OUR MOTHER TONGUE

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 148, 18 March 1939, Page 9

OUR MOTHER TONGUE

Random Notes [By Pkofessob Arnold Wall.} Samuel Richardson, the pioneer novelist, who loved above all the society of the ladies, noticed that certain words tended to be used exclusively oy the fair sex (then so-called), among which were “batter” and “flurry,” neither of which is now monopolized by either sex. I am reminded of this by Bowler’s observation concerning the misuse of the word “clever” in the sense of “bookish,” “studious,” “successful in school,” which appears, he says, “specially in feminine conversation.” Conjurors And Burglars.

A critical reader of these notes draws my attention to this misuse, thinking that it is a peculiarity of New Zealand speakers, which it by no means is, being very common wherever the English language is spoken by women. He would always prefer to say “able when he seeks to describe mental ability above the average, and there are, of course, plenty of other appropriate words. The root idea underlying the true meaning of “clever” is “ingenuity,” “adroitness,” “manual or mental dexterity,” or “Quickness in apprehension.” This notion of rapid seizing is, indeed, the original idea involved, for “quick at seizing” is the sense of the old adjective, “diver,” from which our word descends, and the related noun, “clivers,” means the “talons of a bird of prey,” So “clever” is the proper word to describe the typical activities of conjurors, burglars, politicians, diplomatists and performing dogs. Looking back on it, I think this is rather a clever paragraph. Basic English

Aly correspondent lias noticed that Dickens invariably uses the word “resource” in such expressions as “I had no resource but to . . .” and modern writers generally say “no option” or “no alternative”, and he asks whether Dickens’s usage is out of date. I should say that his observation is quite correct, and that while “resource” is perfectly correct and good, it at least tends to be disused in this phrase or class of phrases. This is a typical instance of the extraordinary wealth of our language in synonyms, and it is this superabundance of words meaning the same thing that prompted the invention of “basic English,” which may be succinctly described as “restricted English.” The idea is to make a selection of the truly indispensable words required for all practical purposes, and to exclude all'synonyms, just as if we were to dismiss a whole crowd of useless, loafing footmen and flunkeys from a great household and retain only those servants whose offices are strictly necessary. The vocabulary has thus been reduced from several thousand words to under (or about) one thousand. For literary purposes, oratory, poetry, and so forth the pruned vocabulary is obviously inadequate, but the main idea is excellent. Illustrations of our unnecessarily’ swollen bank account may be found perhaps most strikingly in the language of the law. For instance, the simple idea of ‘to say” or “to state” will be found in old statutes expressed by means of a long string of more or less synonymous terms, such as “aver,” “allege,” "declare?” “affirm,” “assert” and so forth, but whether the lawyer, in using all ■these words, was anxious to cover all possible contingencies and to stop up loopholes, or was simply making his document as long as possible so as to be able to charge more for drawing it up, it is not for me to say. “Lust Of Novelty”

The same critic provides a further illustration of the point when he observes that the working people of New Zealand with: whom he •makes contact” seem to avoid like the plague the use of the. word “man” to describe a person. They will say “bloke”, “fellow”, “chap”, “chappie”, “cobber”, "unprintable”, but. not plain “man.” This is quite true, and there is an interesting reason for the habit. The phrase “lust of novelty”, used by an old grammarian of Queen Anne’s time, well describes the principle which underlies this tendency. We tend to “get tired” of a word or expression which we are obliged to use on innumerable occasions from day to day, and with, our natural hatred of dull routine and mere huindrummery we snatch at any means of relief. So we find that in most languages that part which is in most constant use shows the most rapid and frequent changes, e.g., the auxiliary verbs like "to be” and “to have”, which will generally be found to be “irregular” and capricious in their forms and idioms. Similarly, we may notice that while the more ceremonious and less frequently worn forms of clothing, suqh as dress-suits, remain unchanged during long periods of . time (speaking comparatively) fashions in our ordinary working and living articles of dress tend to change more rapidly and frequently, such things as hats, collars and ties, for instance, even when worn by the more conservative and less expending sex. “Not Wanted.”

My attention has been directed to a curious instance of the way in which a word may move by imperceptible decrees from its original meaning until it gives us, when we see it in some old writing, exactly the opposite idea to that which was intended by the unfortunate old writer. The example is from Defoe’s classic, “Robinson Crusoe,” so that it is a little over 200 years old. Crusoe tells how hard he found it to make butter and cheese, also salt, which at last he succeeded in making, so that, he says, “I never wanted it afterwards.”' Now, to the modern reader, this conveys the idea that, after all his trouble, he found that he did not need it, whereas Crusoe means that he was “never without it” when he needed il. There is something similar in Crusoe’s use of the word “amusement.” He tells how he suffered intense mental agony from unfounded fears, and refers to these agonies as “amusement”— "having, by the amusement of my mind, been, as it were, tired.” The only delinition of the verb “to amuse” in a dictionary of Defoe’s day is “To stop or slay a Person with a trifling Story, Jo make him lose his Time, to feed with expectations, to hold in Play.” It was not in this sense that it was used by ljueen Victoria, when she said, “We i re not amused.”