1 00:00:20,888 --> 00:00:24,085 In 1 7 1 3, "The Englishman" magazine 2 00:00:24,191 --> 00:00:27,718 ushered a new word into the English language... orrery. 3 00:00:27,828 --> 00:00:30,296 It was taken from the name of the Earl of Orrery, 4 00:00:30,397 --> 00:00:32,763 who put up the money to build a machine like this... 5 00:00:32,866 --> 00:00:34,629 a mechanical depiction 6 00:00:34,735 --> 00:00:37,295 of the Earth's movement in the solar system. 7 00:00:37,404 --> 00:00:39,304 The motion of the universe itself... 8 00:00:39,406 --> 00:00:42,739 laid bare by Isaac Newton's work on gravity and cosmology... 9 00:00:42,843 --> 00:00:45,277 had been put into miniature order. 10 00:00:45,379 --> 00:00:47,813 An age of reason was attempting to bring order 11 00:00:47,915 --> 00:00:49,405 to everything around it. 12 00:00:49,516 --> 00:00:51,143 And in the 1 8th and 1 9th centuries, 13 00:00:51,252 --> 00:00:53,243 a series of self-appointed authorities 14 00:00:53,354 --> 00:00:56,323 tried to tame the unruly English language. 15 00:00:56,423 --> 00:00:58,220 It was a heavyweight contest. 16 00:01:21,582 --> 00:01:24,551 Subtitling made possible by Acorn Media 17 00:01:30,190 --> 00:01:34,524 The Age of Reason, which began in the late 1 7th century, 18 00:01:34,628 --> 00:01:38,029 was born out of years of massive political upheaval in Britain. 19 00:01:38,132 --> 00:01:39,429 It had seen civil war, 20 00:01:39,533 --> 00:01:42,661 during which the king left London and set up court here, 21 00:01:42,770 --> 00:01:45,102 at Christ Church College, Oxford. 22 00:01:45,205 --> 00:01:47,571 The war made familiar such words and phrases 23 00:01:47,675 --> 00:01:49,666 as "roundhead" and "cavalier", 24 00:01:49,777 --> 00:01:53,178 "plunder", "iconoclast", "cabal", "regicide", 25 00:01:53,280 --> 00:01:55,009 "Lord Protector", "commonwealth", 26 00:01:55,115 --> 00:01:58,016 "Restoration", "papist", "nonconformist", 27 00:01:58,118 --> 00:02:00,609 "Keep your powder dry", and "warts and all"... 28 00:02:00,721 --> 00:02:05,317 a lexicon of faction and dispute, often mortal. 29 00:02:07,828 --> 00:02:09,261 The philosopher John Locke 30 00:02:09,363 --> 00:02:11,024 was educated here at Christ Church 31 00:02:11,131 --> 00:02:12,826 and lived through this turmoil. 32 00:02:12,933 --> 00:02:15,925 He developed his greatest work in the 1 67 0s and '80s, 33 00:02:16,036 --> 00:02:18,334 "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding". 34 00:02:18,439 --> 00:02:21,374 In it, he argued that better use of language 35 00:02:21,475 --> 00:02:24,000 could put an end to disputes and factionalism. 36 00:02:24,111 --> 00:02:26,102 If the definition of words could be agreed 37 00:02:26,213 --> 00:02:27,874 and misunderstanding avoided, 38 00:02:27,981 --> 00:02:30,677 peace would naturally follow. 39 00:02:31,518 --> 00:02:34,646 It's a wonderful example of rational idealism. 40 00:02:34,755 --> 00:02:37,781 Did John Locke, a man of such supreme intelligence, 41 00:02:37,891 --> 00:02:40,860 really believe that by getting the language clear 42 00:02:40,961 --> 00:02:43,293 and the arguments stripped to basic simplicities, 43 00:02:43,397 --> 00:02:44,386 then, as he put it, 44 00:02:44,498 --> 00:02:46,625 "disputes would end of themselves"? 45 00:02:46,734 --> 00:02:48,497 Clearly, he did. 46 00:02:48,602 --> 00:02:49,899 There is blind faith here, 47 00:02:50,003 --> 00:02:52,437 at the heart of what seems pure reason. 48 00:02:52,539 --> 00:02:54,234 It's a fascination in this story, though, 49 00:02:54,341 --> 00:02:56,400 that men of Locke's calibre did think 50 00:02:56,510 --> 00:02:59,502 that, in effect, language was the master of life. 51 00:02:59,613 --> 00:03:02,980 Perhaps it could rule everything. 52 00:03:13,594 --> 00:03:15,960 Locke was a member of the Royal Society, 53 00:03:16,063 --> 00:03:19,089 founded in 1 660 to promote what we call science, 54 00:03:19,199 --> 00:03:20,097 but they called 55 00:03:20,200 --> 00:03:22,964 "physico-mathematical experimental learning". 56 00:03:23,070 --> 00:03:25,402 They tried to write pure and simple English, 57 00:03:25,506 --> 00:03:27,133 to avoid what they described 58 00:03:27,241 --> 00:03:29,835 as "this vicious abundance of phrase, 59 00:03:29,943 --> 00:03:32,639 this volubility of tongue". 60 00:03:32,746 --> 00:03:35,715 At the time, learned books were usually written in Latin, 61 00:03:35,816 --> 00:03:37,647 because Latin was understood internationally 62 00:03:37,751 --> 00:03:39,651 and was regarded as more precise. 63 00:03:39,753 --> 00:03:41,220 The members of the Royal Society 64 00:03:41,321 --> 00:03:43,653 wanted to make English a fit language for scholars, 65 00:03:43,757 --> 00:03:45,315 and English began to make inroads 66 00:03:45,426 --> 00:03:47,053 into the territory of Latin. 67 00:03:47,161 --> 00:03:49,789 Newton had published his "Principia Mathematica" 68 00:03:49,897 --> 00:03:51,694 in 1 68 7 in Latin, 69 00:03:51,799 --> 00:03:54,427 but in 1 7 04, his "Opticks" was published, 70 00:03:54,535 --> 00:03:55,559 written in English... 71 00:03:55,669 --> 00:03:57,432 a new kind of rational English, 72 00:03:57,538 --> 00:04:00,473 larded with terms of enquiry and argument. 73 00:04:00,574 --> 00:04:02,940 MAN: I proceeded by this Analysis to discover 74 00:04:03,043 --> 00:04:05,910 and prove the original Differences of the Rays of Light 75 00:04:06,013 --> 00:04:10,109 in respect of Refrangibility, Reflexibility, and Colour, 76 00:04:10,217 --> 00:04:14,210 and their alternate Fits of easy Reflexion and easy Transmission, 77 00:04:14,321 --> 00:04:17,552 and the Properties of Bodies, both opake and pellucid, 78 00:04:17,658 --> 00:04:21,389 on which their Reflexions and Colours depend. 