book

The Professor and the Madman

21 Pages 621 Words 1557 Views

?Fixed or fluid? In the book “The Professor and the Madman” many people had questions and concerns about the English Language. It all began a few centuries back, 1857, to be exact. When the members of the Philological Society of London decided that existing English language dictionaries were incomplete and deficient, and called for a complete re-evaluation of the language from Anglo-Saxon times onward. (pg number). It took more than seventy years to create the twelve tombstone size volumes that made up the first edition of what we know as the Oxford English Dictionary. This perfect masterpiece that was first called the New English Dictionary but eventually came the Oxford ditto & known commonly by OED- was completed in 1928. (pg.25) In the book it states that the dictionary is still regarded as a paragon, the most definitive of all guides to the language that, for good or ill, has of the become the “lingua franca” of the civilized modern world. Which is a language that is adopted as a common language between speakers whose native languages are different. (Webster Dictionary) All languages change over time, and vary from place to place. They may change as a result of social or political prospectives, such as invasion and immigration. New vocabulary is required for the latest inventions, such as transport, domestic activities and industrial equipment, or for entertainment and leisure purposes. But a language can also changes in way we realize. No two people speak identically, people from different geographic areas speak differently but even within the small community we may lie in there are variations according to the speakers age, gender, ethnicity and education background, with that alone we encounter new words, expressions and pronunciations and integrate them into our own speech. Thus, I believe the English language should remain fluid; it’s what makes our language unique. The flexibility we have as Americans of our languag

Read Full Essay