Pronounced Contrast
Edison’s phonograph. He may have slowed the pace of linguistic change.
A door just opened on a street –
I, lost, was passing by –
An instant’s width of warmth disclosed,
And wealth, and company.The door as sudden shut, and I,
I, lost, was passing by, –
Lost doubly, but by contrast most,
Enlightening misery.— “Contrast,” by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Note that the rhyme indicates Emily’s pronunciation of “compan-ie” and “miser-ie”.
Occasionally poetr-ie reveals how languages must have been pronounced differently in the past (at least in the dialect of the poet).
But it seems likely to me that only a small portion of such pronunciation changes would happen to be revealed by rhymes. There may be other means of discovering them, but I can imagine that there might have been plenty of such changes, even in recent centuries, that we have no way of knowing about. Right until the invention of audio recording.
And it seems likely to me that that invention made all changes in pronunciation transparent — denying them the veil of time behind which they used to hide. Tending to prevent them.
Does this mean that the pace of language change (at least phonetic change) must have decreased strongly in the last century-and-a-half? Did we technologically freeze our languages? :)
July 13th, 2005 at 11:29 am
Uh… are you forgetting how popular culture changes the pronounciation of things? Specific examples comes to mind.. such as people saying, “aks” instead of “ask”… (I’m going to be incredibly aware of this in the next year as I return to the States again!)
No, we didn’t technologically freeze our languages. Rather, technology will probably speed up the pace of language change because “what’s cool” will be spread faster. And, at least in English, “what’s cool” is messing with language or trying to use it incorrectly on purpose.
July 13th, 2005 at 10:33 pm
Ah, good point. Fair enough, technology certainly affects the process of language change, but in more complex ways than I casually suggested. Of course.
Did “aks” arise out of popular culture? I thought it was from some kind of regional or ethnic dialect.
Don’t know about using language “incorrectly” … is it really incorrect if you are doing it on purpose? Or is it just using language in a way that differs from established convention?
I wonder how many of the conventions we call correct language today may have been found incorrect around the time they were first established.
Maybe correct language is ultimately defined only by those unreasonable few who use language incorrectly (i.e. in novel ways).
Maybe “all progress depends on” them.
July 15th, 2005 at 2:32 am
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ…* huh?
Oh, sorry… fell asleep there for a sec…
Really, dude… you have WAY too much time on your hands to be thinking about these things… but since you raised these questions, hell, I’ll go ahead and give you my totally bullshit answers.
First of all, I only have good points. Your point on me having good points is redundant… ;-)
Secondly, “aks” probably arose partly out of dyslexia, perhaps partly out of people’s inability to realize that “aks” sounds like “axe” and that a noun doesn’t always substitute so well for a verb, and partly because they think it sounds cool to be from “the ‘hood…”
Don’t know if it’s incorrect to use language incorrectly on purpose. I think we’re going into deeper issues here than language… It may be, as you pointed out, using language in a way that differs from established convention. Or it could be just someone showing off. Knowing Americans, it’s the latter. No one’s that smart in the States. Even me.
“I wonder how many of the conventions we call correct language today may have been found incorrect around the time they were first established.” Don’t know, but I expect a 500-word essay on this topic on my desk by 4pm tomorrow.
“Maybe correct language is ultimately defined only by those unreasonable few who use language incorrectly (i.e. in novel ways).” Again, don’t know. Ask e e cummings, Mark Twain, or even Halldor Laxness… oops, they’re all dead…
“Maybe all progress depends on them.” Oh please, God, no…
July 18th, 2005 at 3:51 pm
Regarding the technological freeze of pronunciation: If technology had this impact then the written language should not have changed much since 1455.
A note on correct language: The idea of a correct language is probably related to the concept of the nation state. When a nation state is invented and created a language is often used as a national identifier. More importantly there has been a tendency in many states to define a “correct language”. This was done in Iceland when supporters of the nation-to-be defined language rules for Icelandic and condemned deviances as *WRONG*. This is still notable in Iceland as the country has one of the worlds highest ratio of language fascists.