The following is a synopsis of the nine videos of the PBS series The Story of English. The videos are available for viewing in the Salem State Media Center, Library 312.
This program explains how English has risen to such prominence. "More than 320 million people - a tenth of the world's population - speak English as their first language; hundreds of millions more as their second language." English is the language used for all Air Traffic Control. Fifty percent of the world's telephones are in English-speaking countries. Fifty percent of the songs on the European hit parade are in English. Eighty percent of all computer data is in English. During World War II, BBC radio broadcasts in English were heard throughout Europe. The Edward R. Morrow, W.W. II Victory-in-Europe broadcasts of 1945, along with the subsequent decline of the British Empire, signaled the rise of the U.S. variety of English to prominence. U.S. English has been disseminated world-wide by U.S. business concerns and the military and is associated with economic and political power.
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This program presents a survey of the growth and changes of U.S. English. The Feminist movement of the 1960s worked to remove sexism from English. Mrs. and Miss became Ms., mailman became letter carrier. English is always evolving, with new words constantly being added to the lexicon based on new technology. Hardware, software, and compact disk are prime examples. Many languages adopt these words as is, but some countries, such as France, maintain language conferences to translate new English words in order to keep their language as endogenous as possible. The term for compact disk in France is le disk audio numerique. World trade is largely conducted in English. Business people from many countries believe that the first order of any language is to help one make a living, that a person cannot fulfill their cultural self if they cannot fulfill their biological self. English is the number-one foreign language taught in all countries. As long as the world retains its political and economic stability, U.S. English will continue to dominate.
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The English of William Shakespeare and the King James Bible was brought to the New World during the Age of Exploration. Shakespeare invented many English words, such as multitudinous and incarnadine. He also used some nouns for verbs, freely using the language to fulfill his artful purposes. People in Shakespeare's time celebrated their localized English accents and the concept of standardized English pronunciation was not accepted. The clear and poetic writing and the 8,000 word vocabulary of the King James Bible had a great influence on the English language. Phrases from the Book of Common Prayer, such as ashes to ashes, are still used today.
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Sir Walter Raleigh was the first to bring English to the New World when he established the colony of Virginia in 1584. Early American English borrowed many Native American words, such as skunk and chipmunk. The early Virginians had Raleigh's Western Britain accent from the area of Cornwall. The English accent of the inhabitants of Little Tangier Island, off the coast of Virginia, still sounds like the original American English from Cornwall. The Puritans of Massachusetts Bay restricted their English to the 8,000 word vocabulary of the King James Bible. The Puritans' accent came from Eastern Britain where the letter "R" is not stressed as much as in the West. This accent became identified with the New England states.
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This program covers the influence of American Blacks on English.
Blacks living on islands off the coast of Georgia and North Carolina
speak Gullah, which still sounds like the English of the slaves. The
style and accent of Gullah can be traced back to the pidgin English
of West African slave traders. This simplified, or pidgin, English is
still spoken by West African traders today. The slave trade spread
Pidgin English throughout the Caribbean Islands and the southern U.S.
and became the basis for Plantation Creole. Plantation Creole sounds
very much like Gullah, with common words such as voodoo and
nitty-gritty. Black house servants learned to speak a form of English
that sounded more like the "Master's English" as a way to advance
themselves socially and economically. Southern Whites had the r-less
accent of southern England which became modified by the speech
patterns of Plantation Creole, creating the Charleston accent of the
southern White aristocracy. Many southern, aristocratic boys were
sent to school in England to learn "proper English" so that they
would not embarrass their families by speaking Plantation Creole.
Southern, aristocratic girls were typically not educated and so kept
the Plantation Creole sound in their speech. Southern, Black English
spread to the North of America with the migration of Blacks to
northern regions. In 1934, Du Bose Heyward and George Gershwin wrote
the opera Porgy and Bess which featured the vernacular of Blacks from
coastal South Carolina, spreading this style of speech across the
U.S.. The "jive talk" of Black musicians during the 1920s became the
language of jazz and featured words and phrases such as: Cool cats;
hip; groovy; and the joint is jumpin'. This style of speech was
featured in the Cab Calloway song: Hepster's Dictionary. White
musicians soon adopted the terms. Some modern Blacks feel that they
have to lose their Black accents and "talk White" in order to get
good jobs and increase their social standing. This sentiment is
echoed by many educators, both Black and White. Black rap musicians
are currently the foremost disseminators of Black English into the
mainstream, U.S. culture.
