Category: English language

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816) had Irish lineage and was an MP at Westminster for 32 years, lending him ample experience of the clever, comedic and nonsensical use of the English language. His own wit and articulacy are evident in his writings, which include his first play, ‘The Rivals’ (1775).

One of the characters, Mrs Malaprop (deriving from the French mal-à-propos, meaning inappropriate), likes long words but gets them confused, e.g. “… but he can tell you the perpendiculars” – she means ‘particulars’, and “… to illiterate him quite from your memory” – she means ‘obliterate’.

Mixing up similar-sounding words is something people normally avoid by substituting simpler vocabulary if they are not sure, but when it is done in this forthright manner, it is called a malapropism in honour of Sheridan’s comic exposure of the phenomenon.

Another playful word-twist was pinpointed when William Archibald Spooner (1844-1930) of London, teaching at Oxford University, was said to absent-mindedly switch the first letters or syllables of adjacent words, e.g. “… the weight of rages…”  instead of “… the rate of wages…” or even the complete words, e.g. saying “Dr. Friend’s child” instead of “Dr Childe’s friend” . Spooner, once aware of this quirk, apparently began to speak more slowly in an effort to self-edit.

(Images LtoR: Sheridan at picryl.com / Public domain, Spooner at Wikimedia Commons / Public domain)

Stuck for a word? Since 1852 we have been turning to the amazing lexicon (“dictionary, vocabulary, index, glossary, thesaurus…”) that is ‘Roget’s Thesaurus‘, ‘thesaurus’ meaning ‘treasury’ and Peter Mark Roget (1779-1869) being the dedicated compiler of that treasury of synonyms, antonyms, phrases and sayings. The original title was ‘Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Classified and Arranged as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition’, summing up its aims.

Roget, from London, lost both parents – one died, the other was institutionalised – so was then raised by his uncle. It was during this troubled childhood that Roget began writing lists. He went on to become a successful doctor but also continued making notebooks of groups of words for his own use and by 1805 had a draft of his later masterpiece.

Upon retiring this was his focus and four years of work resulted in the first publication of his Thesaurus. There have been many updated editions, with Roget himself authoring the first 28 before his death, followed by his son and then his grandson taking on the task. The book is organised into different categories and sub-categories. Fortunately, Roget decided to add an alphabetical index just prior to its first appearance.

(Images LtoR: by Ray MacLean at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0, P.M. Roget by Wellcome at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 4.0)

Being the first English-language novel written specially for children, ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ (1865) has afforded researchers plenty of time for detailed analysis. Alongside this, its success has also allowed it to become embedded in the culture and language, giving us phrases such as “going down the rabbit-hole”, “grinning like a Cheshire cat” and “curiouser and curiouser”.

It was written by Cheshire-born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-98) under the pseudonym ‘Lewis Carroll’ after a river outing in Oxford with friends including young Alice Liddell (1852-1934), whom he entertained with his story-telling. Alice demanded that he write this one down and indeed it is dedicated to her. It tells of Alice’s dream whereby she encounters various strange animals that live far below a hole in the ground. The first version was actually titled ‘Alice’s Adventures Under Ground’ (1864), the manuscript of which Alice gainfully sold as an elderly widow.

There is a sequel, ‘Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There’  (1871), and an abridged edition for infants up to age five, called ‘The Nursery Alice’ (1890), so four books in all. They contain Victorian-era jokes, puns and riddles and despite critics searching in vain for hidden meanings, these books still stand as an artistic and literary landmark.

(Image: illustration by John Tenniel at itoldya420.getarchive.net / Public domain)

The children’s stories about the accident-prone bear called Paddington, were written by Berkshire-born Michael Bond, CBE (1926-2017). They encompass three classic themes of children’s literature, namely, a humanised animal, an orphaned youngster and, though getting into comical scrapes, successful survival in the outside world. More than 50 Paddington Bear titles are based on his assertion that: “Things are always happening to me. I’m that sort of bear.”

