Native speakers of English – or any other language – seem to know how to use their own language, and what is correct in language use, even without formal study of the rules of grammar. People just seem to know “what sounds right”. Many very wise people have written about this at length and I wouldn’t dare try and compete with Noam Chomsky, Steven Pinker or David Crystal.
Sometimes, as languages grow and develop, confusing situations occur with different meanings or different rules for similar sounding words. While recognising that language changes, we try to pass on these more sophisticated usages as they are keys to subtle yet meaningful variations in our speech and writing. Those of us who love clarity and correctness (and I count myself amongst them) can be upset when distinctions are lost, and this week Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich eloquently bewailed the apparent loss of one distinct variation in usage. The particular distinction that bothered Schmich was the difference between “lie down” and “lay down”. This is a distinction that I understood automatically, but I had to go to Michael Swan for a formal explanation. “Lay” means to put down carefully, says Swan, and takes an object. It has a regular form, but an awkward spelling in its past tense (“laid” not “layed”). “Lie”, meaning to be or become horizontal, is an irregular verb, with the past tense “lay”. It’s easy to see how this may confuse some people.
The unhappiness that people like Schmich and I feel when distinctions are lost is not due to us being “old-fashioned”, or “conservative”, but because we believe that the variety that correct usage entails enriches language, while casual and thoughtless usage makes language poorer for all of us.
In his recent article “Whose English?” in the Financial Times, Michael Skapinker describes the growing popularity of English in the non-English speaking world. For example, one South Korean politician is promising that if elected he will greatly increase the availability of English language teaching in the country so that families are not “separated for English learning”. That anecdote gives an insight into just how much importance people in developing countries give to learning English. They will risk family break-up in order to travel abroad to study English. There’s a video on YouTube of a “crazy” mass English lesson in China that’s possibly evidence of the same attitude.
Based on the assertions of scholars like David Crystal that 1.5 billion people can speak English at some level, Skapinker notes that “non-native speakers now outnumber native English-speakers by three to one”. That could mean that the spoken English of the future may not be the English spoken in Britain or United States. It may have a more international flavour. That kind of English may well make native-speakers wince, as Skapinker suggests, and may give people like Lynne Truss apoplexy, but I think it may well happen and we’ll just have to get used to it.
In order to create publicity material to accompany the implementation of a law making it illegal to smoke in enclosed places, the UK Department of Health (DoH) have invented a new word: “smokefree”.
In fact they have an entire campaign going on about “Smokefree England“.
I am in despair about this. Not, let me explain, about the legislation. I am all in favour of banning smoking in pubs and restaurants as well as in the workplace. But I am in despair at this new word, and the way the DoH have chosen to use it.
It appears to be an adjective, and to mean “free of smoke”. But in their literature and on their web site the DoH have applied this adjective so widely as to make it meaningless. For a start, will the entire country of England be free of smoke of all kinds and in all places for 1st July? In fact, it will only be free of tobacco smoke in designated places. So “smokefree England” doesn’t make sense.
The literature prepared by the DoH refers to the “smokefree law”. Does that mean the legislation itself was free of smoke?
And don’t get me started on the new verb the DoH have introduced: “to go smokefree”!
