Opprobrious rot!

Came into work this morning and was rifling through the weekend's newspapers when a coworker pointed out an article I was sure to find inflammatory. Across three pages of the Globe and Mail was spread an article on yet another example of our modern-day quest for equality being subverted into a means of placating the lowest common denominator: the vilification and gradual extinction of vocabulary.

Grrrr....

According to the (apparently well-researched) article, our society has determined that a vocabulary made up of words greater than 3 syllables is a threat to our pan-cultural and globally-minded aspirations. Teachers are being told not to challenge children, lest they confuse them or (heaven forbid!) force them to use a dictionary to understand what is being taught to them. Pandering seems to be the modus operandi of our society, where the thought of language-barriers to non-english speakers is abhorrent and thus must be weakened and dumbed down to lessen the considerable strain that such a taxing exercise as learning a new language must place upon ESL students.

Which makes sense, of course. I mean, why set a high standard for yourself and others and have people rise to the occasion and in doing so gain a greater knowledge and understanding of English when we can underestimate people and dumb ourselves down to their level? Brilliant! In this way, we can make headway into eliminating higher brain-function altogether and revert to using a series of grunts and pointing to ensure that even the most neanderthalic among us is not left out.

No child left behind? Great. So let's keep everyone back in the dark ages because it would be dammaging for poor Johnny's self-esteem if he thought that anyone in his class could read better than he could.

Let's see, we've got spell-checkers and grammar checks on our computers, we don't need cursive writing because, of course, we'll ALWAYS have a laptop at the ready should we need to communicate, and, you know what? Fuck it. Let's rid ourselves of higher language altogether. I think a man clubbing me over the head with a large stick and dragging me back to his cave is just as effective a communications tool as asking me out on a date. In fact, it's better, because it's getting to the point and not dallying around, which would waste precious "doing" time with what would otherwise be pointless "saying" time.

According to this article, out of a possible working vocabulary of over 700,000 words (English has, by far, the greatest number and variety of words available of any language, which is what makes it such a utile language in teh first place) the average human being is in possession of between 30,000 and 60,000 words. And the greatest time to learn language (like all other forms of learning) is at a young age. So the modern TV-babysat child whose parents are focussed on ensuring that they can defuse a nuclear missile and prepare for advanced calculus by age 2 are not providing children with the linguistic tools necessary to convey the intellectually challenging ideas with which they can come up with.

The article offers counterpoints by linguists who, being pragmatic beasts (I was nearly one, remember, so I can see this side, too) figure that if it's a word too long to get the point across, then the purpose of language (communication) has been lost and therefore the use of big/complicated words is superfluous. Except, of course, for that naggling fact that larger words allow us to convey specific ideas that might otherwise take half a paragraph of carefully chosen "dummy words" to express. That and, well, the whole idea of a language's "usefulness" completely ignores the fact that language is an artform and tool for expressing the most complex of human thoughts, feats and emotions. For the same reason we don't still use wooden mallets and stone flints to build buildings, opting instead for mitre saws and cement mixers, so too should we not deprive ourselves of the all but the most basic tools of communication.

Ok. So I've rambled on enough about this, but for a final touch of "WTF"-ness, here is a perfect example of such linguistic laziness completely miring our culture:

Harry Potter, perhaps the most popular series of books since Jesus and the Gang got together, sold hundreds of millions of copies in North America alone. And while Canadian children, like their British counterparts, got to read the first book in the series, entitled "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", their neighbours to the south got to read "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." Now, I don't believe (as much as I would sometimes like to) that Canadian children are that much brighter than their American peers. They are, however, apparently more readily able to access a dictionary to find out the meaning of the word "philosopher", which apparently was too difficult for American children's sensitive craniums to grasp. Forget the facts that philosophy is an ancient and still very important field, or that a philosopher's stone is actually a mythological and historical THING (whereas a sorcerer's stone is sweet fuck-all) that has implications to the book itself.

You can see how this makes my brain ache and long for the times when we could sit around in togas, drinking at a symposium and plotting for the moment when we could replace dictators and tyrants with philosopher kings.

All right. I'm done. But I encourage you to read the article here:

Globe and Mail, June 16, 2007

...that is, of course, assuming that you people are still capable of reading.

K