Bond’s purchase of the last teddy bear on the shelf in a London shop on Christmas Eve 1956 and his WW2 memories of child evacuees with small suitcases and labels round their necks were inspirational. His father’s old-fashioned civility in doffing his hat to anyone he met was also rolled up into Paddington’s character. The choice of “darkest Peru” for Paddington’s mysterious origin (where his Aunt Lucy taught him perfect English!) and Paddington’s obsession with marmalade were further ingredients in Bond’s ingenious creation. Nevertheless, although ‘A Bear called Paddington’ was published in 1958, Bond did not leave his job as a BBC cameraman until 1965.

Bond went on to invent other characters, such as Olga da Polga (a pig), and wrote a BBC television series called ‘The Herbs’ (1968-72) featuring Parsley the Lion and Sage the Owl, among others.

(Image: Jazz Guy at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

A phoneme is the smallest unit of spoken sounds that together make up words (there are 44 in English) and a grapheme is the way that each phoneme is written, although there may be several of these for the same phoneme, e.g. ‘f’, ‘ph’ and even ‘gh’. The grapheme ‘ou‘ is so versatile, it can represent a range of different sounds, e.g.

• Bournemouth and Falmouth are in the south. (…ɔ:…ə…aʊ…)
• You could hear the courier coughing loudly. (…u:…ʊ…ʊə…ɒ…aʊ…)
• My spouse’s shoulder touched the bag of flour. (…aʊ…oʊ…ʌ…aʊ…)
• Your cousin is serious about moving to the country. (…ɔ:…ʌ…ə…aʊ…ʌ…)
• The young courtier was courageous though dour. (…ʌ…ɔ:…ə…ə…əʊ…aʊ…)

In short, with only five vowels at its disposal, English would be lost without the ‘ou’ combination! Not only do we commonly have more than one phoneme spelt with ‘ou’ in one sentence, but there are also single words containing different ‘ou’-related phonemes. Outrageous!

This economy, or over-use, emerged from the Great Vowel Shift and the French and Dutch influences, which resulted in some foreign spelling patterns and words morphing into English, thereby detaching some spellings from their individual component sounds. Nevertheless, the various sounds of ‘ou’ come naturally enough with practice and are obviously fundamental.

(Background image: freeimageslive.co.uk / CC BY 3.0)

The most famous Welsh poet is surely Dylan Marlais Thomas (1914-53), whose most prolific period came in his late teens. Heavy drinking sadly played a part in the Glamorgan-born writer’s death when only 39 while on a Dickens-style recital tour of the U.S.A.. This video exemplifies the type of dramatic effect he brought to these performances:-

Thomas began his career as a journalist but soon took up writing poetry and prose full-time. His innovative use of language took a little while for critics to grasp, but it was highly evocative in its unusual juxtapositions, e.g. “you snored like a brewery”, “by owl-light”, “with sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses”, “wood of weathers” and “garden of time”. He made use of the different meanings of particular words by repeating them in close proximity and a listener is almost overwhelmed by the constant, sometimes jumbled, flow of imagery.

His most well-known pieces are the poems ‘And Death Shall Have No Diminion’ (1933), ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ (1952) and ‘A Child’s Christmas in Wales’ (1955) and his play ‘Under Milk Wood’ (1954). He mishandled his finances, however, so embarked on the lucrative N.American tour, only to catch pneumonia and die after a night of alcoholic carousing.

(Top images LtoR: Augustus John’s 1937 painting by Steve Knight at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0, photo at the Dylan Thomas Museum by Jim Forest at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Author, playwright and screenwriter Alan Bennett (1934-), a Yorkshireman, began writing in 1960, when he was a member of the illustrious Oxford Revue ensemble that wrote and performed ‘Beyond the Fringe’ in Edinburgh, London and New York. Its success pushed him to resign as junior lecturer, though decades later he donated 15 bookshelf metres of his life’s work to Oxford’s Bodleian Library in gratitude for his education there.

His first play, ‘Forty Years On’ (1968) featured no less a star than Sir John Gielgud (1904-2000) and Bennett continued to enchant and amuse audiences with subsequent hits such as ‘Talking Heads’ (1988, 1999), ‘The Madness of George III’ (1991) and ‘The History Boys’ (2004). Bennett’s witty sharpness has won him many fans. ‘The Lady in the Van’ (1999) is an example of how Bennett recycles real-life episodes ~ he had allowed his homeless acquaintance to live in a van on his driveway for 15 years, providing a wealth of anecdotal material for later use.