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The War of Independence affected U.S. English, creating phrases such as: Yankee Doodle Dandy. After the Battle of Yorktown, U.S. and British English diverged. Thomas Jefferson's use of English in the Declaration of Independence is considered especially elegant. The American spellings of English words became different: Honour became honor; theatre became theater. The pioneering lexicographer, Noah Webster, created a U.S. English dictionary which helped incoming immigrants to learn American English pronunciation by giving equal quantity to each syllable: Forehead from for'ed. Canadian English is different from U.S. English because Canada was settled by English loyalists who kept the short vowel sounds of British English. The idiosyncratic habit of Canadians to add the vowel sound "A" to the end of sentences is often a source of amusement for Americans. Both Canadian and American English spread across their countries along the inland waterways such as the St. Lawrence Seaway and Mississippi River. Men from the "outland" of the western territories and sporting the unusual dress of buck skins and coonskin caps were called: outlandish. The trading of buckskins to create wealth lead to the use of the word bucks for dollars. Mississippi riverboat gamblers added words and phrases like: Ace, deuce, big deal, poker face, and up the ante. These words and phrases were picked up by Wall Street traders: Blue chip stocks and hitting the jackpot. The goldrush of 1849 added words like: Gold mine for a profitable business and having things pan out when they go well. The language of the American cowboy, itself a new word, added words with a Spanish influence due to their location near Mexico: Ranch from rancho, vamoos from vamanous, and loco for crazy. The pidgin English of American Indians added: No can do and long time no see. The expansion of the American railroad produced a leveling of the language as the distinctive regional accents of travelers began to merge. Railroad slang produced: All fired up, letting off steam, and one track mind. Mark Twain was the first American writer to take spoken, vernacular English and use it in literature. In the last decade before the first world war, immigrants Americanized their last names in order to assimilate into the culture but they also added their effects to the language. The Italians added many food words like capicola and lasagna. The Germans added many common brand names like Westinghouse, Studebaker, and Budweiser, and others like kindergarten and delicatessen. After the second world war, many German words were changed to avoid stigma: Frankfurters became hotdogs and sauerkraut became liberty cabbage. Jewish immigrants spoke Yiddish which added: Chutzpah for tenacity, schmaltz for overacting or oversentimentalization, and shmoozing for engaging in intimate conversation.
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This program covers the story of Cockneys, Australians, and Aborigines. The Cockney accent and slang comes from the east end of London and is considered working-class speech. The word, Cockney, comes from middle English and means cock's egg or runt. The characteristic sound of Cockney is to drop the leading "H" sound in words and to replace the "Th" sound with a "V" sound: Hello becomes 'ello and mother becomes muvver. Cockneys like to speak in rhyming slang, replacing words with a recognized, usually humorous, rhyming word or phrase: the word, wife, is replaced with "trouble and strife," the word, hat, is replaced with titfer, from tit for tat, the word, talk, is replaced with rabbit and pork, leading to the expression: rabbiting on, to describe someone who is speaking at length and emphatically about something. Cockneys also use back slang, which is to say words backwards: Boy becomes yob. Cockneys love to use large, dramatic words like diabolical because they enjoy the humorous overemphasis. Cockneys also borrow words from many languages such as Yiddish and Romany, as in using knosh for food and dukes for hands. If Cockneys start sounding their H's and Th's, they are usually made fun of by their peers for putting on airs in order to move up in social standing. In the late middle-ages, everyone from the London area spoke Cockney, but the upper-classes wanted to distinguish themselves from the working classes and did so by switching to public school English. In the eighteenth century, the writer, Jonathan Swift proposed an academy to regulate the English language in order to reduce its constantly changing character. During this time, Samuel Johnson made the first English dictionary, which became the first stabilizing authority by linking spoken English words to a printed standard. Therefore the educated middle-class leaned to speak like the dictionary and scorned the Cockneys. The Cockney influence went to Australia because Cockneys made up one-third of Australia's first colonists. Many Aborigine words were borrowed, such as boomerang, kangaroo, and billabong. The prisoners of the Australian penal colony came from all the counties of England, Scotland, and Ireland. The word, wowser, means someone who is a kill-joy and comes from the rural North of Britain, cobber means friend and comes from Suffolk, larakin means a young person and comes from Warwickshire, corker means a very good thing and comes from Ireland. The prisoners spoke the Flash language of the criminal classes. The prisoner, Flash Tim Voe, wrote a vocabulary of Flash language in 1812 that British magistrates used to understand what was being said in court. Australian English continued to feature many words from Flash language because many released prisoners chose to settle in Australia. Free colonists picked up Flash language from ex-convicts. Australian is considered the most classless form of English because it derives from so many sources and classes. A few Australians speak cultivated Australian which sounds more like the standard, middle-class speech of England. The accents of the English of Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand sound very similar because they were all settled in roughly the same time period. The Australians used to feel that their language was inferior to that of England, but now celebrate their own dialect.
