The virtual linguist

Changes in English over the Queen's reign

Does the Queen speak the Queen's English? Not to the extent that she did at the beginning of her reign, is the answer. The Queen's accent has changed over the decades - she no longer says the traditional 1950s 'posh' pronunciation 'orf' (off), 'bleck het' (black hat) and 'syuper' (super), and her vowels have been influenced by Estuary English. So says lexicographer Susie Dent in a Daily Telegraph article.

 

These days a regional accent is equated with honesty and reliability, which explains why politicians affect them. Another big change -- in grammar this time -- is the trend towards using the active voice rather than the passive in official documents (tax forms now say 'I have sent you two forms', rather than 'you have been sent two forms' or 'two forms have been sent to you').

 

Things that were once considered incorrect, such as saying 'disinterested' when you mean 'uninterested', are now very common.

 

Minority communities are adding new words to English eg bait (absurd), bare (lots of) and safe (a greeting) from Caribbean English. Hinglish is responsible for adding Hindi- and Urdu-derived words to the language.

 

Here's the full article.

University in Milan to teach in English

The Politecnico di Milano, a leading university in Milan, is switching to teaching completely in English from 2014, according to this BBC piece. It is doing so to avoid being isolated and to keep up with other universities across the world (many in other countries already offer teaching in English) and to attract students from China, India and elsewhere. English is also seen as vital in raising a university in international rankings.

 

See the full story here.

Slacks banished from New Yorker magazine

Readers of the New Yorker have voted 'slacks' as the word which most needs to be banished from the English language. I am surprised at that, as I didn't realise anyone still said 'slacks' - I thought it was an old-fashioned word when my mother and her generation said it in the 1960s.

 

Other words nominated were epic, irregardless, actually, awesome and literally. Some people suggested eliminating the New Yorker's own favourite words, such as focussing and spectre. The word moist was cited by about 10% of respondents.

 

Here's the story.

Mass Observation

There was a piece on the Radio 4 Today programme last week (listen again for a couple more days here - scroll down to 07:38) about the Mass Observation project, that was begun in the 1930s, and that set out to observe the conversation of ordinary people in Britain in order to understand them better. Volunteer correspondents were asked to report on all sorts of things - people's behaviour at war memorials, gestures made by motorists, bathroom behaviour and such like.

 

The questions asked by the correspondents are as revealing about the 1930s as the answers. One fascinating area was people's attitudes to different words, and how these were regarded as class markers. For instance one question asked whether people used certain words, and if not, what did they think when others used them. The words included cheerio, okey-dokey, toodle-oo, not half, old boy, chum, pal, ta and mate. A 47-year-old male park-keeper replied that he felt uneasy if addressed as pal, chum or old boy as he felt the other person was talking down to him.

 

The interview is at 07:38 on this page, and here is the website of the Mass Observation archive.

Banned words during the Olympics

Pub landlords won't be able to put up signs saying "Watch the London Games (or Olympic Games) here" and organisations won't be able to put on exhibitions with the words "summer 2012" or "London 2012" in the name during this summer's Olympics. Restrictions on mentioning any brands that are not official Games sponsors will be in force, and athletes have been told not to be seen with, or mention, Pepsi Cola or Nike, for instance, which are not official sponsors.

 

Using the words Games, Twenty-Twelve, 2012, or Two Thousand and Twelve, in conjunction with one of these words - London, medals, sponsors, summer, gold, silver or bronze - is also banned.

 

Games organisers are keen to avoid 'ambush marketing', which is where companies associate themselves with a particular event, without paying any of the fees associated with sponsorship.

More Cockney cash machines to be installed before Olympics

There are plans to install more ATMs with Cockney instructions and prompts in East London regions around the Olympic venues, according to this BBC article. So now you can get your sausage and mash (cash), after putting in your Huckleberry Finn (PIN), in Lady Godivas (fivers or £5 notes), speckled hens (£10s), or in horns of plenty (£20).

Ukrainian police learning English ahead of Euro 2012

15,000 police officers in Ukraine are being given a crash course in basic English ahead of the Euro 2012 Championship in June, according to this article in the Kyiv Post. “We need to teach them to give directions to cathedrals and other places of interest around the city”, said one English teacher. I don’t know how useful that language will be, although it would be nice to think that football fans will be clamouring to see Kiev’s cathedrals. The main stumbling block is that many police officers don’t know themselves where the cathedrals or places of interest are, so they have to be given a crash course in learning about their own city.

The good news is that all of them passed their oral test. Just in case, police officers based in the city centre will be issued with phrase books and/or electronic translation gadgets so that they can cope with any request.

The full article is here.

Advice on British English to Americans

Telly, adverts, bloke, chuffed and soft drink are all common words explained in an article in today's Washington Post (here), designed to prepare US visitors to the London Olympics in a few months' time. If you're coming for the first time you'll hear some words that you think you know, but that have a different meaning here eg a cracker (a great thing), chips (fries), subway (underpass), cheers (thank you), gutted (upset) and pants (underwear item or an adjective meaning 'bad').

 

Here's the article.

 

Monstrous Regiment of Women

Terry Pratchett has written a book called Monstrous Regiment, and there used to be a feminist theatre company with the same name. The term Monstrous Regiment comes from the title of a John Knox pamphlet, written in 1558 – the full title is The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstruous Regiment of Women. I discovered this when I was watching episode 3 of the BBC series She-Wolves: England’s Early Queens (click here to watch on iPlayer). John Knox was a Protestant reformer whose pamphlet rails against the rules of the Catholic queens around at the time – Mary of Guise (mother of Mary Queen of Scots) who ruled in her daughter’s name from 1554 to 1560, Mary Queen of Scots, and Queen Mary (Tudor) of England.

The two words monstrous and regiment have changed in meaning since those days. The original spelling of monstrous, used by Knox in the title of the pamphlet, was ‘monstruous’ and the original meaning was ‘unnatural’ (it is from the Latin monstrosus, meaning portentous or unnatural). The original meaning of regiment was ‘rule or government over a person, group or country, especially royal authority’. So, Knox was referring to the rule by female monarchs as unnatural. He got his come-uppance when Elizabeth I succeeded Mary to the throne. She was a Protestant but she banned Knox from setting foot in England.

Cross Bones Graveyard and single women

I went to a fascinating ceremony on Friday evening (23rd), held at the gates of the old Cross Bones Graveyard near London Bridge station in Southwark. In the 1990s London Underground were doing some digging in the area and came across 148 skeletons, many of which were those of women and children (they estimated that this represented only about 1% of the number of bodies buried there, ie there were around 15,000 in total). This plot of land, it turns out, was the site of an old paupers' graveyard, described in a 1598 Survey of London as a burial ground for "single women", a euphemism for prostitutes (and, indeed, 'single woman' is in the OED as a sub-heading of the 'single' entry, with the definition 'a prostitute' (and citations dating from the 16th and 17th centuries)).

 

The short ceremony I attended was organised by a community group, led by local writer John Constable (also known as John Crow), and takes place at 7pm on the 23rd of every month. The purpose is to honour and remember the forgotten or outcast dead - and not only those buried in Cross Bones. Here is an audio slideshow from the BBC website and here is a very interesting 10-minute video on YouTube.

 

You'll notice that 'Winchester geese' appears on the plaque and in the video. Winchester geese is another old euphemism for prostitutes. I wrote about this term last year here.

 

Here is the website of the Cross Bones Graveyard group.