79 00:04:27,434 --> 00:04:31,302 BRAGG: Here was a new vocabulary of reason and investigation. 80 00:04:31,405 --> 00:04:33,498 "Refrangibility" and "reflexibility" 81 00:04:33,607 --> 00:04:35,507 were words coined by Newton 82 00:04:35,609 --> 00:04:37,406 to allow him to describe his experiments 83 00:04:37,511 --> 00:04:38,910 with refraction and reflection. 84 00:04:39,012 --> 00:04:41,344 "Transmission" had been used before 85 00:04:41,448 --> 00:04:43,882 to mean "passing from one place to another". 86 00:04:43,984 --> 00:04:45,576 Newton changed its meaning 87 00:04:45,686 --> 00:04:47,779 to describe passing through a medium. 88 00:04:47,888 --> 00:04:50,948 And "opaque" had meant "unlit" for 200 years 89 00:04:51,058 --> 00:04:52,992 before the 1 7th century changed it to mean 90 00:04:53,093 --> 00:04:55,254 "not allowing the passage of light". 91 00:04:55,362 --> 00:04:57,660 The word "lens" had only been coined a decade 92 00:04:57,764 --> 00:04:59,425 before Newton used it in his book, 93 00:04:59,533 --> 00:05:01,262 and as he reported his observations, 94 00:05:01,368 --> 00:05:02,562 he also gave English the terms 95 00:05:02,669 --> 00:05:05,502 "indistinctness" and "well-defined". 96 00:05:05,606 --> 00:05:08,074 The scholars were reframing, redefining, 97 00:05:08,175 --> 00:05:09,802 and refashioning the language. 98 00:05:09,910 --> 00:05:11,901 They made it part of their apparatus. 99 00:05:12,012 --> 00:05:13,843 And there's another word that took on its meaning 100 00:05:13,947 --> 00:05:16,973 as the equipment for an experiment during this period. 101 00:05:18,485 --> 00:05:21,386 There appeared to be a growing and general confidence 102 00:05:21,488 --> 00:05:22,512 in the state of English. 103 00:05:22,623 --> 00:05:25,353 Printing presses were no longer licensed 104 00:05:25,459 --> 00:05:28,019 and they had spread and proliferated. 105 00:05:30,097 --> 00:05:31,064 For the first time, 106 00:05:31,164 --> 00:05:34,395 daily newspapers were being printed and circulated. 107 00:05:34,501 --> 00:05:36,492 Reports of events around the globe 108 00:05:36,603 --> 00:05:39,504 went into the hands of ordinary people. 109 00:05:40,541 --> 00:05:42,475 The fashionable meeting places of the day 110 00:05:42,576 --> 00:05:43,838 were the coffeehouses. 111 00:05:43,944 --> 00:05:45,241 It was in places like this 112 00:05:45,345 --> 00:05:49,042 that people read and talked about the news. 113 00:05:49,149 --> 00:05:52,118 This one sold coffee until just a decade ago. 114 00:05:52,219 --> 00:05:53,982 Now it serves up stronger fare. 115 00:05:56,023 --> 00:05:59,015 Printed English had become part of the fabric of daily life 116 00:05:59,126 --> 00:06:00,821 as it had never been before. 117 00:06:00,928 --> 00:06:03,294 Here's the first issue of "The Daily Courant" 118 00:06:03,397 --> 00:06:06,093 for March 1 1, 1 7 02. 119 00:06:06,199 --> 00:06:08,861 The news comes from the War of the Spanish Succession, 120 00:06:08,969 --> 00:06:12,837 that the French have sent over 20,000 troops to Italy. 121 00:06:12,940 --> 00:06:15,170 There was a massive appetite for this news. 122 00:06:15,275 --> 00:06:17,539 Joseph Addison told the readers of his magazine, 123 00:06:17,644 --> 00:06:18,542 "The Spectator", 124 00:06:18,645 --> 00:06:22,137 that different papers cooked the same news in different ways 125 00:06:22,249 --> 00:06:25,514 and that no-one could bear to leave coffeehouses like this one 126 00:06:25,619 --> 00:06:28,281 before they'd read all the different versions. 127 00:06:28,388 --> 00:06:30,982 But co-existing with the exuberance of Grub Street 128 00:06:31,091 --> 00:06:33,582 and the coffeehouses, possibly as a result of it, 129 00:06:33,694 --> 00:06:35,025 there was a deep anxiety 130 00:06:35,128 --> 00:06:37,358 about the state of the English language. 131 00:06:37,464 --> 00:06:40,160 There was no Royal Society here, protecting English from 132 00:06:40,267 --> 00:06:43,600 "vicious abundance of phrase and volubility of tongue". 133 00:06:43,704 --> 00:06:45,604 There was no John Locke pressing the case 134 00:06:45,706 --> 00:06:47,867 for agreed definitions and clarity of meaning. 135 00:06:47,975 --> 00:06:51,934 The greatest worry was that English itself was changing. 136 00:06:52,045 --> 00:06:54,673 The poet Geoffrey Chaucer was still revered 137 00:06:54,781 --> 00:06:57,511 three centuries after he'd written "The Canterbury Tales". 138 00:06:57,618 --> 00:07:00,553 But, by then, he'd become difficult to understand. 139 00:07:00,654 --> 00:07:02,087 The satirist Jonathan Swift, 140 00:07:02,189 --> 00:07:04,419 writer of a series of bogus travel diaries 141 00:07:04,524 --> 00:07:06,116 we know today as "Gulliver's Travels", 142 00:07:06,226 --> 00:07:08,023 voiced his concern. 143 00:07:08,128 --> 00:07:11,154 MAN: How then shall any man be able to undertake his work 144 00:07:11,264 --> 00:07:12,993 with spirit and cheerfulness 145 00:07:13,100 --> 00:07:15,625 when he considers that in an age or two, 146 00:07:15,736 --> 00:07:19,297 he shall hardly be understood without an interpreter? 147 00:07:19,406 --> 00:07:22,500 The aristocracy couldn't be relied on to set the example. 