A History of English Language

A history of the english language 328
would blush to betray an equal intolerance of the music or furniture or social conventions
of other parts of the world than their own. Doubtless the best safeguard against prejudice
is knowledge, and some knowledge of the history of English in the past is necessary to an
enlightened judgment in matters affecting present use. Such knowledge warns us to
beware of making arbitrary decisions on questions that only time can settle. It teaches us
that reason is but a sorry guide in many matters of grammar and idiom and that the usage
of educated speakers and writers is the only standard in language for the educated. It
should make us tolerant of colloquial and regional forms, because like the common
people, they claim their right to exist by virtue of an ancient lineage. And finally, it
should prepare us for further changes since language lives only on the lips of living
people and must change as the needs of people in expressing themselves change. But
knowledge of the ways of language in the past is not all that is necessary. Knowledge
must be coupled with tolerance, and especially tolerance toward usage that differs from
our own. We must avoid thinking that there is some one region where the “best” English
is spoken, and particularly that that region is the one in which we ourselves live. We must
not think that the English of London or Oxford, or Boston or Philadelphia, is the norm by
which all other speech must be judged, and that in whatever respects other speech differs
from this norm it is inferior. Good English is the usage—sometimes the divided usage—
of cultivated people in that part of the English-speaking world in which one happens to
be.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The best source of information about the growth of the vocabulary in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries is the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, ed. J.A.Simpson and
E.S.C.Weiner (20 vols., Oxford, 1989) and its Additions Series (1993–). For the ways in which
changes in the vocabulary take place, excellent treatments are J.B.Greenough and
G.L.Kittredge, Words and Their Ways in English Speech (New York, 1901); George
H.McKnight, English Words and Their Background (New York, 1923); and J.A.Sheard, The
Words We Use (New York, 1954). A regular department of the quarterly journal American
Speech is “Among the New Words,” and annual lists appear in the Britannica Book of the Year.
For many examples of common words from proper names, see Ernest Weekley, Words and
Names (London, 1932), and Eric Partridge, Name into Word (2nd ed., New York, 1950). A
readable account of the growth of scientific English is Theodore H.Savory, The Language of
Science (2nd ed., London, 1967). Principles of English word formation are explained and fully
illustrated in Herbert Koziol, Handbuch der englischen Wortbildungslehre (2nd ed., Heidelberg,
1972); Hans Marchand, The Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word-Formation
(2nd ed., Munich, 1969); and Valerie Adams, An Introduction to Modern English Word-
Formation (London, 1973). On degeneration and regeneration there are two important
monographs: H.Schreuder, Pejorative Sense Development in English (Groningen, 1929), and
G.A.Van Dongen, Amelioratives in English (Rotterdam, 1933). For slang see Eric Partridge, ed.,
Slang To-day and Yesterday (4th ed., New York, 1970); Harold Wentworth and Stuart Berg
Flexner, eds., Dictionary of American Slang (2nd ed., New York 1975); Jonathan E.Lighter et
al., eds., Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, vol. 1, A-G (New York,
1994); and Connie Eble, Slang & Sociability: In-Group Language among College Students
(Chapel Hill, NC, 1996). An engaging account of differences between nineteenth-century and