Get Real

“Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?”

Henry Higgins, My Fair Lady

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Over four hundred years ago, William Shakespeare satirized the linguistic foibles of his fellow countrymen in The Merchant Of Venice: 

NERISSA

What say you, then, to Falconbridge, the young baron

of England?

PORTIA

You know I say nothing to him, for he understands

not me, nor I him: he hath neither Latin, French,

nor Italian, and you will come into the court and

swear that I have a poor pennyworth in the English.

He is a proper man's picture, but, alas, who can

converse with a dumb-show?

(Act I, Scene 2)

Knowing the limitations of an Englishman’s knowledge of other languages, one can understand the despair of Thomas Mowbray, having been exiled from his homeland for life by King Richard II.

THOMAS MOWBRAY

A heavy sentence, my most sovereign liege,

And all unlook'd for from your highness' mouth:

A dearer merit, not so deep a maim

As to be cast forth in the common air,

Have I deserved at your highness' hands.

The language I have learn'd these forty years,

My native English, now I must forego:

And now my tongue's use is to me no more

Than an unstringed viol or a harp,

Or like a cunning instrument cased up,

Or, being open, put into his hands

That knows no touch to tune the harmony:

Within my mouth you have engaol'd my tongue,

Doubly portcullis'd with my teeth and lips;

And dull unfeeling barren ignorance

Is made my gaoler to attend on me.

I am too old to fawn upon a nurse,

Too far in years to be a pupil now:

What is thy sentence then but speechless death,

Which robs my tongue from breathing native breath?

(Richard II, Act I, Scene 3)

Not that Shakespeare himself—he of “small Latin and less Greek,” according to Ben Jonson—was innocent of mangling other languages. Like his contemporaries he would, for example, have pronounced Milan as “Millen.”

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The mangling four centuries later by 20th and now 21st century Englishmen continues on its merry way. That is especially true when they have to deal with foreign words with a long “o.” For much of the 20th century, Englishmen spoke of the West as being confronted by something called “The Sahviet Union.” And on a non-political plane, commentators (we call them “announcers”) of football matches (we call it “soccer”) call the South American nations tournament the “Coppa América” and call the great Argentine club team “Bocka Juniors.”

But I have to say that the height of this linguistic folly was reached this weekend when Liverpool Football Club met the Spanish side Real Madrid in the final of the Champions League. Somehow the team that faced the Merseysiders metamorphosed—thanks to the English commentator—into an entity called “Raul Madrid.”

(I'm imagining what would have happened had the final been between Raul Madrid and AC Millen.)

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If only there were a Henry Higgins to teach the English not only how to speak their native tongue, but also to respect other languages.