Characteristics of English Language: C. L. Wrenn

GENERAL CHARACTER OF ENGLISH

 The English Language: An Introduction

English a medium of international communication -Its many-sided role in international affairs - Its suitability to the expression of newer ideas and thoughts.

 The Characteristics of English: Liabilities

1.            Lack   of   correlation   between   spelling   and pronunciation.

2.            Idiomatic expressions.

3.            The copiousness of vocabulary and the difficulties in using it.

4.            Synonymous character.

The English Language: An Introduction

English today is among the most vibrant and living languages of th» world. That this language, which only four centuries ago had been spoken by a speech community of a few millions and unknown to the rest of the world, has now become an almost indispensable medium of international communication with its speakers spread over all the continents is an amazing phenomenon. The present standing of English is partly attributable to its establishment as a mother tongue outside England. It is the language of the United States spoken by over 270 million people, besides being the major native tongue in Canada, Australia,

 

New Zealand and South Africa. Where it is not a native language, English is an important medium of communication such as in India and other former British colonies. In these countries, though there has been a pronounced tendency to change over to the vernacular medium, for a long time ahead English will be an important language in the spheres of higher education, trade and commerce, administration and judiciary.

 Apart from its use in the former colonies in the past few hundred years, the English speaking peoples have played a large part in sea-faring and international trade so much so that today it is an essential commercial language of the world. Writes C.L. Barber:

 If a Norwegian or Dutch business firm wants to write to a firm in Japan or Brazil or Ceylon, it will probably do so in English, and will expect to receive a reply in English. In science, too, the English-speaking peoples have played a large part, and in recent years there has been an increasing tendency for scientists in other countries to publish in English, which in this field has gained at the expense of German. Of course, English is not the only important international language. Arabic, French, German, Malay, and Spanish all play an important part in certain areas. Russian has become of greater international importance than ever before, and will undoubtedly continue to go up; and we can confidently expect that Chinese will soon follow. But at the moment it does seem that English is the most important of the international languages. Again to quote A.C. Baugh

“Today it would seem as though English were in the ascendant. Its pre-eminence in commercial use is undoubted. Its employment for purposes of science and research has increased notably of late, especially in Scandinavian countries and among the smaller nationalities of Europe. Its influence is dominant in the East, cultivated Chinese and Japense have adopted it as a second language. It is nowhere a question of substituting English for the native speech. Nothing is a matter of greater patriotic feeling than the mother tongue. The question simply concerns the use of English, or some other widely known idiom, for international communication. And as John Galsworthy remarked, "any impartial scrutiny made at this moment of time must place English at the head of all languages as the most likely to become, in a natural, unforced way, the single intercommunicating tongue." (A History of the English Language)

 English shares with the other highly developed languages of Europe the ability to express the multiplicity of ideas and refinements of thought in tune with the demands of modern civilization. It has a literature endowed with traits which could justifiably be described as Shakespeare's Enobarbus did:

 

Age cannot wither her

Nor custom stale her infinite variety.

 

And the question that naturally arises in our mind is, 'what are the qualities and characteristic features that outstand in making the English language what it is, which give it its individuality and make it of this world-wide significance?"

The following are the principal characteristics of English.

 

1. Heterogeneousness

 The most obvious and the most important characteristic of English is its extraordinary receptive and adaptable heterogeneousness - the varied ease and readiness with which it has assimilated material from almost everywhere in the world. English, which evolved from the dialects of the Jutes, Saxons and Angles during the fifth and the sixth centuries, was almost a pure, homogeneous tongue, depending in a very large measure on its internal, intrinsic resources for word-building and enrichment. Then it had a negligible sprinkling of words borrowed from Greek, Latin and Celtic. Mow English has become the most heterogeneous of languages having received from the seventh century downwards all kinds of foreign elements with ease and assimilated them all to its own character. This unique tendency of the English language has invested it with an amazingly copious vocabulary and an even more amazing variety and heterogeneousness.

