Oh, Maya! What’s Become of the Language?

The other night the evening news ran a story about a guy who’s traveling the country correcting grammatical errors in signs he sees--an apostrophe here, one deleted there, spelling mistakes, the like. He’s found a lot of them. I particularly liked the sign promoting stationery, for people to write on, where the company itself had spelled it “stationary,” something that stands still. I thought it was a cool way to travel. I wonder if he gets paid.

As someone schooled in English, I often wince at its “slaughter.” Newscasters particularly gall me. They have almost completely dropped the “ly” from adverbs, words that modify, or describe verbs (words of action, for those who’ve been away from the blackboard a while!)--drive safe, when it should be drive safely, eat healthy when it should be eat healthily. Healthy and safe modify nouns--a healthy snack, a healthy boy, a safe drive, a safe trip to grandmother’s house. I’m irked because they are supposed to know better, being also schooled in English. And, I am irked because I suspect the reason they butcher the language (this is only one example) is to make it fit their sound-bite time constraints.

Another side of me thinks there can be too much nit-picking. After all, I still understand the message. When they say, “Drive safe,” they mean, “Drive safely,” or “Have a safe drive.” And isn’t that ultimately the aim of language? To convey a message?

I also know that there is a difference between the written word and the spoken word. And I like the variations. They keep language, and communication, vibrant and dynamic and fun. Still, there are times and places, and, as the old saying goes, you must know the rules to break them. Knowing the rules, and purposefully breaking them gives them even more meaning, the original conventional meaning and the new one created by the juxtaposition between the accepted and the “broken” usage. But if the original rule is not known, much of the meaning and nuance of language is lost.

In watching HBO’s series, “John Adams,” this winter, I was struck by how the language has changed since the birth of the United States. It takes some close listening to understand all they are saying! They speak in eloquent, drawn out sentences that convey well-crafted and complete, no-room-left-for-doubt, thoughts. They have true discussions. Nowadays, people seem more likely to string together a series of phrases, a sort of stream-of-consciousness thing that conjures up images--you get the gist, but it’s lacking in finely tuned articulation. Such is the evolution of language.

Getting back to those typos and errors: PBS’ “Nova” recently examined the hieroglyphs of the ancient Mayan civilization. It was a difficult code to crack because the language had so many systematic variations. There would be no room for a typo--not only because they are carved in stone, but because it would drastically change the meaning of the symbol. I wonder what linguists 3000 years from now will think of our “code”--and if they'll be able to crack it!