Death of the English Language

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The Washington Post

washingtonpost.com  > Arts & Living

Goodbye, cruel words. The Death of the English Language


By Gene Weingarten
Sunday, September 19, 2010

The English language, which arose from humble Anglo-Saxon roots to become the lingua franca of 600
million people worldwide and the dominant lexicon of international discourse, is dead. It succumbed
last month at the age of 1,617 after a long illness. It is survived by an ignominiously diminished
form of itself [known in Milton Keynes as ®MDRV¯Slobspeak®MDNM¯ --Flash].

The end came quietly on Aug. 21 on the letters page of The Washington Post. A reader castigated the
newspaper for having written that Sasha Obama was the "youngest" daughter of the president
and first lady, rather than their "younger" daughter. In so doing, however, the letter
writer called the first couple the "Obama's." This, too, was published, constituting an
illiterate proofreading of an illiterate criticism of an illiteracy. Moments later, already severely
weakened, English died of shame.

The language's demise took few by surprise. Signs of its failing health had been evident for some
time on the pages of America's daily newspapers, the flexible yet linguistically authoritative
forums through which the day-to-day state of the language has traditionally been measured. Beset by
the need to cut costs, and influenced by decreased public attention to grammar, punctuation and
syntax in an era of unedited blogs and abbreviated instant communication, newspaper publishers have
been cutting back on the use of copy editing, sometimes eliminating it entirely.

In the past year alone, as the language lay imperiled, the ironically clueless misspelling
"pronounciation" has been seen in the Boston Globe, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the
Deseret Morning News, Washington Jewish Week and the Contra Costa (Calif.) Times, where it appeared
in a correction that apologized for a previous mispronunciation.

On Aug. 6, the very first word of an article in the Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal was
"Alot," which the newspaper employed to estimate the number of Winston-Salemites who would
be vacationing that month.

The Lewiston (Maine) Sun-Journal has written of "spading and neutering." The Miami Herald
reported on someone who "eeks out a living" -- alas, not by running an amusement-park
haunted house. The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star described professional football as a "doggy
dog world." The Vallejo (Calif.) Times-Herald and the South Bend (Ind.) Tribune were the two
most recent papers, out of dozens, to report on the treatment of "prostrate cancer."

Observers say, however, that no development contributed more dramatically to the death of the
language than the sudden and startling ubiquity of the vomitous verbal construction "reach out
to" as a synonym for "call on the phone," or "attempt to contact." A
jargony phrase bloated with bogus compassion -- once the province only of 12-step programs and
sensitivity training seminars -- "reach out to" is now commonplace in newspapers. In the
last half-year, the New York Times alone has used it more than 20 times in a number of contextually
indefensible ways, including to report that the Blagojevich jury had asked the judge a question.

It was not immediately clear to what degree the English language will be mourned, or if it will be
mourned at all. In the United States, English has become increasingly irrelevant, particularly among
young adults. Once the most popular major at the nation's leading colleges and universities, it now
often trails more pragmatic disciplines, such as economics, politics, government, and, ironically,
"communications," which increasingly involves learning to write mobile-device-friendly ads
for products like Cheez Doodles. [®MDRV¯like ®MDNM¯Cheez Doodles? I'm sure I'm
not the only one on this list who cringes at that --Flash] 

Many people interviewed for this obituary appeared unmoved by the news, including Anthony Incognito
of Crystal City, a typical man in the street.

"Between you and I," he said, "I could care less."

E-mail Gene at weingarten@xxxxxxxx.

[Oi! Yo' bluffin' off, mate! --Antony Blatherington, aka the man on the Clapham bus.]