148 00:07:22,609 --> 00:07:25,305 Swift hated the vulgar liberties, as he saw it, 149 00:07:25,412 --> 00:07:27,346 that they were taking with the English language, 150 00:07:27,447 --> 00:07:29,244 the way they clipped vowels out of words 151 00:07:29,349 --> 00:07:30,281 or abbreviated them. 152 00:07:30,384 --> 00:07:33,012 "Rep" for "reputation", "poz" for "positive", 153 00:07:33,120 --> 00:07:34,815 "incog" for "incognito", 154 00:07:34,921 --> 00:07:37,617 and the one that survives as standard English today... 155 00:07:37,724 --> 00:07:41,660 "mob", from the Latin mobile vulgus, the common people. 156 00:07:41,762 --> 00:07:42,956 In coffeehouse society, 157 00:07:43,063 --> 00:07:46,726 elegant English was supposed to consist of long, Latinate words. 158 00:07:46,833 --> 00:07:49,324 These shortenings were considered crude. 159 00:07:49,436 --> 00:07:51,700 And Swift also hated what he thought of 160 00:07:51,805 --> 00:07:52,999 as merely modish words, 161 00:07:53,106 --> 00:07:56,132 like "banter", "bubble", "bully", "cutting", "shuffling", 162 00:07:56,243 --> 00:07:58,734 "palming", and "sham". 163 00:08:01,148 --> 00:08:03,616 Swift found a model in the classical languages 164 00:08:03,717 --> 00:08:04,911 Latin and Greek. 165 00:08:05,018 --> 00:08:07,077 Those languages, it was thought, had survived 166 00:08:07,187 --> 00:08:08,654 because they never changed. 167 00:08:08,755 --> 00:08:10,985 They were carved in stone. 168 00:08:11,091 --> 00:08:14,618 Swift would save English by arresting it, 169 00:08:14,728 --> 00:08:16,457 putting an end to changes. 170 00:08:16,563 --> 00:08:18,292 He would take control of English 171 00:08:18,398 --> 00:08:20,491 and take it away from the anarchy 172 00:08:20,600 --> 00:08:23,467 of the upper-class bloods and their slang. 173 00:08:23,570 --> 00:08:27,904 In 1 7 1 2, Swift proposed the foundation of an academy 174 00:08:28,008 --> 00:08:29,339 for "Correcting, lmproving, 175 00:08:29,443 --> 00:08:31,377 and Ascertaining the English Tongue". 176 00:08:31,478 --> 00:08:34,379 The academy would replace the aristocracy. 177 00:08:34,481 --> 00:08:36,039 "Ascertain" was the big word. 178 00:08:36,149 --> 00:08:39,482 English was to be fixed... ascertained... forever. 179 00:08:39,586 --> 00:08:42,248 No matter that the French and Italians already had academies 180 00:08:42,355 --> 00:08:44,721 that had failed to halt changes in their languages, 181 00:08:44,825 --> 00:08:47,157 Swift's determination was ferocious. 182 00:08:47,260 --> 00:08:50,127 One critic sneered that he was attempting the impossible, 183 00:08:50,230 --> 00:08:52,790 and he said, "May as well set up a society 184 00:08:52,899 --> 00:08:54,628 to find out the Grand Elixir, 185 00:08:54,735 --> 00:08:56,896 the Perpetual Motion, the Longitude, 186 00:08:57,003 --> 00:08:59,870 as to fix our language beyond our own times." 187 00:08:59,973 --> 00:09:03,170 Well, he was wrong about longitude. 188 00:09:03,276 --> 00:09:05,141 Swift even took his case to court 189 00:09:05,245 --> 00:09:07,110 and proposed his scheme to Queen Anne, 190 00:09:07,214 --> 00:09:09,648 saying that only classical English would endure 191 00:09:09,750 --> 00:09:11,445 to report her glory. 192 00:09:11,551 --> 00:09:13,212 But she died two years later, 193 00:09:13,320 --> 00:09:16,118 and her place on the throne was taken by George l, 194 00:09:16,223 --> 00:09:17,520 a German king 195 00:09:17,624 --> 00:09:20,889 who spoke little English and cared about it even less. 196 00:09:20,994 --> 00:09:23,963 Swift's plans were dead. 197 00:09:26,399 --> 00:09:28,833 But English fielded another champion, 198 00:09:28,935 --> 00:09:31,802 an intimidating scholar, the monarch of London wits, 199 00:09:31,905 --> 00:09:34,567 a beacon of his age, a savage melancholic, 200 00:09:34,674 --> 00:09:38,633 and, like Isaac Newton, an effortless eccentric. 201 00:09:43,383 --> 00:09:46,181 He lived and created his masterwork in this house 202 00:09:46,286 --> 00:09:49,050 in Gough Square, just off Fleet Street in London. 203 00:09:52,325 --> 00:09:53,314 Came the hour, 204 00:09:53,426 --> 00:09:56,293 came Dr Samuel Johnson and his great dictionary. 205 00:09:56,396 --> 00:09:59,331 He thought he could write it in three years. 206 00:09:59,432 --> 00:10:01,923 When it was put to him that it had taken 40 Frenchmen 207 00:10:02,035 --> 00:10:04,003 40 years to compile their dictionary, 208 00:10:04,104 --> 00:10:07,232 he replied, "40 times 40 is 1,600. 209 00:10:07,340 --> 00:10:08,967 As 3 to 1,600, 210 00:10:09,075 --> 00:10:12,841 so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman". 211 00:10:20,421 --> 00:10:25,017 In fact, it took him 7 years, and this is where he did it. 212 00:10:25,125 --> 00:10:28,390 In this garret on the top floor of this house, 213 00:10:28,495 --> 00:10:29,860 he fed material... 214 00:10:29,963 --> 00:10:32,124 43,000 words and definitions, 215 00:10:32,232 --> 00:10:35,030 etymologies and quotations showing how they were used... 216 00:10:35,135 --> 00:10:37,899 to six assistants who wrote them down. 217 00:10:38,005 --> 00:10:40,997 Johnson's achievement with the dictionary was immense 218 00:10:41,108 --> 00:10:42,769 and immensely idiosyncratic. 219 00:10:42,876 --> 00:10:44,537 He left out proper names. 220 00:10:44,645 --> 00:10:46,272 He included obsolete words 221 00:10:46,380 --> 00:10:48,314 if they were found in authors not obsolete 222 00:10:48,415 --> 00:10:50,645 and was criticised for including archaic words 223 00:10:50,751 --> 00:10:53,777 such as "digladation", "cubiculary", 224 00:10:53,887 --> 00:10:55,320 "incompossibility", 225 00:10:55,422 --> 00:10:57,982 "jobbernowl", and "opiniatry". 