Who Owns English?

While we want to make sure that we write effectively and clearly, it’s probably not even possible to write unassailable English. Unlike its French or German cousins, English is a language without an official set of rules. We don’t have a formal body presiding over our language in the same way that French speakers have the Académie Française, the organization that acts as the state-sponsored authority on French and publishes the official French dictionary. Even if you don’t recognize the name of the Académie Française you’re probably aware of their work. They pop up every now and then in those news stories on TV about the French trying to reassert control over their language by weeding out anglicized words like “weekend,” “t-shirt,” or “parking.” That’s the Académie Française in action. These reports seem to be cyclical and recur every few years, much like panic over Pit-bull attacks or threats of the imminent resurgence of bell-bottoms, but they seem to recur much more frequently when the French are out of favor and we have troops in Iraq. I remember hearing one of these anti-English stories for the first time when I was a teenager. Back then I was in the middle of spending several years being outraged by everything so, of course, I was outraged. Telling people how to speak and how to write! What could be wrong with calling a t-shirt a t-shirt! That’s un-American!

Now that I’ve spent more time trying to write clearly myself and have many years experience in trying to teach other people how to write, the idea of having a well-defined set of rules doesn’t sound so bad. In fact, it sounds a little comforting. Because the way English works is very different. You can’t even get very far in a discussion of English spelling, punctuation or grammar without having to clear up which version of English you’re talking about. Is it American English or English English? The language spoken in Australia or in India? And don’t even think about going out and buying a copy of the official English dictionary-- there’s no such thing. Despite the opening paragraphs of millions of high school essays (“Webster’s Dictionary defines Freedom as…”) and factoids from an equal number of corporate PowerPoint presentations, there’s no such thing as Webster’s Dictionary. Many publishers have piled on the legacy of Noah Webster by creating dictionaries that include “Webster’s” in their title, including the Merriam-Webster dictionary-- which is the legitimate descendant of Webster’s original work. English dictionaries, even the big impressive ones with the leather covers, even the ones with the gilt-edged pages, are different than the dictionary published by the Académie Française because they are meant to chronicle the way the language is used, not the way that it should be used. Webster’s first dictionary was conceived, in fact, to document uniquely “American” usages, to show how the language had grown in the English colonies. One of Webster’s original goals was to capture the everyday language of Americans, including new words derived from Native American languages (like “wigwam”) that seemed to especially excite him.

Don’t believe me? Get out the dictionary and look up a word that your elementary school English teacher told you not to use. No, not the dirty ones (though they are there too). How about ain’t? Most of us know a little ditty that tells us that the word doesn’t even exist: “Ain’t ain’t a word/ so you ain’t supposed to use it.” But when I look it up in the online version of the Merriam-Webster dictionary, there it is:

Pronunciation: 'Ant
Etymology: contraction of are not
1 : am not : are not: is not
2 : have not : has not
3 : do not : does not : did not -- used in some varieties of Black Englishusage Although widely disapproved as nonstandard and more common in the habitual speech of the less educated, ain't in senses 1 and 2 is flourishing in American English. It is used in both speech and writing to catch attention and to gain emphasis .

While the dictionary tells us that the usage of ain’t is widely disapproved, it doesn’t mind including it right along with all of the respectable words. In fact, it makes it seem kind of rebellious and cool. Heck, if Nixon is using ain’t, why shouldn’t I?

All right, then, go ahead and look up some of those dirty words. Just promise to come back.