Cranky? Maybe you've got gas.

The ranters are out in force this week, to profess their horror and disgust at the encroachment of Americanisms into the sacred portals of British English. This is an oft recurring complaint, which doesn't seem to staunch the vehemence of the protesters. Come to that, neither does the fact that their roaring, spluttering and frenzied key-bashing has so far achieved precisely naught; the American lexical army marches inexorably onward across our frontier.

The latest outbreak of anti-American feeling is due to a children's short story competition. Sifting through the 74000 entries, beady eyes have spotted the occasional "sidewalk", "smart" (meaning intelligent), and even "garbage". Cue howls of horror and much cyber hand-wringing. Our children have been corrupted! We're all doomed!

The Daily Mail, as always, treated the subject in a calm and rational manner.
"Two centuries ago, British abolitionists fought the American slave trade. Now a new campaign of abolition is needed - to rid us of American-English." thunders Christopher Stevens, in a tirade that is as offensive as it is inaccurate. His fury runs riot over the page, causing him to compare Americanisms to "destructive and virulent" grey squirrels, and to boast of the fact that he can use the word "mellifluous" in a sentence. Bravo Christopher.

Yet the anger and hyperbole is not, for once, confined to the Mail. Journalists and bloggers everywhere are pressing the panic button, and demanding that action be taken to protect the purity of the British language.

In all seriousness, I can - almost - understand where the howlers are coming from. As a self-confessed linguistic pedant, I do believe that preserving our language is important. I believe that education in language is important, as it is one of the most influential tools we will ever wield, both in our personal and our professional lives. However, my interest lies in teaching people to spell and pronounce words correctly, and to understand the rudiments of grammar. And there it stops. If people can use the language correctly to communicate, convince and cajole, why should we get upset about what words they use?

It is no coincidence that the people who are crossest about these developments seem to be, for the most part, Little Englanders. One doesn't tend to see Scottish, Irish or Welsh people jumping to defend "British English". And why on earth should they? It's a ridiculous phrase with no meaning. The Celtic languages may have almost died out, but each and every area of England speaks its own brand of English, peppered with dialect, accent and idiosyncrasy. It is a ridiculous and conceited idea to think that there is such a thing as a "generic" English, blanketing the British Isles. Even the notoriously reactionary BBC no longer considers Received Pronunciation to be the only acceptable form of televised English. Language reflects a culture, and Britain is proudly multicultural. It's rather a marvellous thing, if slightly surreal, to hear white middle class people using Jamaican patois on television. It shows how receptive and welcoming British people are on the whole to incomers. Apart from, apparently, Americans.

I do not understand how we can possibly justify the exclusion of American English from a language which is made up of French, Latin, Greek, German, to name but a few. Not to mention the many everyday words which Shakespeare simply invented to suit his needs. Why are the European invaders acceptable, but American ones not? British people seem to think it is fine to be rude about the Americans, that they are somehow fair game, and this lack of civility extends to our comments on their language. Apparently it is "Crude", "Simplistic" and "Dumbed Down". This because Americans have a predilection for portmanteau words and using verbs as nouns and vice-versa. What exactly is wrong with that? They are merely adapting their language to changing situations and environments." Sidewalk" is one of the examples used by Mr Stevens in the Mail of a "Frankenstein" word, implying that it is somehow ugly in its simplicity. As far as I'm concerned, it does what it says on the tin. Should we then in Britain stop using words such as "Blackboard" and "Campsite"?

The phenomenon works both ways, of course. American English is also constantly assimilating from many other languages including British English. "Mates", "Bespoke", "Zed", and "Arse" have all appeared recently in the American media. Indeed some of the words that people get most upset about, such as "Vacation", "Gotten" and "Oftentimes" are British words that have gone to America and come back again. Interestingly the Americans don't seem to resent our linguistic invasion of their language at all.

The only theory I can come up with to explain our mass rejection of Americanisms is fear. Not of the language, but of the country itself. We worry that our national and political identity will eventually be swallowed up by the all-dominating giant that is the USA and we are powerless to stop it. Our changing language is symptomatic of the ever more pervasive influence of America over our politics and culture. And as always, when we cannot cure the disease we attack the symptoms instead.

