how english became english - university of oxford · robert baker, reflections on the english...
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How English Became
English
Simon Horobin
Faculty of English
Tuesday 27 September 2016
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The Telegraph
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Lord Chesterfield
‘I hereby declare that I make a total surrender of all my rights and privileges in the English language, as a freeborn British subject, to the said Mr Johnson, during the term of his dictatorship.’
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Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1755)
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Oxford Dictionaries Online
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Waitrose
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Robert Baker, Reflections on the English Language: Being a Detection of many improper Expressions used in Conversation, and of many
others to be found in Authors (1770)
Less: ‘This Word is most commonly used in speaking of a Number; where I should think Fewer would do better. No Fewer than a Hundred appears to me not only more elegant than No less than a Hundred, but more strictly proper’.
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Selfie
'A photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or
webcam and shared via social media'.
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• The picture is clearly not a selfie as everyone has been describing it…You can clearly see that it is not Ben who is taking the picture. He's in it but he's not taking it.
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H.W. Fowler on literally
‘We have come to such a pass with this emphasizer that where the truth would require us to insert with a strong expression “not literally, of course, but in a manner of speaking”, we do not hesitate to insert the very word that we ought to be at pains to repudiate.’
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Simon Heffer, Strictly English
• ‘An enormity is something bad, a transgression: it is not simply something big.’
• ‘One should speak not of the enormity of the task, but of its enormousness: even if one is President of the United States’.
• ‘[Carlyle] was about to embark on his first large-scale literary project, a life of Schiller, and was overwhelmed by the enormity of the task.’
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‘I can choose to suppress the irritation I feel when I see, for example, a sign that reads “Potatoe’s”; I cannot choose not to feel it.’ (Deborah Cameron, Verbal Hygiene)
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Bill Bryson:
“If you remember nothing else from this book, remember at least that ‘comprised of’ is always wrong”.
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Merriam-Webster
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Advert in Singlish
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American spellings
• disk, program
• British English disc, programme
• favorite
• dialog
• center
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Emojipedia
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Kadomatsu
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