Oh the English language! A beautiful piece of English craftsmanship… made out of French, German, Latin, Norse and Greek. Well at least it stays the same through history! Oh wait, no it doesn’t. It’s been constantly changing throughout humanities time on this planet. Language has NEVER stayed the same so why should it now? Imagine complaining that your tea got cold because you left it in the fridge for two days. In response to this you should be thinking that the idea of rejecting change or even denying it is ridiculous and also ‘stop putting tea in the fridge you pervert!’. Of course the tea is going to be cold, of course language is going to change, and of course committing sacrilege against tea is punishable by public execution, that’s how the world works. Everything is always changing and it will forever. So why complain about language doing the same?
On the subject of tea and all things fundamentally British. Tea is very similar to the english language when you think about it, there are lots of different types of tea and different dialects in english… oh and the fact that they both come from all across the globe and are only ‘fundamentally’ british if you mean in the sense of widespread slavery, colonialism and genocide. Oh yes, I’m getting to the sensitive bit! Let’s take a trip back to the 1700’s where Britain was going on a 3 century gap year across the world like a snobby middle-class teenager but instead of getting a suntan, malaria and an inflated ego it got slaves, diamonds, silk, opium, spices, millions of dead indians, chinese and Africans, a suntan, Malaria and an inflated ego. But the ‘creme de la creme’ of their global plunder was the intense effect it had on the english language. A plethora of neologisms flooded the empire with new inventions and discoveries coming by the day. But still those petulant prescriptivists (those of us who become startled by their cold tea) insist that despite these facts, the english language must stay the same.
Now, over 300 years later we are at the dawn of a new empire. An empire built on all that is good and evil. An empire growing exponentially. An empire of the internet. Britain didn’t conquer the entire world, but the internet has. And this beautifully diverse mixing pot of languages and cultures is sure to change not only the english language, by making it more accessible, up-to-date and multifarious, but the world too.
(Originally written 17/3/2021 on google docs)
