As an English graduate, I rarely get the opportunity to lecture my friends and family about the myriad wonders of poetry, literature and language. Mostly this is because, while I am talking I see their eyes glaze over and then, abruptly, I discover that my less-than-captive audience has wandered away while I've been talking to myself for the last ten minutes on subjects of interest to me.
As an example, I hardly ever get to expound on my favourite historical linguistic event: The Great Vowel Shift. (To answer an unasked question: yes, a person can have more than one favourite historical linguistic event.) So the Great Vowel Shift (I'm not making up the name) is an event in England that took place sometime between 1450 and 1600 wherein all Middle English long vowels changed their pronunciation. Linguistics aren't entirely sure why everyone decided to pronounce all their vowels differently and although there are some theories, it still remains largely, a compelling mystery (for English majors and linguists, largely).
I won't get into the specifics of the pronunciation differences however I will say that this is the main reason that speakers of Late Modern English (that's us) have a difficult time reading Chaucer (Middle English) or Beowulf (Old English) in its original form.
While I am on the subject and I have your undivided attention, one of my biggest pet peeves, aside from misplaced apostrophes and single quotation marks, is the incorrect use of the term "Old English." I'm putting my dusty, scholarly hat on for a moment to let my readers know, if I haven't lost you already, that Shakespeare is not Old English. Old English, also known as Anglo-Saxon, is the language of Beowulf. Old English is closer to German than what we speak today and unless you have some grammatical training, it's next to impossible to read more than a few words. Next, comes Middle English, which is the language of Chaucer and then Early Modern English (Shakespeare) and Late Modern English (us).
Next on the list, I guess would be teenaged emoticons and texting shorthand but I'm largely unfamiliar with how the structure of cul8r and ttyl would fit into a modern lexicon (The Death of English?).
Still with me? If I haven't lost you so far, please keep reading, there's a reward at the end. And that reward is: Poetry!
Now I know I've lost you.
However, it has been a difficult year so far and one of the things that I forget about is how much a person's language can affect your mood. A smile or a kind word can go a long way to improving someone's day and, sadly, the opposite is more readily true.T.S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land is an often quoted poem about spring: "April is the cruellest month, breeding/ Lilacs out the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring/ Dull roots with spring rain." But T.S. Eliot, your poem is depressing and not at all uplifting.
Let's find a nicer spring poem by Emily Dickinson, from Poem 812, "A Light exists in Spring / Not present on the Year / At any other period". You see the power of language is that we can always find someone, somewhere who agrees with us.
We can find anything written to prove our point.
We can be nice.
We can be kind.
We can be truthful and honest.
Or not.
Language is the key. You can focus on the flowers, or you can focus on the dead earth.
It's your choice.