226 00:10:58,091 --> 00:11:00,457 He confessed to omitting words he couldn't explain 227 00:11:00,561 --> 00:11:02,051 because he didn't understand them. 228 00:11:02,162 --> 00:11:04,096 In a manner which would enrage and amaze 229 00:11:04,198 --> 00:11:05,426 all future lexicographers, 230 00:11:05,532 --> 00:11:06,658 he acknowledged that 231 00:11:06,767 --> 00:11:09,099 "Many terms of art, manufacture, and trade are omitted. 232 00:11:09,203 --> 00:11:10,534 But for this defect, 233 00:11:10,637 --> 00:11:12,832 I may boldly allege it was unavoidable. 234 00:11:12,940 --> 00:11:15,636 I could not visit caverns to learn the miners' language, 235 00:11:15,742 --> 00:11:17,733 nor take a voyage to perfect my skill 236 00:11:17,845 --> 00:11:19,506 in the dialect of navigation." 237 00:11:19,613 --> 00:11:22,776 His dictionary is lacking in the areas of law, medicine, 238 00:11:22,883 --> 00:11:24,475 and the physical sciences. 239 00:11:24,585 --> 00:11:25,916 He left out rude words, 240 00:11:26,019 --> 00:11:28,579 and when two society ladies asked him why, 241 00:11:28,689 --> 00:11:30,281 he responded, "What, my dears? 242 00:11:30,390 --> 00:11:32,654 Then you've been looking for them?" 243 00:11:34,161 --> 00:11:36,527 The dictionary was finally published in two folio volumes 244 00:11:36,630 --> 00:11:38,928 in 1 7 55, 245 00:11:39,032 --> 00:11:40,624 and this is it. 246 00:11:40,734 --> 00:11:42,599 With all his omissions and banishments, 247 00:11:42,703 --> 00:11:43,601 it's a wonder 248 00:11:43,704 --> 00:11:45,035 that the dictionary carried any weight at all. 249 00:11:45,138 --> 00:11:47,106 In fact, it carried immense authority 250 00:11:47,207 --> 00:11:49,903 and also served a purpose of national pride, 251 00:11:50,010 --> 00:11:51,671 that English literature could boast 252 00:11:51,778 --> 00:11:53,302 such a mighty engine of words, 253 00:11:53,413 --> 00:11:55,779 and through the genius, not of a French committee, 254 00:11:55,883 --> 00:11:57,748 but of an English individual. 255 00:11:57,851 --> 00:11:59,216 We like that. 256 00:11:59,319 --> 00:12:02,083 And the personality of that individual shines through... 257 00:12:02,189 --> 00:12:04,885 willful, prejudiced, and learned. 258 00:12:04,992 --> 00:12:07,119 The dictionary becomes an autobiography, 259 00:12:07,227 --> 00:12:08,558 a portrait of an age, 260 00:12:08,662 --> 00:12:10,493 and a book that remains entertaining 261 00:12:10,597 --> 00:12:13,031 way beyond its useful life as a tool. 262 00:12:13,133 --> 00:12:14,395 Though it has to be admitted 263 00:12:14,501 --> 00:12:17,561 that, as a tool, it doesn't stand up by modern standards. 264 00:12:17,671 --> 00:12:18,865 Some of its etymologies, 265 00:12:18,972 --> 00:12:21,372 accounts of the origins of words, are questionable. 266 00:12:21,475 --> 00:12:25,036 And its definitions don't always shed light. 267 00:12:25,145 --> 00:12:27,943 Cough... A convulsion of the lungs, 268 00:12:28,048 --> 00:12:31,745 vellicated by some sharp serosity. 269 00:12:32,519 --> 00:12:34,612 And dross. 270 00:12:34,721 --> 00:12:39,055 He says, "The recrement or despumation of metals." 271 00:12:39,159 --> 00:12:42,151 Sometimes they're biased or inaccurate. 272 00:12:42,262 --> 00:12:45,163 "Oats" he describes as a grain, 273 00:12:45,265 --> 00:12:47,699 which, in England, is generally given to horses, 274 00:12:47,801 --> 00:12:50,133 but in Scotland, supports the people. 275 00:12:50,237 --> 00:12:54,640 Tarantula is "an insect whose bite is only cured by musick". 276 00:12:54,741 --> 00:12:57,471 Dull, he says, is not exhilarating or delightful, 277 00:12:57,578 --> 00:13:00,672 as to make dictionaries is dull work. 278 00:13:00,781 --> 00:13:01,907 When he began his work, 279 00:13:02,015 --> 00:13:05,143 he sounded very much like the inheritor of Swift's great plan. 280 00:13:05,252 --> 00:13:07,516 "The idea," he wrote, "was to make a dictionary 281 00:13:07,621 --> 00:13:10,283 by which the pronunciation of our language may be fixed, 282 00:13:10,390 --> 00:13:13,655 its use ascertained, and its duration lengthened." 283 00:13:13,760 --> 00:13:15,489 But after he had worked on the dictionary 284 00:13:15,596 --> 00:13:16,688 and come to write the preface, 285 00:13:16,797 --> 00:13:18,662 his pragmatism and his honesty 286 00:13:18,765 --> 00:13:21,928 saw a rueful but radical change of mind. 287 00:13:22,035 --> 00:13:24,435 English wasn't going to be tied down. 288 00:13:24,538 --> 00:13:27,336 No dictionary, Johnson added, could embalm a language 289 00:13:27,441 --> 00:13:29,909 and preserve it from corruption and decay, 290 00:13:30,010 --> 00:13:32,069 implying that for Johnson, like Swift, 291 00:13:32,179 --> 00:13:34,443 change was still for the worse. 292 00:13:34,548 --> 00:13:36,175 But I think there's something to celebrate 293 00:13:36,283 --> 00:13:39,309 in the end of the idea of trying to fix the meaning of words. 294 00:13:39,419 --> 00:13:41,353 English would never be lashed down, 295 00:13:41,455 --> 00:13:43,787 and the power of its freedom gave it, I think, 296 00:13:43,890 --> 00:13:46,916 an extra cylinder when it came up against the obstacle 297 00:13:47,027 --> 00:13:49,495 or the opposition of other languages. 298 00:13:53,000 --> 00:13:56,697 MAN: Goat... A ruminant animal that seems a middle species 299 00:13:56,803 --> 00:13:58,270 between deer and sheep. 