His voice has a comfortable quality and he has recorded several classic children’s stories. Bennett declined a CBE in 1988 and a knighthood in 1996, saying “It would be like having to wear a suit every day of your life.” Here he imagines the Queen’s belated regret on not being well-read:

(Top image: Chris Beckett at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Evidently there are far more British words for insulting people than there are for praising them, probably because insults sound funnier. Indeed, many popular comedy series are rife with put-downs, e.g. from ‘Blackadder’ (1983-9, written by Ben Elton & Richard Curtis): “The eyes are open, the mouth moves, but Mr. Brain has long since departed, hasn’t he, Percy?” and from ‘Red Dwarf’ (1988-, written by Rob Grant & Doug Naylor): “We have in our midst a complete smegpot”.

There is, of course, a crop of well-known swear words for those who wish to be nasty about it, and for some, these have become part of normal conversation, thereby reducing their impact. For the crafted, long-form insult, Shakespeare (1564-1616) is the past master: “Thou art a boil, a plague sore, an embossed carbuncle”  (‘King Lear’).

Common slurs, often meant to tease rather than offend, include “You prat / twit / twerp / pillock / plonker / muppet / swine / blighter / nincompoop / ninny / barmpot / nutter / numpty / nitwit / div”, etc., etc.. On the complimentary side, “the bee’s knees / bonnie / grand / brill / smashing / mint / lush / tidy / ledge (short for legend) / wicked / well cool” can be heard. Naturally, many of these types of words and phrases begin in youth sub-cultures and take root via the media.

(Top image: pxhere.com / CC0)

Londoner Harold Pinter (1930-2008), writer for stage, screen and print, actor and director, was awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature. This was one of many accolades, including the Hermann Kesten Medallion “for outstanding commitment on behalf of persecuted and imprisoned writers” in 2001, highlighting his political activism. Indeed, his Nobel acceptance speech was devoted to a sharp criticism of the USA’s foreign incursions post-WW2.

After the briefest of training, Pinter set out as a repertory actor touring the British Isles in 1948-59 but by 1956 he had started writing his own plays. His first full-length play, ‘The Birthday Party’ (1957), was too avant-garde for theatre-goers at the time and it closed after one week. However, its elements of unnerving mood, enigmatic symbolism and speech-silence patterns created a kind of poetic ‘performance art’ which was characteristic of Pinter’s future work and gave rise to the adjective ‘Pinteresque’.

Pinter wrote 29 plays, had 17 screenplays filmed, including ‘The French Lieutenant’s Woman’ (1980) and directed 27 productions. Pinter’s revolutionary style left the audience hanging on every word in an intriguing, haunting, open-ended fragment instead of a complete story with unnaturally eloquent, explanatory dialogue. He is thereby regarded as having pioneered the ‘modern drama’ genre, to which ‘thought-provoking’ is a commonly applied description.

(Top images LtoR:- portrait by Justin Mortimer: El Bingle at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC 2.0 & London’s Harold Pinter Theatre: Tony Hisgett at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)

The relatively modern concept of ‘standard English’ has become known as Received Pronunciation (RP) or even ‘BBC English’. It was originally based on the accent used by the upper-middle classes in south-east England and the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. In theory it is impossible to detect a speaker’s background by their use of RP today, since every Briton alive has been exposed to it via media sources.

In this video, it is certainly difficult to spot that Russell Harty (1934-88) was a Lancashire lad, but who would guess that Diana Rigg (1938-2020) was a Yorkshire lass? Notice how she pronounces the “h” in “what” and the “t” in “question”. Indeed, no “t” is dropped, every word is clear, the grammar is correct and there is no slang. She says “yes”, not “yeah” or “yep”. The vowel sounds are short, not drawn out.

The accent used by royalty and the aristocracy qualifies either as a separate accent altogether, or as ‘upper’ or ‘conservative’ RP. The pronunciation guide in English dictionaries is based on ‘mainstream’ RP and it would be natural to suppose that it is the dominant accent in England, but in reality it is hard to avoid picking up local variations.

(Images LtoR: Alvar Lidell at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0 & pexels.com)