It won't change anything of course. As the French have comprehensively proved through their years of fruitless struggle, a language cannot be legislated. It is an organism; living, growing, adapting and mutating, it truncates, adopts and assimilates as necessary. As long as it is considered, appreciated, and above all used to its full extent, I don't see the problem. The children who have caused this particular storm were behaving naturally; they picked and chose from the words they hear everyday to find the one that best suited their purpose. Does it really matter if that word is American? Let's face it; these children were educated, intelligent and motivated enough to enter a short story competition. How many of us can say the same?

The Demon

The Demon

The was a demon in the bottle

We all knew it was there

But no-one would acknowledge it

We pretended not to care

He lurked there in the darkness

All eyes and teeth and claws

Longing to tear us apart

With his evil jaws

His blood red eyes were on us

At the funeral or the feast

Wedding and birth both were ripe

With the odour of the beast

As we ate the Christmas turkey

And danced across the floor

The demon’s eyes would follow us

So we laughed all the more

 The demon’s voice was in our heads

Though no-one else could hear

We couldn’t make out the words but still

The meaning was quite clear

We talked ever more loudly

Sometimes we’d even shout

We rang the bells and banged the drums

To drown the demon out

I shouted loud, but still I heard

The dread voice of the beast

His terrible howling filled my head

Begging to be released

Despite myself I listened to

The demon’s awful song

And started to feel pity for

The creature bound so long

Maybe we were monsters

To keep him bottled so

Wouldn’t it be kinder

To let the demon go?

I thought that if I freed him

He’d fly so far away

That I’d never have to hear him more

Until my dying day

The others tried to stop me

They begged me, and they cried

They hid the bottle, tried to keep

The demon safe inside

But I was deaf to their appeal

I searched and finally found

The bottle, held it high and then

I smashed it on the ground

The blinding light was such that we

Were all thrown to the floor

But as we looked, we found we saw

More clearly than before

The demon’s piercing light had left

Us with no place to hide

Our dark and secret corners lit

Our eyes were open wide

Every face around me showed

The ugliness beneath

I gasped to see the mottled skin

The yellow, twisted teeth

The bitter lines, the cruel sneers

Their mouths twisted with lies

And worst, I saw the shock I felt

Reflected in their eyes

I knew then that my face and theirs

Must look almost the same

For I was not an innocent

I had my share of blame

So I turned to the demon

And looked him in the face

No hideous monster now, instead

A shining light of grace

My heart lifted and I found

I couldn’t drop my gaze

But the others tried to hide away

From the fiery blaze

They screamed and wept but to my awe

I found myself to be

Becoming, as I was stripped away

As beautiful as he

I watched the others writhing

In their shame upon the floor

I could not help them, for they were

Now lost for evermore

I knew I’d found the thing I had

Been seeking since my youth

The answer from the bottle poured

My demon’s name was Truth.

Magic Spelling

I read with interest today the case of a school in Bedfordshire who has a policy of putting a maximum of three spelling corrections on a piece of work, in order to avoid denting the child's confidence. This was brought to light by a concerned parent, who reported it to her local MP, Andrew Selous, who rather sounds like a spelling mistake himself. Tory MP Mr Sealous does not approve of this particular piece of legislation, to which many schools are apparently currently adhering, and therefore naturally blames it on the old regime. He has called for the Commons to debate the issue.
I've been debating the issue all day in my head - TGI Friday, I'm getting no work done - and I still haven't reached a conclusion on it.

On the one hand, I honestly believe it is essential for children to be given, as early on as possible, what the concerned parent referred to in her letter as "the basic building blocks of English". I really like that phrase actually. I like the idea that we are all architects, and it is up to us whether we create with our 'blocks' a beautiful, baroque mansion, a functional, redbrick community building, or a ghastly concrete eyesore. Anyway, I digress. Mr Selous agrees, saying "Being able to write correctly is essential for adult life. Schools that do not ensure that their pupils can spell and write correctly will be failing them." It is undeniable that in this global climate competition for jobs is going to be fierce (i before e), and that parents have every right to expect schools to provide the best possible preparation for the dog eat dog job market.

