Peter Bradwell
Researcher
Peter Bradwell is a researcher at Demos. He is interested in digital identity, technology and the ways that information and knowledge is shared...
Alongside some good press, there was some ripe coverage of the pamphlet too. I say it was ‘of’ our pamphlet – actually, we found it a little difficult recognising our position or its recommendations in some of the coverage. We shouldn’t be too precious about these things of course, but I thought it was worth making a brief comment about this stuff.
The Daily Mail was perhaps the pick of the bunch, with the disbelieveing headline ‘A-Levels in Hinglish?’ We gathered some stinging comments too. The headline of this post is how my favourite comment begins, a note from Ken –
“This hair-brained notion can only have come from one of those groups of intellectual pygmies that inhabit various and nefarious 'think-tanks' and consultancies who lose sight of common sense in the rarified atmosphere they breath and share among themselves. English is English and does not need manipulating to meet the way that other nationalities chatter. No wonder half the children leaving school are unable to express themselves clearly.”
I just looked up nefarious (in an Oxford English Dictionary, no less), and apparently it can mean wicked, and even criminal! Not very nice. We aren’t taking it personally though because, to be fair to Ken, he and all the other commenters are responding to a pretend version of the pamphlet, one that fits in to all sorts of well-rehearsed stories.
We don’t recommend teaching Singlish or Hinglish instead of UK English, and we don’t think we should ‘dump the dictionary’.
We have what we think is an interesting idea about an online dictionary that anyone can add entries to (called democtionary.org), comment on and develop. And we suggest that we will encounter English in lots of different forms, from functional business English to culturally specific forms like Singlish and Hinglish, and that being able to accommodate and respond to this difference is an important skill.
In the pamphlet we are trying to point out some challenging trends relating to our native tongue that are likely to have a big influence on the world around us, and which will change the benefits and opportunities English has afforded. And we suggest how we might respond.
If you’re interested in knowing more, you can download the pamphlet free here. Do let us know what you think.
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Comments
I'm far more concerned by the loss of careful, considered and meaningful debate than the continued evolution of the English language.
Some people need to get a life - and get online - and read As You Like it. Perhaps then we could engage in a useful discussion about the real arguments Sam and Pete make.
Love the democtionary. I was wondering, though, how do you make sure the tags are meaningful across languages? Will there be South Americans seeing "automaton" tagged with "robot" and wondering what on earth it has to do with traffic lights? Will be interesting to see what kind of a meta-lingua franca emerges, anyway - best of luck with it.