 The assimilative power of English and its general receptive remains almost unparalleled in the history of human languages. It is this trait, more than anything else, that has contributed to its cosmopolitan character making it a suitable and attractive vehicle in several parts of the world. The following remarks of C.L. Wrenn (p.33) capture the extent of the copiousness and variety of English:

 All the peoples with whom its speakers have come into contact during more than thirteen centuries of its growth, whether these contacts have been deep and lasting like those of France and ancient

 Rome, or casual like those of Spain or Czechoslovakia, have almost without exception left permanent marks on the vocabulary. The Romans with whom the ancient Germanic tribes had dealings, the Romanized Britons, the Latin Fathers of the Church who were once so eagerly studied, the Danish and Norwegian invaders, the Norman French conquerors, the revived ancient Latin and Greek Classics at the Renaissance, the Italian artists and men of letters of the sixteenth century, the great colonizing nations of the same century-all these have made their contribution to the English vocabulary. Arab mathematicians from Spain have enriched our language, as have American redskins and Indian sepoys.

 More than half of its vocabulary is derived from Latin, some words being direct borrowings, a great many through French, and some more through the other Romance (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese) languages. (We shall be discussing these loan words in detail in a later lesson). English, marked by an unusual capacity for assimilating outside elements, has borrowed words from several other languages outside of Europe. Look at the following loans:

 

American Indian    :   moose, raccoon, skunk.

 Words brought from the Arabs :   algebra, cipher, saffron, cotton, amber, arsenal, assassin, magazine.

 From India       :   nirvana, karma, yoga, sahib, mongoose, bungalow, juggernaut, bangle, chit, shampoo, dinghy.

 Persian             :   azure, jasmine, khaki, shawl, checkmate.

 From China      :   tea, kowtow.

From Japan	:   kimono, hara-kiri
From the Australian bushman	:   boomerang
From Malaya	:   bamboo, sago
From the Eskimos	:   igloo
From Portuguese Africa	:   chimpanzee
From Haiti	:   canoe, potato
From the South Sea Islands	:   tatoo

 All these, and many other borrowings of this kind demonstrate the cosmopolitan character of the English language, its outstanding assimilative power, richness, copiousness and variety.

 2. Receptiveness

The first outstanding characteristic of English language is receptiveness. This is regarded as extra-ordinary feature of the language. It has accepted and adopted words from Asian, European, African, Indian, Japanese, Chinese and other languages. English has kept open-door policy of accepting words from classical languages like Latin, Greek and Sanskrit.

 3. Simplicity of inflection

A second outstanding characteristic of English is its inflectional simplicity. In the early centuries of its evolution English had inflections of the noun, the adjective, the verb and the pronoun. Thus the Old English noun and the adjective inflected for four cases in the singular and four in the plural, and in addition the adjective had separate forms for each of the three genders. Take the Old English noun sian (stone) and look at its inflectional endings:

 4.         Fixed word order:

 Another characteristics of English language is its fixed word order. This arrangement becomes necessary for proper relationship of the words in a sentence, and to avoid ambiguity. The place of each word in a sentence decides its relationship to others.

5.      Use of Periphrases:

 In English language there is a very significant use of periphrases. Periphrases mean round about ways of expressing ideas or feelings in other words it is possible to say the something in many different ways in English. Periphrases is a very important quality of any language; because it makes the language rich and varied.

6.      Development of intonation

 The last but the significant quality of English is the great development of intonation to express different shades of meanings. Intonation can easily change the meaning of a sentence completely. Intonation can be described as the pitch and intensity or the tone of the voice.

 Not all the above qualities or characteristics are necessarily good in themselves. Also all characteristics have not contributed equally to the development of English language and its general success.

C.L. Wren comments that : “It may fairly be said that English is among the easiest languages to speak badly; but the most difficult to use well”.