Linguistic Quests

Whoa, it's as if we traveled forward in time from the 80's to the 2000's in a matter of days. Also, we're not listening to a story of English but an adventure. What time does to some stuff. Anyway The Adventure of English brought us examples of people who already had enough of common people speech and wanted a proper way of speaking.

Firstly we have John Locke, after surviving a plane crash and magically gaining strength in his legs... Right wrong one. Locke wrote an essay believing in that if all misunderstandings were removed, there would be no more conflicts. It could be done. How many times have there been bar fights because someone misunderstood someone else? Plenty.

As seen from 1:10 onward we can see how misunderstanding can lead to conflict. Seeing from that point we can agree if there was more understanding between people then such consequences won't occur. Though could it solve wars and other deeper conflicts? No. I guess Locke only wanted a language in which everyone understood each other with no mistakes. It seems that idea will always seem unreachable as everyday language seems to change and society not quite keeping up with it.

After that we have Jonathan Swift and Samuel Johnson. Both wanted to improve Standard English and have done everything possible such as setting up institutions for language and coming up with the first dictionary. They were worried slang would change the English language and have some sort of base in which everyone would have to follow. Though sadly, they weren't so lucky as their idea of the perfect English was not approved by everyone and sought to be too archaic. We can relate to this now a days as there has been an increase in slang in the last few years. These include words founded in music, games and movies. If you think about it, most of them came from the media.

Finally there is Robert Burns and William Wordsworth who completely disregarded the guys' theories mentioned above. They wrote poems (pronounced "perms" in the video) in the Scottish dialect. Both showed and helped Scottish thrive after constant batter for English to be only used in Britain. Wordsworth said there was no need for a deep poetic diction since poetry could be written in the mans common tongue.

There is so much to talk about in language. It’s hard to say what the future brings to English as its uncontrollable and always changing. Without a doubt, there will always be more words inserted into the language and some won't be heard of again.