300 00:13:58,372 --> 00:14:00,772 Electrick... Attractive without magnetism. 301 00:14:00,874 --> 00:14:03,274 Petroleum is a liquid bitumen, black, 302 00:14:03,377 --> 00:14:05,004 floating on the water of springs. 303 00:14:05,112 --> 00:14:08,309 Enthusiasm... A vain belief of private revelation. 304 00:14:08,415 --> 00:14:11,316 Lexicographer... A writer of dictionaries. 305 00:14:11,418 --> 00:14:14,114 A harmless drudge. 306 00:14:15,489 --> 00:14:18,151 Johnson's work won both brickbats and garlands, 307 00:14:18,258 --> 00:14:19,725 but it was rarely ignored. 308 00:14:19,826 --> 00:14:21,919 There was praise from the two European countries 309 00:14:22,029 --> 00:14:24,623 which had established academies to regulate their language, 310 00:14:24,731 --> 00:14:26,164 Italy and France. 311 00:14:26,266 --> 00:14:27,494 A French journal declared 312 00:14:27,601 --> 00:14:31,002 that Johnson himself was an academy for this island. 313 00:14:31,104 --> 00:14:33,698 And although it didn't fix forever the meaning, 314 00:14:33,807 --> 00:14:37,504 or in Swift and Johnson's word, "ascertain", a single word, 315 00:14:37,611 --> 00:14:40,011 the dictionary is still read and enjoyed 316 00:14:40,113 --> 00:14:44,243 in all its eccentric, dusty glory. 317 00:14:48,288 --> 00:14:49,949 The second half of the 1 8th century 318 00:14:50,057 --> 00:14:51,524 was an age when nature itself 319 00:14:51,625 --> 00:14:53,092 was being put into classical order 320 00:14:53,193 --> 00:14:54,217 by landscape gardeners 321 00:14:54,327 --> 00:14:57,353 like William Kent here at Rousham in Oxfordshire, 322 00:14:57,464 --> 00:15:00,228 and a host of grammarians, led by Robert Lowth, 323 00:15:00,333 --> 00:15:03,996 wanted to do the same to the English language. 324 00:15:04,705 --> 00:15:07,071 From now on, things were different from 325 00:15:07,174 --> 00:15:09,039 but certainly not different to 326 00:15:09,142 --> 00:15:10,837 the old individual freedoms. 327 00:15:10,944 --> 00:15:12,605 In some ways, they added clarity. 328 00:15:12,713 --> 00:15:15,181 In other ways, they created pedantry. 329 00:15:15,282 --> 00:15:16,943 "Between you and l" was outlawed. 330 00:15:17,050 --> 00:15:19,712 "Between you and me" was now the only way. 331 00:15:19,820 --> 00:15:22,152 Comparatives were to be used with a pair of objects, 332 00:15:22,255 --> 00:15:23,882 and superlatives with more. 333 00:15:23,990 --> 00:15:27,016 "The better of two", but "the best of three". 334 00:15:27,127 --> 00:15:30,494 Incomparables... like perfect, unique, or round... 335 00:15:30,597 --> 00:15:32,064 weren't to be qualified, 336 00:15:32,165 --> 00:15:35,464 so you should no longer be "more unique" or "less perfect". 337 00:15:35,569 --> 00:15:37,730 "Lie" and "lay" were distinguished from each other, 338 00:15:37,838 --> 00:15:39,430 as were "will" and "shall". 339 00:15:39,539 --> 00:15:42,633 Perhaps surprisingly, Lowth recognised that a preposition 340 00:15:42,743 --> 00:15:45,610 was permissible to end a sentence with, 341 00:15:45,712 --> 00:15:48,681 though avoiding it was more elegant. 342 00:15:48,782 --> 00:15:51,478 Where two ways of using language existed, 343 00:15:51,585 --> 00:15:53,348 one must be wrong. 344 00:15:53,453 --> 00:15:54,784 They carved a single path 345 00:15:54,888 --> 00:15:56,321 through the thickets of English grammar. 346 00:15:56,423 --> 00:15:58,789 And they began to turn their attention to vocabulary. 347 00:15:58,892 --> 00:16:01,793 There were attempts to ban popular words and phrases... 348 00:16:01,895 --> 00:16:04,864 words such as "fib", "banter", "bigot", "fop", 349 00:16:04,965 --> 00:16:06,057 "flippant", "flimsy", 350 00:16:06,166 --> 00:16:08,293 "workmanship", "selfsame", "despoil", 351 00:16:08,401 --> 00:16:10,062 "nowadays", "furthermore", 352 00:16:10,170 --> 00:16:11,933 "wherewithal", "subject-matter", "drive a bargain", 353 00:16:12,038 --> 00:16:13,699 "handle a subject", and "bolster an argument". 354 00:16:13,807 --> 00:16:16,537 All of them had to be wiped out. 355 00:16:16,643 --> 00:16:20,010 Hating English words and phrases isn't as common as liking them, 356 00:16:20,113 --> 00:16:22,638 but the flying squads of opposition are always with us 357 00:16:22,749 --> 00:16:24,910 and sometimes they're to be welcomed. 358 00:16:25,018 --> 00:16:27,213 Today, some people object to what they see 359 00:16:27,320 --> 00:16:29,288 as the misuse of "hopefully", as I do, 360 00:16:29,389 --> 00:16:30,651 instead of "I hope"; 361 00:16:30,757 --> 00:16:33,282 to the way "decimate" is losing its meaning 362 00:16:33,393 --> 00:16:34,951 of "to reduce by a tenth"; 363 00:16:35,061 --> 00:16:37,859 or the use of "ahead of" instead of "before". 364 00:16:37,964 --> 00:16:39,522 There's a sense in which they can't fail 365 00:16:39,633 --> 00:16:40,793 and they can't succeed either, 366 00:16:40,901 --> 00:16:43,597 because English will find its own words. 367 00:16:43,703 --> 00:16:46,399 The language itself, through usage and natural selection, 368 00:16:46,506 --> 00:16:51,136 will see what is survivable and what will not survive. 369 00:16:54,615 --> 00:16:58,210 The 1 8th century was a paradise for the terrible twins... 370 00:16:58,318 --> 00:17:00,149 class and snobbery... 371 00:17:00,254 --> 00:17:02,222 and in they came, pat on cue. 372 00:17:02,223 --> 00:17:05,215 The new rules and regulations were immensely influential, 373 00:17:05,326 --> 00:17:06,623 not for the upper classes, 374 00:17:06,727 --> 00:17:09,059 who felt no need to change the way they used English, 375 00:17:09,163 --> 00:17:11,927 or for the lower classes, who had little incentive. 