However, the first question that springs to my mind is: How important is spelling nowadays? A quick rifle through the internet would suggest the answer: Not very. The many and various ill-spelled and yet incredibly popular blogs out there, the dementedly punctuated responses to those blogs, the glaring errors to be found even in some online national newspapers; all this leads me to conclude that people value content far beyond style, nowadays. Which is, after all, a valid point; if someone is an eloquent, passionate and influential political commentator, with well researched and intelligent opinions, does it really matter if he leaves an R out of the word embarrassed? An error which I must admit often leaves me - um - red-faced.

Which leads me to another point; I am sure I am not the only person who, when unsure of the spelling of a particular word and having no dictionary to hand, simply chooses another which they can spell from their mental thesaurus and continues blithely on. While this can be a good and productive thing, encouraging us to explore our vocabulary more thoroughly, there are two problems with this that I can see.
The first is that not every word possesses an exact synonym. English is a language full of nuance and subtlety, and even a small difference can vastly alter the sentiment that you are trying to express. For example, take the sentence "She approached the teacher in a timorous fashion". Imagine the word Timorous replaced by the word Cowardly. The two words differ only slightly in meaning, but in the second example, "She approached the teacher in a cowardly fashion", the impression of the subject is suddenly very negative.
The second issue I can see with this is that almost inevitably one would choose a simpler, and probably shorter word, than the word one was having difficulty with. And one would probably continue to use that word in future, as the simpler option. Then someone would come along who couldn't spell that word, and required a simpler one. The logical conclusion, if we extrapolate this to its furthest point, would see us roaming the earth conversing purely in words of one syllable, à la Caveman. Impossible? Don't be so sure. One only has to look at Text-Speak to see the simplicity of language that we have already generated in our search for ease and speed.

Is spelling still important to employers? Unlike the French, who still in many cases require a hand written cover letter accompanying the CV, most British employers are now happy to accept typed, and therefore Spell-Checked letters, or in many cases no letter at all. In my job I am required to write reams, either by letter or more usually by e-mail, to and for customers, but nobody ever checked that I could spell before I was offered the job. Maybe my previous career as an English teacher spoke for me, but I am pretty sure that none of my colleagues were required to sit a spelling proficiency test either. One of my friends, a manager in her company, is slightly dyslexic. Although I write all of her important correspondence for her, she regularly sends e-mails to customers riddled with spelling mistakes, and nobody that I know of has ever pulled her up on it. And why would they? She is friendly, professional, and makes sure that all of their concerns and queries are dealt with efficiently and on time. What matters a wandering apostrophe?

In my previous career, teaching business English to French people, my policy was only to correct repetitive mistakes. That is to say, to treat each error as a one off, until I saw or heard it again. I applied this rule as I realise how intrinsically linked are confidence and achievement. Constant hesitation can mean a lost opportunity, a ruined project. People need to feel that they are doing well, otherwise why would they bother continuing?

I am trying desperately, as you may have noticed, to create a case for both sides of this debate. But deep in my heart I know there can only be one answer for me. I am a pedant. A Grammar Nazi, I believe is the current unflattering term. It doesn't just apply to grammar though; I am also a stickler for spelling and, when speaking, pronunciation. Maybe I could call myself a Langauge Guardian? It is a hereditary condition; my mother is one too. A careless "would of", a misapplied "it's"; these things pierce us to the heart. I can't switch it off either. I have learned not to correct people all the time - apparently they find that irritating, who knew? - but I continue to twitch internally and reach for my mental red pen.

The main conclusion I have reached it that this policy is essentially demeaning to teachers. Teachers are not stupid. It is perfectly possible to point out a child's errors whilst still emphasising their achievements, or congratulating them on their progress since the last time. Children don't need to believe they are perfect; this way ASBO lies. However they do need to feel that they are getting better, that they are achieving. And I'm sure that most teachers are capable of understanding and applying this without meddling from the government. Mr Sealous, take note.

If you wood like too leave any coments Id be very intrested too here what you think about this ishue.