the Vietnam War, mid-to-late 1960s. The Vietnam-era naval term came back into vogue in 2004 due to John Kerry’s service on a swift boat during that war.

tsunami, n., a series of large waves caused by an earthquake or other underwater geological disturbance, from the Japanese, tsu (harbor) + nami (waves), in English use since 1897. Often also popularly called a tidal wave (1878), but this latter term is technically imprecise as it can also refer to the large, but regular, tidal surge that occurs in some harbors and shorelines (1830). In December 2004 a tsunami, caused by a large (Richter 9.0) earthquake off the coast of Sumatra, devastated nations around the Eastern rim of the Indian Ocean. The death toll as of this writing is 127,000 and climbing.

vet, v., to investigate the suitability of a person nominated for a position of trust and confidence, 1904, from a late-19th century sense of having racehorses examined by a veterinarian. At the end of 2004, Bernard Kerik, the nominee for the post of Secretary of Homeland Security withdrew his name from consideration after a string of embarrassing revelations about his past. The White House had not adequately vetted him.

wardrobe malfunction, n., an accidental or pseudo-accidental exposure of the female breast, 2004. “I am sorry that anyone was offended by the wardrobe malfunction during the halftime performance of the Super Bowl. It was not intentional and is regrettable,” Justin Timberlake, 1 Feb 2004, after exposing singer Janet Jackson’s breast during the Superbowl half-time show.

Language Death, Part 2

1 December 2004

The issue of language death is a hot topic among linguists. Language death is the disappearance of dialects from the globe, the reduction in the number of dialects that are spoken worldwide. Most linguists agree that we are in the midst of an era where languages are disappearing at an extremely rapid rate and that this will result in various dire consequences for humanity and culture.

Last month, we examined the question of language death and how large a problem it is. This month, we’ll take a look at what the consequences of language death are and what can be done to address the problem.

Is it really a problem?
Isn’t the multiplicity of languages a barrier to communications? Wouldn’t a reduction in the number of languages improve the human condition and be a catalyst for peace? It is a common belief that a single language, or at least fewer languages, would make it easier for peoples to communicate, improve trade and economic conditions, and make war less likely.

Let’s take the last claim first. Are people who speak a common language less likely to make war with one another? Some of the bloodiest conflicts in recent years have been civil wars in countries where people speak the same language. Northern Ireland, Rwanda, Burundi, Cambodia, Vietnam, Korea, and China-Taiwan are all examples of conflicts or potential flashpoints between peoples who speak the same language. As a matter of fact, linguistic uniformity is more likely the result of war and violence than a vaccine for it. The dominant languages of the world, English, Russian, French, Spanish, Arabic, and Chinese are dominant because at some point in history those peoples engaged in extended periods of imperialism, bringing their language to others at the point of a sword or the barrel of a gun.

But there is truth to the belief that a common language can be beneficial in many ways, particularly economically. A common language facilitates trade and one of the driving forces behind language death is urbanization and other migrations of people seeking economic opportunity. They abandon the dialects of their home in favor of a tongue that opens doors to prosperity. This belief however assumes that one must choose between languages, it is either one or another. This is simply not the case, as is evidenced by the fact that most people in this world speak two or more languages. Spanish-speaking immigrants to the United States need to learn English to make the most of the American economy, but this does not mean they need to abandon Spanish. The Netherlands is an excellent example of a nation with a vibrant home language while encouraging the use of English and other European languages.

How does the death of one language diminish others?
Anyone who has studied English etymology knows that the answer to this is yes. Languages borrow from one another—and none do so more than English. Contact with speakers of other languages enriches a language, giving it access to words and concepts that it lacks. Reducing the number of languages inevitably reduces the opportunities for borrowing terms and concepts.

And it is not just borrowing words that is at stake. Language death means the loss of literature and folklore, written or oral. Even if written down and preserved, the literature becomes inaccessible to all but a handful of linguists who bother to learn a dead language.