376 00:17:12,033 --> 00:17:13,466 But the growing middle class, 377 00:17:13,568 --> 00:17:15,798 or the growing number of people who wanted to be middle class, 378 00:17:15,903 --> 00:17:17,495 regarded knowledge of the rules 379 00:17:17,605 --> 00:17:19,903 as the key to joining polite society, 380 00:17:20,007 --> 00:17:22,032 a badge of entry to the club. 381 00:17:22,143 --> 00:17:24,202 One typical example was William Cobbett, 382 00:17:24,312 --> 00:17:26,906 who became famous as the author of "Rural Rides". 383 00:17:27,014 --> 00:17:28,641 He was a lower middle-class boy 384 00:17:28,749 --> 00:17:30,717 who took a copy of Lowth's grammar 385 00:17:30,818 --> 00:17:32,445 and taught himself the rules. 386 00:17:32,553 --> 00:17:35,044 And he put his reasons bluntly. 387 00:17:35,156 --> 00:17:37,317 "Without understanding grammar," he wrote, 388 00:17:37,425 --> 00:17:39,916 "you can never hope to become fit for anything 389 00:17:40,027 --> 00:17:42,723 beyond mere trade or agriculture. 390 00:17:42,830 --> 00:17:45,128 It's impossible for you to write correctly; 391 00:17:45,233 --> 00:17:49,033 and it is by mere accident that you speak correctly; 392 00:17:49,136 --> 00:17:50,569 and, pray bear in mind, 393 00:17:50,671 --> 00:17:54,107 that all well-informed persons judge of a man's mind 394 00:17:54,208 --> 00:17:55,937 until they have other means of judging 395 00:17:56,043 --> 00:17:58,637 by his writing or speaking." 396 00:17:58,746 --> 00:18:00,839 Writing or speaking. 397 00:18:00,948 --> 00:18:03,212 The word police were also turning their attention 398 00:18:03,317 --> 00:18:05,785 to the spoken word. 399 00:18:17,498 --> 00:18:19,261 English reached the Scottish Lowlands 400 00:18:19,367 --> 00:18:21,494 not long after the first Anglo-Saxon invasions 401 00:18:21,602 --> 00:18:23,934 in the 5th century. 402 00:18:24,038 --> 00:18:26,632 As it replaced Gaelic as the language of lowland Scotland, 403 00:18:26,741 --> 00:18:29,972 it took on a character of its own. 404 00:18:30,077 --> 00:18:32,170 The English-speaking Scots took up words 405 00:18:32,280 --> 00:18:33,747 that were unknown further south. 406 00:18:33,848 --> 00:18:36,612 Contact with the French produced "bonny" from bon, : 407 00:18:36,717 --> 00:18:38,912 "ashet" from assiette, for a serving dish; 408 00:18:39,020 --> 00:18:42,217 and "fash" from the Old French fascher, meaning "to annoy". 409 00:18:42,323 --> 00:18:44,154 I remember it being in common use in the Borders 410 00:18:44,258 --> 00:18:47,250 in "Don't fash yourself", meaning "Don't get agitated." 411 00:18:47,361 --> 00:18:48,919 The Dutch gave the Scots kalant, 412 00:18:49,030 --> 00:18:50,725 which became "callan", meaning "lad"; 413 00:18:50,831 --> 00:18:53,732 mudseken which became "mutchkin", a quarter pint; 414 00:18:53,834 --> 00:18:56,496 and the Dutch kolf... a stick or a club... 415 00:18:56,604 --> 00:18:59,903 is the probable origin of the Scottish invention "golf". 416 00:19:00,007 --> 00:19:01,975 And there were hosts of words from the Gaelic. 417 00:19:02,076 --> 00:19:05,512 Cairn, ceilidh, claymore, gillie, glen, 418 00:19:05,613 --> 00:19:07,410 ingle... meaning a fire in a hearth, 419 00:19:07,515 --> 00:19:08,880 strath... a wide valley, 420 00:19:08,983 --> 00:19:11,884 Ioch, sporran, and whisky. 421 00:19:11,986 --> 00:19:13,112 And as well as words, 422 00:19:13,220 --> 00:19:15,450 the Scots had their own ways of talking. 423 00:19:15,556 --> 00:19:18,525 I want to try some of those sausages, please. 424 00:19:18,626 --> 00:19:21,390 It's the apricots I'm not sure about. 425 00:19:21,495 --> 00:19:24,020 ...along with neeps, tatties, they're fantastic. 426 00:19:24,131 --> 00:19:25,689 Then the next course. 427 00:19:25,800 --> 00:19:27,927 And the whisky had nothing to do with it? 428 00:19:28,035 --> 00:19:30,026 BRAGG: In 1 7 61, Thomas Sheridan, 429 00:19:30,137 --> 00:19:31,570 Irishman, former actor, 430 00:19:31,672 --> 00:19:34,800 and a self-appointed master of elocution and pronunciation, 431 00:19:34,909 --> 00:19:36,274 came to Edinburgh. 432 00:19:36,377 --> 00:19:38,902 He was on a mission... to teach the Lowland Scots 433 00:19:39,013 --> 00:19:41,675 how to speak English properly. 434 00:19:44,018 --> 00:19:45,246 It's hard to believe 435 00:19:45,353 --> 00:19:47,287 that there could have been a sense of inferiority 436 00:19:47,388 --> 00:19:49,015 among the great and good of Scotland 437 00:19:49,123 --> 00:19:50,886 in the Age of Enlightenment. 438 00:19:50,992 --> 00:19:53,483 This was one of Europe's intellectual powerhouses, 439 00:19:53,594 --> 00:19:55,562 and here in Edinburgh The Signet Library 440 00:19:55,663 --> 00:19:57,563 is filled with the fruits of their learning... 441 00:19:57,665 --> 00:20:00,463 the philosopher David Hume, the economist Adam Smith, 442 00:20:00,568 --> 00:20:03,332 the engineer James Watt, the architect Robert Adam, 443 00:20:03,437 --> 00:20:04,768 the geologist James Hutton, 444 00:20:04,872 --> 00:20:06,703 and the historian William Robertson. 445 00:20:06,807 --> 00:20:08,775 They were the first among many equals. 446 00:20:08,876 --> 00:20:10,969 But there was a sense of inferiority, 447 00:20:11,078 --> 00:20:13,603 and it lay in their use of language. 