Plain Talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

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It's difficult to tell how many books have been written about the English language. I, for one, must have read at least a dozen during my studies of the English language and its literature.

I have just read reviews of three newly published books: Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss which deals mainly with punctuation, Accommodating Broccoli in the Cemetery by Vivian Cook, which is about spelling mistakes, and Lost for Words: The Mangling and Manipulation of the English Language by John Humphrys.

I have a copy of yet another recent book on English in front of me: The Adventure of English, by one of the leading English writers, with 19 novels to his name and over six non-fiction works, including a biography of Lawrence Olivier. Melvyn Bragg's book is subtitled 500 AD to 2000: The Biography of a Language.

Braggs indeed treats the language as a "living organism," tracing English from where it began as a common tongue until the present time when it has become the lingua franca.

The book reads like a narrative and one interesting narrative at that. It is, in the author's words, "about the words which describe the way we live, the words we think in, sing in, speak in; the words which nourish our imagination, words which tell us what we are." English to him has a character and presence of its own.

The book is a result of a programme the author produced for BBC Radio 4 sometime ago called "The Rules of English." In it he discussed the ways in which English has changed and developed on the tongue, that is the development of spoken English as pronunciation. The present book has evoked another programme, this time on the British Independent Television (ITV), dealing with the history of English.

Naturally, I cannot present a comprehensive account of the book here. I shall simply stop at certain landmarks in the development of this language. At one stage English became the speech of kings overtaking French. During the reign of King Henry IV, after a period of ups and downs English became a royal language. Latin and French had not lost their grip as the languages of official business and of the Church.

The second stop was Chaucer who was "the first writer of the newly emerged England. He told us what we were." In the Canterbury Tales he describes characters that can still be seen in modern times, writing them in what the author calls "new English." That was in the 14th century when "English speakers talk directly to us, through skillful stories told by a group of pilgrims to ease the time as they ride from Southwark in London to Canterbury Cathedral. Here I would like to add that I presented a series of dramatised versions of the Tales on the BBC Arabic Service years ago.

The fight for the English language was with the Church and the state. But it was with the Church that English had its most violent struggle, led by the 14th century scholar John Wycliffe. Wycliffe challenged the Catholic Church over a number of issues, but his main argument was that everyone had the right to read and interpret Scripture for himself. Hence, he encouraged the translation of the Bible into English and inspired two such translations which "rightly bear his name."

However, it was William Tyndale's Bible that became the authorised version. It was published in Germany where Tyndale lived but copies were smuggled into England. The quality of this English translation had "rhythmical beauty, a simplicity of phrase, crystal clarity, which penetrated deep into the bedrock of English today whenever it is spoken". The author gives some of Tyndale's expressions which remain in use: scapegoat, let there be light, the powers that be, my brother's keeper, fight the good fight, flowing with milk and honey etc.

I hope that I've managed to stir up an interest in this wonderful book. I might pick it up again in future columns.