History, too, loses valuable evidence when languages die. It is not simply the loss of the stories that are told, although this can be a tremendous loss in and of itself, but the very structure of language contains valuable historical clues. For example, there are no contemporary written accounts of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of England. Accounts such as Bede’s come centuries later and are often at odds with each other and with physical evidence. Language can come to our rescue. By studying the spelling (which reflected pronunciation much more than English does today) and word choice, we can often see which groups of Germanic invaders were dominant during a particular period or the extent to which they influenced one another.

The hard sciences can also suffer with the loss of languages, particularly indigenous languages. Indigenous peoples often make subtle distinctions in their languages relating to flora, fauna, and geology found in their regions. These distinctions are not always readily apparent to Western science and the indigenous languages can often point scientists to discoveries of new animal and plant species or to interesting geologic formations.

Finally, each language is interesting in and of itself. Each language is vital to the continuing study of linguistics and cognitive sciences. The loss of each language is the loss of valuable data, making it more difficult to further our understanding of these fields. There clearly is a problem with language death. The consequences may not be as severe as with the loss of biological species, a phenomenon with which language death is often compared, but the negative consequences are significant. The disappearance of languages across the globe.

Last month we saw that this is a growing problem. While languages have always died, they are disappearing at a greater rate today than in the past. This, coupled with the negative consequences of this that we have seen in this article, require that something be done to slow the disappearance and mitigate the consequences. Next month we’ll take a look at what steps can be taken to do this.

Holiday Shopping List

1 December 2004

What do you get the word lover in your family for Christmas? You get them a copy of Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends by David Wilton (Hardcover, Oxford University Press, 2004, $21.95). But of course they ran out to the book store on the first day the book was available, so that’s no good. What other books are out there that the discriminating logophile will enjoy? Here is a list, culled from those we’ve reviewed over the past few years.

New Dickson Baseball Dictionary by Paul Dickson (Paperback, Harvest Books, 1999, $20.00). This is without a doubt the best reference for baseball slang and jargon. Rigorously researched, Dickson gives usage citations for the earliest known appearance of most terms. A joy for both baseball fans and word lovers, a treasure for those who are both.

Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language by John McWhorter (Paperback, Perennial Books, 2003, $13.95). A superb and highly readable review of the processes of language change and comparative linguistics. McWhorter is insightful and intellectually daring.

The Man Who Deciphered Linear B by Andrew Robinson (Hardcover, Thames & Hudson, 2002, $19.95). This one is a bit different. It is a biography of Michael Ventris, the polymath who, in the mid-20th Century, was the first to successfully read the ancient Greek language known as Linear B. It is a fascinating account of a truly brilliant mind at work.

Predicting New Words: The Secrets of Their Success, by Allan Metcalf (Hardcover, Houghton Mifflin, 2002, $22.00). This book provides a theory for why certain new terms survive while most are rapidly forgotten. Metcalf also provides a formula for predicting the success of words while they are still new. Whether he is right or not will be known in about 50 years, but in the meantime it is still fun reading.

The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary, by Simon Winchester (Hardcover, Oxford University Press, 2003, $25.00). This is a “biography” of a dictionary. Winchester tells us the story of the Oxford English Dictionary, how it came into existence, the methodology used by the lexicographers, and the struggle to keep the project going over the decades. Above all, it is the story of a fascinating cast of characters who (mostly) labored in obscurity to produce what is probably the greatest reference work ever created.

Word Spy: The Word Lover’s Guide to Modern Culture, by Paul McFedries (Paperback, Broadway Books, 2004, $15.95). A wonderful collection of new terms from his excellent website (www.wordspy.com) which McFedries expertly ties to current cultural trends. Fascinating linguistics and sociology.

Dewdroppers, Waldos and Slackers: A Decade-By-Decade Guide to the Vanishing Vocabulary of the Twentieth Century, by Rosemarie Ostler (Hardcover, Oxford University Press, 2003, $25.00). Last but not least, this is the true gem of the list. Each chapter of this wonderful book addresses the terms that are emblematic of a particular decade in the 20th Century. From speakeasy to Trekkie, from jitterbug to hip-hop, no word lover should be without this book.