448 00:20:13,714 --> 00:20:15,614 Since the Act of Union in 1 7 07, 449 00:20:15,716 --> 00:20:18,150 Scotland had been part of a united Britain. 450 00:20:18,252 --> 00:20:20,482 A new idea had swept through the whole country, 451 00:20:20,588 --> 00:20:25,890 the idea that there was only one proper way to speak English. 452 00:20:27,194 --> 00:20:29,059 The idea was partly the result 453 00:20:29,163 --> 00:20:31,529 of the spread of the printed standard English. 454 00:20:31,632 --> 00:20:33,224 More people than ever were reading, 455 00:20:33,334 --> 00:20:34,301 but they weren't reading 456 00:20:34,402 --> 00:20:36,597 the local dialects they'd grown up hearing. 457 00:20:36,704 --> 00:20:38,296 There had always been a gap 458 00:20:38,406 --> 00:20:39,998 between what was said on the page 459 00:20:40,107 --> 00:20:41,267 and what was said on the tongue. 460 00:20:41,375 --> 00:20:44,469 But now, in what could be called the great print shift, 461 00:20:44,578 --> 00:20:48,105 the printed version started to be regarded as correct. 462 00:20:53,554 --> 00:20:56,250 In short, the best spoken English 463 00:20:56,357 --> 00:20:58,052 was increasingly supposed to sound 464 00:20:58,159 --> 00:20:59,683 like the best written English. 465 00:20:59,794 --> 00:21:02,661 But what did written English sound like and who decided? 466 00:21:02,763 --> 00:21:06,062 One simple idea was that words should be spoken 467 00:21:06,167 --> 00:21:07,896 with all the written letters sounded, 468 00:21:08,002 --> 00:21:10,436 which was fine as long as you could read, 469 00:21:10,538 --> 00:21:12,506 but it outlawed those clipped pronunciations 470 00:21:12,606 --> 00:21:13,664 that Swift had so hated. 471 00:21:13,774 --> 00:21:15,639 It put "waistcoat" back in favour 472 00:21:15,743 --> 00:21:17,574 instead of "weskit", for example, 473 00:21:17,678 --> 00:21:18,906 and put "chimney" back 474 00:21:19,013 --> 00:21:21,675 where many people preferred to say "chimley". 475 00:21:21,782 --> 00:21:24,580 But it was no help in deciding how to pronounce the "A" 476 00:21:24,685 --> 00:21:27,677 in "fast", "bath", or "last". 477 00:21:27,788 --> 00:21:30,018 Fast, bath, or last. Long or short? 478 00:21:30,124 --> 00:21:31,182 Both had champions, 479 00:21:31,292 --> 00:21:33,226 and the argument has lasted, or "larsted", 480 00:21:33,327 --> 00:21:35,352 from the 1 8th century to the present day. 481 00:21:35,463 --> 00:21:37,226 And what about the many inconsistencies 482 00:21:37,331 --> 00:21:38,457 of English spelling? 483 00:21:38,566 --> 00:21:41,034 The relationship between sound and spelling in English 484 00:21:41,135 --> 00:21:42,193 is a nightmare. 485 00:21:42,303 --> 00:21:43,998 Our written system isn't phonetic 486 00:21:44,105 --> 00:21:45,902 to the point of being anti-phonetic. 487 00:21:46,006 --> 00:21:48,736 There are, for instance, at least seven ways 488 00:21:48,843 --> 00:21:50,743 of representing what, for most people, 489 00:21:50,845 --> 00:21:53,313 is the same vowel sound... "ee". 490 00:22:05,759 --> 00:22:07,056 BRAGG: What do we do? 491 00:22:07,161 --> 00:22:10,927 Or take the letters "O-U-G-H" in... 492 00:22:18,606 --> 00:22:22,565 BRAGG: The same four letters. Six different sounds. 493 00:22:24,011 --> 00:22:26,605 Dr Johnson had omitted pronunciation 494 00:22:26,714 --> 00:22:27,612 from his dictionary 495 00:22:27,715 --> 00:22:29,080 and wrote that trying to fix it 496 00:22:29,183 --> 00:22:30,741 was like trying to lash the wind. 497 00:22:30,851 --> 00:22:32,546 But that didn't deter others. 498 00:22:32,653 --> 00:22:34,177 The Irish actor Thomas Sheridan 499 00:22:34,288 --> 00:22:37,086 spotted the need for a national elocutionist. 500 00:22:37,191 --> 00:22:39,182 He seized the role. 501 00:22:39,293 --> 00:22:43,059 Sheridan's first and crucial book was published in 1 7 56, 502 00:22:43,164 --> 00:22:45,098 hard on the heels of Dr Johnson's dictionary. 503 00:22:45,199 --> 00:22:48,896 He called it, significantly, "British Education". 504 00:22:49,003 --> 00:22:51,028 Not English. And "Education". 505 00:22:51,138 --> 00:22:54,403 No messing about with ways of speaking or pronunciation. 506 00:22:54,508 --> 00:22:56,669 He went for the key and jugular word. 507 00:22:56,777 --> 00:22:59,143 If you wanted to say what you said in the best way, 508 00:22:59,246 --> 00:23:01,077 then what you needed was an education, 509 00:23:01,182 --> 00:23:04,049 and this book, this man, could provide it, 510 00:23:04,151 --> 00:23:05,982 which, remarkably, he did. 511 00:23:06,086 --> 00:23:07,348 Sheridan toured England, 512 00:23:07,454 --> 00:23:09,649 lecturing to appreciative middle-class audiences. 513 00:23:09,757 --> 00:23:11,281 And then he was invited here to Edinburgh 514 00:23:11,392 --> 00:23:12,950 by David Hume, Adam Smith, 515 00:23:13,060 --> 00:23:15,858 and other members of the city's leading debating club, 516 00:23:15,963 --> 00:23:17,590 the Select Society. 517 00:23:17,698 --> 00:23:20,462 MAN: Pronunciation is a sort of proof 518 00:23:20,568 --> 00:23:23,298 that a person has kept good company, 519 00:23:23,404 --> 00:23:25,804 and, on that account, is sought after by all 520 00:23:25,906 --> 00:23:28,374 who wish to be considered as fashionable people 521 00:23:28,475 --> 00:23:31,535 or members of the beau monde. 522 00:23:31,645 --> 00:23:35,581 The task was the last that the past master could grasp, 523 00:23:35,683 --> 00:23:38,516 but one can't mark his charm harmfully. 524 00:23:38,619 --> 00:23:40,109 BRAGG: Sheridan hit a nerve. 