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This is the story of Irish English. The Irish were forced to
accept English over their native Gaelic when they were conquered by
England. Gaelic survives only in remote, rural, western Ireland and
is a focal point for the Irish who want to remember their historical
roots. Gaelic poetry and prose is full of references to Ireland's
years of struggle to gain independence from England. The
Anglo-Normans invaded and settled the eastern coast of Ireland in
1170. The cultures initially mixed and English borrowed many Gaelic
words. English rose to dominance as more and more English isolated
themselves in castles and on large estates. The English crown felt
that acceptance of the English language was a necessary part of
accepting English rule. Blarney means the gift of gab because the
inhabitants of Blarney Castle spoke out against the British and
successfully held out against domination for a long time. The Cork
accent of Irish English is what most people identify as the Irish
brogue. Saying ting for thing is a throwback to Gaelic. In 1649,
Oliver Cromwell's campaign against Ireland created the first wave of
Irish emigration as Irish prisoners were sent to the Caribbean
islands, bringing Gaelic and Irish English. Irish emigration to New
foundland also brought the language. The seventeenth century saw the
rise of the Anglo-Irish ruling classes in Ireland that were allied
with Britain and whose language sounds very much like standard
English. Accepting English and Protestantism became necessary for
survival and advancement of one's social standing in Ireland. In the
1840s, the potato famine forced massive emigration to the U.S. and
England where it was necessary to speak English. Many Irish
identified speaking Gaelic with the catastrophe of the famine and
actively dropped the Gaelic language in favor of English. Much of
Irish English literature contains the accent and vernacular of
Gaelic. James Joyce wrote in Gaelic-influenced Irish English as a way
of protesting the domination of English over Gaelic. Today, an
authentic Irish pub is called a Joycean pub. Many Irish emigrated to
Liverpool, England. The Liverpool dialect sounds very much like the
Irish English of Dublin. The Irish in America influenced American
English as in the pronunciation of yous to refer to more than one
person. In Belfast, Northern Ireland, Gaelic and English are
representative of the struggle for Northern Irish independence and
allegiance to Britain. Many Northern Irish learned Gaelic only when
they went to prison as political prisoners. Some Irish believe that
accepting Irish English is the only way of creating a common Irish
identity.
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The English naval tradition spread the language world-wide. The English spoken on Pacific islands, such as New Guinea, is a pidgin English derived from maritime English as a necessary contact language, or trading language spoken by peoples of different indigenous cultures to English speakers. Pidgin uses block phrases like: Good fella true for friend, big fella for big, and long time bepo for long ago. Pidgin also uses characteristic repetition of words like: good-good and talk-talk, and words characteristic to all pidgins, like savvy. Pidgin English is considered an economic lifeline and the language of the future where it is spoken. When children grow up speaking pidgin as their first language, the language becomes known, linguistically, as a Creole. The slave trade created Creole languages across the globe that became the basis for many forms of Black English. Creoles are considered essential to third world trade and are not thought of as inferior to standard English. The standardized Creole of West Africa is called Creo, which is spoken exclusively in the market place and on national television. Barbajan English is based on West African Creole and all island Creoles are similar. Jamaican Creole is the language of reggae music, but standard English remains the language of authority in Jamaica. There is a movement in Jamaica to make Creole the national written and spoken language. Modern British English contains many words from the Creoles of present and former colonies. English will continue to evolve as the words and accents form languages around the globe pass into and out of the language.