(~7 minutes to read)

l’Académie Française has just announced that a set of 2,400 proposed changes to spellings and punctuations will be rolled out in school text books in the upcoming academic year.

My knowledge of the Académie is not that great, but if I’m not mistaken, this is tantamount to revolution, not evolution. Apparently, these 2,400 changes affect approximately four percent of the French lexicon. The changes were first proposed in 1990, but were never embraced by the French at large.

One interesting change—“week-end” is to become “weekend”. How behind the times I am! Last time I took an interest in this topic, l’Académie Française was resisting all attempts to include borrowings from English into French; perhaps I was misinformed all those years ago.

Interesting Parallel

A BBC radio interview in 2012 addressed the topic of “how the French messed up English spelling”. Apparently, old and middle English spelling was straightforward (given the letter and word pronunciation rules of the time), but the Normans (1066 and all that) brought a whole new raft of words to England, which over the following decades and centuries got mixed and mooshed up into the existing English lexicon.

The interview cites the introduction of the “b” into “debt” as being a reforming attempt to standardize the spelling of “det” or “dett” by using Latin influence—in this case, “debitum”. Not sure how the French got the blame for that, but that’s Brits for you!

The Last 60 Years

While Professor David Crystal (the 2012 interviewee) was talking about centuries-old change, I want to look at changes to English that have occurred in my lifetime (significantly less than “centuries”!) With a Shorter Oxford Dictionary that was revised in 1944 and corrected in 1956 at my disposal, I went hunting for a few interesting changes.

I shall refer to this dictionary as “SOD44” for brevity.

Smalls Talk

This article was inspired by the SOD44 definition of “lingerie”, which just happened to jump off the page at me as I was browsing for something else. (You must have noticed how certain words do that “jumping off the page” thing—an article about it is on my “to do” list.)

So, when I was born (in 1955), the Oxford Dictionary defined lingerie as “linen articles collectively; those in a woman’s wardrobe or trousseau.”

By 1995, Webster’s had “underwear, sleepwear, and other items of intimate apparel worn by women.”

A quick surf for “lingerie” on Google Images (carried out purely for dispassionate research for this article you understand), reveals very little linen. (It revealed much else, but little or no linen.)

Change the search to “lingerie 1950s” and the lack of linen is still evident, although, to be fair so is the lack of revealing…

Change the search to “lingerie 1920s” and finally we’re seeing more “linen” and a lot less skin.

I strongly suspect that linen doesn’t feature strongly in the catalogues of Ann Summers and Victoria’s Secret; I haven’t checked, because that might be considered a little too creepy!

Canoe

Not much to see here, except the breathtaking superiority—nay, arrogance—of a certain cross-section of the British!

In SOD44, there are two definitions—“a boat in use among uncivilized nations hollowed out of a tree trunk or otherwise rudely constructed…” and “in civilized use, a small light boat or skiff…”

By these definitions, that would make the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean uncivilized, the North American Indians and Australian Aboriginals civilized, and the early Danes uncivilized. (Okay—the Danes referred to are from about 4000 BCE; not quite fair!) Whatever definition of “civilize” you decide to use, this assumption that a dugout canoe is peculiar to uncivilized societies and a birch bark (or similar) canoe is the domain of civilized societies does seem arbitrary and yes, somewhat arrogant. This kind of attitude puts the “grrrr” into Great Britain. Thank goodness times have changed!

This didn’t matter to me as a kid though—I paddled around in two-man kayaks; canoes were for mounties serenading their best girlies.

No Sweat, We’re British

This is a word you didn’t use in polite company! I remember learning a saying: “pigs sweat, men perspire, ladies glow”. In SOD44, the verb “sweat” is prefaced with, “avoided in refined speech in the ordinary physical senses.” Now the word is used informally in North America to refer to, for example, sweatpants, although admittedly, this isn’t a verb use.

Drugs in the Tabloid

Nowadays, we associate the word “tabloid” with a small newspaper format (half the size of a broadsheet). These newspapers sell well to people who enjoy salacious gossip, half-truth, rumour, and tales of celebrities falling from grace.

You may be as surprised as I was to discover that the word is originally a term registered by a pharmaceutical company in 1884 to describe medicinal preparations in compressed (tablet) form. Although a registered term, “tabloid” was fairly quickly adopted to describe other goods in compressed form, and this was the sense in which the word was used in news-speak (not to be confused with newspeak).

Most newspapers used to be broadsheets, so the tabloid moniker originally meant, “news in a condensed format”. However, the format quickly came to be associated with news of a scandalous nature that was beneath the dignity of the broadsheets to print. It seems that the normally puritanical Americans were decades ahead of the Brits in this race to the bottom (pun not intended, but retained anyway).

The tabloid form really came into its own in the UK in the late 1960s, some thirty or forty years after the USA. With the format came the connotation, and some of the newly-shrunken newspapers called themselves “compact” rather than tabloid. The UK now refers to “red tops” (e.g., the Mirror, the Sun) and “tabloids” (e.g., the Daily Mail, the Daily Express). “Red Tops” are so-named because of the use of white text in a red background for the newspaper’s masthead. All newspapers appear to be proud of their style and fan base and the reactions that their reporting cause. Those that aren’t “red tops” seem to me to assume an air of superiority over those that are. However, a cynic might point out that the red tops could be likened to pigs and the tabloids to pigs with lipstick, journalistically speaking, although the simile seems base-upwards from a colouration perspective.

Full Circle

Being an ex-Brit, I’d grown up using “ise” endings on words. I really don’t recall using “ize” endings at all. When I immigrated to Canada in 1994, I went out of my way to learn “proper” Canadian spellings. I didn’t want to hang on to British spellings, nor did I want to adopt American spellings—I wanted to use Canadian spellings. Luckily for me, the Canadian Oxford Dictionary was published in 1998, and the Canadian Press adopted it as their reference dictionary. I was therefore happy to adopt “ize” endings. Many British spellings look strange to me now.

A few years later, I discovered that the “ise/ize” debate doesn’t involve the Atlantic Ocean; it involves the 84 miles that separate the Oxford and Cambridge Universities in England.

The Oxford Dictionary advocates the “ize” endings, and does quite a convincing job of justifying that stance. For example, they state that the “ize” ending dates from the 15th century, with “realize” being recorded in 1611; “realise” doesn’t appear until 1755.

The Cambridge Dictionary advocates “ise” endings but doesn’t attempt to justify it (or if it does, the justification has been invisiblised).

The “ise” endings are a French affliction that the British adopted in the 20th century. And those are the ones I learned. Obviously I didn’t use my 1963 Oxford Pocket Dictionary much: if I had, I would have spotted that “ize” endings were cited throughout.

So in a way, I’ve come full circle with the “ize/ise/ize” debate.

And this article has come full circle—Professor David Crystal had said that the French had messed up English spelling, and I guess the “ise” endings are proof positive.

Summary

English is constantly evolving. The problems that many of us have with Shakespeare originate in part from the change in meaning and use of words, and you have to wonder what people will make of 21st century writing in the 25th century.

With the implementation of the 2,400 changes to spelling and punctuation, the Académie Française is acknowledging and encouraging evolution. That’s a healthy thing for any language. Language has to adapt or it will be supplanted by another language that does.