On Tue, 10 Feb 1998, Alan Baker wrote:
> But the comparison does
> raise the question that maybe the English
> language has simply lost its freshness after
> 400 years of use and misuse...
- Fie, and possibly Tush, Sirrah, how can you say such things in the face
of the sparkly linguistic freshness you see all around you, not least on
this list.
When Zukofsky quoted the gobbit of Golding I lifted, he did so with
specific reference to its *modernity* - all the words and structures are
directly accessible to us today. The language which most quickly passes
its sell-by is surely the official, central "koine", the artificial
received language which seems so universally applicable at the time. As an
instance, try those old news bulletins from 20 years ago - already the
inflection and much of the vocabulary seem stilted as last week's
youthcult terms - usable with irony or not at all.
On the peripheries - however they're defined - language remains a fairly
dynamic process, still capable of surprise (for me anyway). I'd be awful
sorry if it ever stopped.
RC
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