Confused?
So was I. When our year 13 English class had to read the play Othello, by Mr William Shakespeare, there was a collection of groans - "But Miss, we don't understand it, can't we just watch Shrek instead?"
Being a senior drama student and having worked with Shakespeare before, I fared a lot better than my classmates who had to read the play aloud, cold turkey.
"Old English" - that is what we call this strange language in Shakespeare's plays. What will the English language we speak now be called in 500 years, when we are long gone and people speak in beeps and bops?
Will the English language even exist, or will it continue to be abbreviated beyond recognition?
The English language is ever-changing. It is unique from most other languages in how it has embraced words from other languages to expand its own. Little by little, Maori has been edged into New Zealanders' vocabulary. For example, Oxford's Dictionary of New Zealand English has added Maori words such as "whanau".
The German language does not add any words from other languages, in an attempt to keep German pure. What does this say about the English language?
Changes in the language are well and good, but New Zealanders are increasingly lazy with their use of language. We expect things to happen quickly. We are increasingly reliant on fast-food outlets, internet banking and self-service checkouts. Rather than reading a book to learn about the discovery of New Zealand why not Google it?
In 0.18sec you can get up to 2600281 hits.
Laziness has crept into everything we do and so has hindered how we speak and write. Children are entering our schools now with very low oral skills because they have little social interaction from watching the television. Cellphone abbreviations are increasingly used in emails and hand writing. We don't text, we txt.
Businesses are called BedsRUs.
And all this is now being encouraged by our education system.
In 2006, NZQA allowed abbreviated text language be used in the answers for NCEA examinations.
And this makes me wonder about the future of English language.
I might be able to access Shakespeare, but would I be able to read the English of the future?
Will my descendants read my favourite writers with the same sense of dread that my classmates approach the Bard?
- By Olivia Sanders, Year 13, South Otago High School
