English: the master key to the world of business, science and knowledge
June 2, 2007, 7:59 am |
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By Kenneth T. Tellis
The English language began its journey from Celtic Britain, which after the Roman conquest, became influenced by Latin. After the Roman withdrawal from Britain, the country was invaded by Angles, Saxons and Jutes. English then adopted words from their languages. The Danes then invaded Britain and in time left their stamp on the English language. By the time of the Norman conquest of 1066, the language known as Aenglisch was still pretty close to other Nordic languages. After the Norman conquest, more than 10,000 Norman-French words were incorporated into the English language.
By absorbing Norman-French words into English, the language changed drastically. During the age of discovery, English was well established as a language. British explorers of the New World and other parts of the globe brought back new words from other languages. The settlements in the American continent added words used by Native American tribes into English. The language was expanded even further by British explorers and soldiers of fortune who helped build the Empire. The growth of the British Empire helped expand English, well beyond those of any other language. Words from islands in the South Pacific, Australia, New Zealand, and the East Indies, including Malaya and parts of Africa, crept into the language giving it a power that had no equal.
English did not stop growing even after the British Empire collapsed. Another branch of the English language developed in Britain’s former American colonies. By the time the Space Age had arrived, English had become the only language to create a completely new glossary, one that heralded in the new frontier of technology.
It was great lexicographers like Dr. Samuel Johnson who created his “Dictionary of the English language” in 1755, which modernized English. But the journey of English did not stop there, because another genius, American lexicographer Noah Webster, published “An American Dictionary of the English Language” in 1828. Johnson and Webster helped increase the vastness of the English language.
English is a living language created by the people, and not necessarily by government bodies, which gives it great flexibility. French, which began as a colloquial language, called Lingua Franca by the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne (Carolus Magnus) in the 8th century, never did advance like English, because it was dictatorial and inflexible. Present day French in all its forms is still a very rigid language and requires the approval of l’Academie française and the French government. We now see this rigidity in practice in the Canadian province of Quebec, where a form of French jargon or patois called Joual holds sway, which is under total government control, and the people of course have no say at all in it. The French language in a manner of speaking is still in the age of sailing ships where it rightly belongs, while the English language has moved into the new frontier of the Space Age. The intransigence of French has caused it to become a dying language, surviving only on life support, and unable to make it on its own. English is a language of languages, because it is a polyglot. To summarize, English is a language CHOSEN by people who every day help create new words and add to its growth, whereas the French language is controlled via l’Academie française in France, and fully supported by government edicts.
Related: History, Linguistics
June 3rd, 2007 at 8:01 pm
Excellent piece and well written. What is needed now is to have it translated into that “other” so that they too will learn the truth about the superiority of the English language. Needless to say, it will enrage them and they will deny it and call us a bunch of “racists”, a word that comes so easily to the mouths of those who disagree with them, as I have been accused of so many times after interviews, radio talk shows and television appearances on the language issue and recently on the “First Nations” land claims and blockades issue. I was accused of being a racist when I suggested that they, the First Nations” people, or Native Indians as I call them, since they are subject to the “Indian Act”, renounce the paternalism of the Canadian government, get off the reserves, abolish the Indian Affairs Department and Ministry, joins us as equals, get jobs and pay taxes like the rest of us.
Unfortunately, just like Quebecers and in fact most French anywhere, they have lessons to learn on the meaning of democracy as opposed to preferencial treatment for minorities.
Thanks again for a good piece.
SA.
June 23rd, 2007 at 10:37 am
Kenneth,
This is an excellent description of the people’s language, English. New words are being added daily by people who invented them through the scientific and business world.
Shirley Kleskin, Alberta school teacher for 30 years who has worked as a full-time elementary and substitute in scores of different schools, including French immersion and Native Reserve schools has commented on the deterioration of the hard subjects of science and math in French Immersion schools in Alberta.
In her opinion, the curriculum for the hard subjects of math and science taught in French immersion schools has had to change its basic content. It is impossible to teach children science by way of proving an experiment or test a theory with facts in French. The main reason is that the French language does not have the words to describe these scientific experiments and hard evidence. The words of science evolved in the English language due to its basic premise of logical rational and conceptual thought.
It was the English speakers who used reason to spawn objective thought patterns based upon the gathering, by human existential sensory perception, evidence - hard facts which evolved into concepts, theories and laws of science and math. Hence the English language evolved into an objective, ‘rational’ language.
The French language does not contain words which evolved from the discovery and concrete analysis of scientific facts. It was born, as you mention, from an oppressive authority. That is the reason that the hard subjects like science and math cannot be taught effectively to students in French.
Shirley Kleskin has told me that the actual curriculum of math and science have been changed to accommodate the French language and the subjects in no way resemble the science and math of English curriculums. She said that math and science taught in French immersion schools is not real math and science.
GP