Breaking Down the Masculine Charm:
Decoding the English Language's Aura of Strength and Dominance
If a person is
required to characterize the English language in one short expression, he must
say after Otto Jespersen, the most illuminating of philologists that it is
expressly and positively masculine. “It is”, says Jespersen, “the language of a
grown-up man, and has very little childish or feminine about it.” A great many phonetical, grammatical and lexical, words and terms that are found and not found in the language produce and confirm this impression.
The phonetic system of English bears out the masculine quality of English. The English consonants are separated from one another in sound and they are clearly and precisely pronounced. English has none of those indistinct or half-slurred consonants that abound in Danish.
The English
language is characterized by briefness, conciseness and terseness which are
characteristic of the style of men. In grammar, it has got rid of a great many
superfluities found in Old English, and in most cognate languages, reducing
endings to the shortest forms possible, and often doing away with endings
altogether. In the expression “all the young girls who come here” we find that
all the article (the) the adjective (young) and the relative pronoun (who do
not receive any mark of the plural number. Only the girls and come have
received the sign of the plural number. The sense here is expressed with the
greatest clearness imaginable.
English has
certainly gained in force though it has lost thereby something of its melodic
elegance- by shortening many words of two syllables into monosyllabic ones. If
there were not the great number of long foreign, especially Latin words,
“English would have approached”, says Jespersen, “the state of such
monosyllabic languages as Chinese.” Many English proverbs possess the condensed power of the monosyllabism found in Old Chinese. Some
examples of such monosyllabic proverbs are “first come, first served”; “no
cure, no pay”; “haste makes waste”; “live and learn”.
Business-like
shortness appears in such convenient abbreviations of sentences as are very
common in English, for instance: “While going to the college he found a snake”
(While he was going): “He did not answer when spoken to” (when he was spoken
to): “Once out of the house he gets panicky (Once he is): “The feast over, the
guests went away” (being). These expressions partake of the character of telegrams.
These shortenings are in syntax and morphological shortenings are in words.
Examples of morphological shortening are cab for cabriolet, bus for omnibus,
photo for a photograph, phone for telephone, and rifle for rifle gun.
Pursue:
141 Most Important
Philological Word Notes
This
business-like brevity of expression cannot be separated from a certain sobriety
in expression. Just as an Englishman dislike using more words or syllables than are strictly necessary for conveying his sense, he also dislikes saying more than he can stand to. He is opposed to strong or
hyperbolical expressions of approval or admiration. “That is not half bad” or
“She is rather good-looking” are often the highest praises one can draw out of
him. He is always under the fear of appearing ridiculous by showing strong
emotions. This sobriety is characteristic more of man than of woman, and so
this feature (i.e. sobriety in an expression of the English language stamps it
with a masculine trait).
The grammatical
side of the English language strengthens and deepens this impression of
masculinity. This masculinity appears in the fewness of the diminutives and in
the rarity with which they are used. Of these diminutives-let is the commonest,
and a comparatively modern ending. The ending- kin and -ling are not very
frequently employed, and they generally express a sense of contempt or hatred.
The ending –y or -ie which corresponds exactly to the fondling suffixes of
other languages is more or less confined to use in the nursery and is hardly
used by grown-up persons except in talking to children.
Word order of the English language bears the full stamp of its businesslike, virile qualities. In English words are not engaged in a hide-and-seek play as they are in Latin or German. In German we find that ideas which belong together by right are widely sundered in obedience to caprice or lo a rigorous grammatical rule. In English, there is a fixed word order. In it, an auxiliary verb does not stand far from its principal verb (Juthika has prepared tea; has – auxiliary verb; prepared- principal verb): indeed, the distance of the auxiliary verb from its principal verb is rarely greater than in the sentence, “Babla has seldom gone through such experiences”.
A negative will be found in the
immediate neighbourhood of the word it negatives, generally, the auxiliary
verb, e.g. Prakash does not read hard- not negatives read). An adjective nearly
always stands before the noun it qualifies, the notable exception to this rule
occurs when there are qualifications added to it, which draw it after the noun,
as in “I have never undergone an experience so uncanny and blood-curdling as
you speak of.” The subject nearly always precedes the verb, and the transitive
verb precedes its object (e.g. Dulal hit Anup- subject-Dulal: transitive
verb-hit: object-Anup). This word order is seen to be abandoned only for the
specific purpose of emphasis as in “Him I don’t like, her I do.”
The logical
quality of the English language boars out its masculinity. English is the most
logical of the modern languages except for Chinese which has been described as
pure applied logic In English the difference between the past he came and the
present perfect he has come and the past perfect he had come is maintained with
great consistency. The comparatively recent development of the expanded (or
progressive) tenses has furnished the language with the wonderfully precise and
logically valuable distinction between I go and I am going; I went and I was
going; I shall go and I shall be going.
English is
marked by freedom from the narrow-minded pedantry which in most languages
sacrifices the logic of facts to the logic of grammar or which makes people shy
of saying and writing what is not strictly grammatical. This freedom from
pedantry appears most clearly in number. Thus cabinet, government, clergy
committee, family club, etc., are grammatically singular in number, but as a
matter of hard fact, they connote more than one person. Most languages can
treat these words only as singulars, but in English they can take a singular
verb when the idea of unity is predominant, as in “The present cabinet is
better than the previous one”, on the other hand, they take a plural verb when
the idea of plurality predominates as in “The cabinet were not unanimous in
their rejection of the party’s directive. This freedom of choice is a great
advantage because it is conducive to clarity. In English, the speakers are also
at liberty to express as a singular what is grammatically a plural as in three
years is but short” (Shakespeare), or ten minutes is heaps of time” (E.F.
Benson).
A great many
other phenomena in English show the same freedom from pedantry. The use of the
passive voice, as in “This peculiar phenomenon was taken no notice of or of the
prepositional combination or adverbs as adjectives, as in “an almost marriage”
or “his out of the way humour illustrates this freedom. Such liberties with
grammar cannot be taken in French where any deviation from the grammatical
rules is severely condemned. This freedom from pedantry has done much to make
English such a rich and elastic language as it is now.
This freedom
from pedantry marks the vocabulary. English writers have always been free to
choose from anywhere those words which suited their literary purpose. In order
words, the purpose of English authors has determined the choice of words and
not the words the purpose, as in France and Italy. No academy as in France and
Italy has been allowed to chain down the liberty of English writers. The result
is that English dictionaries comprise a larger number of words than those of
any other nation. Now as men who move in wider circles of the world command a
greater number of words than women who move in narrower circles, so this
richness of the English language is a sign of its masculinity.
To sum up in
the words of Jespersen,
“The English
language is a methodical, energetic, business-like and sober language, that
does not care much for finery and elegance, but does care for logical
consistency and is opposed to any attempt to narrow in life by police
regulations and strict rules either of grammar or of the lexicon.”
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