John Cheese

Having read the assigned articles regarding the history of the English language, I find myself not entirely disinterested in the subject. Though, prior to this class, I would probably have expected language to be frivolous and uninteresting study, it seems to me an interesting progression, mirroring history as well as providing a human insight into our ancestry. I guess having an interest in history helps.

Possibly even more interesting than the history of our language are the individuals who study and uncover it. For instance, I never really thought about dictionaries. Being fortunate enough to grow up in well supplied schools, I never found myself lacking a dictionary and, I suppose, never really appreciated the amount of work put into publishing a dictionary. I also never took the time to consider the history of the dictionary. I knew of the Webster’s (or Merriam-Webster), and I knew of the Oxford, but I didn’t ever think about the differences between them. The sheer amount of work required to create the Oxford dictionary is staggering; I can’t even imagine considering such an undertaking.

I often wonder how information regarding obscure linguistic facts is uncovered. What Bill Bryson records regarding the history of the word “dollar”, for instance, seems like a lesson in ambiguousness; how it was traced back to a silver mine in Germany I think I shall never know. For that matter, how did Joachimsthaler become dollar? My best guess is that the silver coming out of that particular mine, or the coins it created, were referred to by the name of their origin, which was then shortened to “sthaler” or “thaler”, from which point it made its progression to the word we use today. Though my amateur assessment of how “dollar” came about may be entirely inaccurate, it seems that the natural progression of a word is something like a multi-centennial game of telephone; what begins as a perfectly standard word or phrase comes out as utter nonsense or a different word or phrase all together. Though this seems to be the standard of linguistic progression, I often wonder what the digital revolution will have. Only time will tell, I suppose.