525 00:23:40,221 --> 00:23:41,381 The Scots intellectuals 526 00:23:41,488 --> 00:23:44,980 were worried about appearing uneducated. 527 00:23:45,092 --> 00:23:48,152 The task was the last that the past master could grasp, 528 00:23:48,262 --> 00:23:50,822 but one can't mark his charm harmfully. 529 00:23:50,931 --> 00:23:52,364 Okay, let's hear you all together. 530 00:23:52,466 --> 00:23:54,525 "Look at the cook book." 531 00:23:54,635 --> 00:23:57,126 "Look at the cook book," said the cook, 532 00:23:57,238 --> 00:24:00,002 as he took the pullets and put them in the nook. 533 00:24:00,107 --> 00:24:01,631 BRAGG: Sheridan's great idea 534 00:24:01,742 --> 00:24:04,142 was that if everyone spoke in the same way, 535 00:24:04,245 --> 00:24:05,837 they would talk to each other as equals. 536 00:24:05,946 --> 00:24:07,379 Of course, it didn't work. 537 00:24:07,481 --> 00:24:09,881 The new standard immediately divided people 538 00:24:09,984 --> 00:24:12,680 into those who copied it and those who didn't. 539 00:24:12,786 --> 00:24:15,619 "Look at the cook book," said the cook, 540 00:24:15,723 --> 00:24:19,352 as he took the pullets and put them in the nook. 541 00:24:19,460 --> 00:24:21,087 BRAGG: But some Scots were affronted 542 00:24:21,195 --> 00:24:23,891 by the very suggestion that their speech was inferior. 543 00:24:23,998 --> 00:24:25,192 They needed a standard-bearer, 544 00:24:25,299 --> 00:24:28,598 and the post was not empty for long. 545 00:24:31,405 --> 00:24:35,171 Robert Burns was born in 1 7 59 to a poor tenant farmer 546 00:24:35,276 --> 00:24:37,767 and worked as a ploughboy until he was 1 5. 547 00:24:37,878 --> 00:24:41,006 He loved women to excess. He loved Scotch. He loved Scots. 548 00:24:41,115 --> 00:24:44,016 He published his first collection in 1 7 86... 549 00:24:44,118 --> 00:24:46,848 "Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect"... 550 00:24:46,954 --> 00:24:49,514 and was canny enough to leave out some verses 551 00:24:49,623 --> 00:24:51,716 which he'd written in more standard English. 552 00:24:51,825 --> 00:24:53,087 It was a shrewd move. 553 00:24:53,193 --> 00:24:55,218 The Scots had found someone 554 00:24:55,329 --> 00:24:58,423 to make them proud of their own language. 555 00:24:59,633 --> 00:25:00,759 He came to Edinburgh 556 00:25:00,868 --> 00:25:04,269 and, on his first visit, stayed here at Lady Stair's Close. 557 00:25:04,371 --> 00:25:05,861 He was feted, patronised, 558 00:25:05,973 --> 00:25:08,567 and ruined, perhaps, as the Ploughman Poet. 559 00:25:08,676 --> 00:25:11,770 He died when he was only 3 7, but his legacy is vast... 560 00:25:11,879 --> 00:25:13,039 400 songs, 561 00:25:13,147 --> 00:25:15,138 some of which are recognised as masterpieces, 562 00:25:15,249 --> 00:25:18,218 "The Lea Rig", "Tam O'Shanter", and "A Red, Red Rose". 563 00:25:18,319 --> 00:25:21,482 1 0,000 came to pay their respects at his funeral, 564 00:25:21,588 --> 00:25:23,579 and that was only the beginning of a reputation 565 00:25:23,691 --> 00:25:24,817 which is kept alive 566 00:25:24,925 --> 00:25:26,916 wherever Scots with even a smattering of literature 567 00:25:27,027 --> 00:25:29,257 meet to talk of Scotland, drink whisky, 568 00:25:29,363 --> 00:25:33,493 and toast the ladies and the haggis in Burns' tongue. 569 00:25:33,600 --> 00:25:35,898 MAN: Fair fa' your honest sonsie face, 570 00:25:36,003 --> 00:25:37,766 Great chieftain o the puddin' race! 571 00:25:37,871 --> 00:25:39,839 Aboon them a' ye tak yer place 572 00:25:39,940 --> 00:25:41,771 Painch, tripe or thairm... 573 00:25:41,875 --> 00:25:45,333 Weel are ye wordy of a grace As lang's my arm. 574 00:26:00,094 --> 00:26:02,289 BRAGG: Just south across the border from the Lowlands 575 00:26:02,396 --> 00:26:03,658 where Burns spent his youth, 576 00:26:03,765 --> 00:26:06,290 lie the fells... the Norse word for mountains... 577 00:26:06,400 --> 00:26:07,833 which form the Lake District. 578 00:26:07,935 --> 00:26:09,630 They nursed and nourished another poet 579 00:26:09,737 --> 00:26:11,398 who sought out the common experience, 580 00:26:11,506 --> 00:26:12,803 William Wordsworth. 581 00:26:18,679 --> 00:26:20,704 Wordsworth wrote down a lot of his work 582 00:26:20,815 --> 00:26:22,510 in this small cottage in Grasmere 583 00:26:22,617 --> 00:26:23,515 which used to be a pub. 584 00:26:23,618 --> 00:26:26,610 He liked to use this chair, with its flat arm, 585 00:26:26,721 --> 00:26:28,211 to work on his poems. 586 00:26:28,322 --> 00:26:31,450 Poetry, once the preserve of the high-born, or the high-flown, 587 00:26:31,559 --> 00:26:35,222 was being stormed by romantic and revolutionary language. 588 00:26:35,329 --> 00:26:36,990 His contribution to English poetry 589 00:26:37,098 --> 00:26:38,827 has been well and widely cherished. 590 00:26:38,933 --> 00:26:41,163 Wordsworth's contribution to the adventure of English 591 00:26:41,269 --> 00:26:43,464 is that, in the preface to his "Lyrical Ballads", 592 00:26:43,571 --> 00:26:45,402 first published in 1 798, 593 00:26:45,506 --> 00:26:47,906 he stressed that poetry could be written 594 00:26:48,009 --> 00:26:50,034 in "the language really used by men" 595 00:26:50,144 --> 00:26:52,339 and didn't need a special poetic diction 596 00:26:52,446 --> 00:26:54,243 to express deep feelings. 597 00:26:54,348 --> 00:26:56,680 "Up! Up! My friend, and clear your looks, 598 00:26:56,784 --> 00:26:58,649 Why all this toil and trouble? 599 00:26:58,753 --> 00:27:00,721 Up! Up! My friend, and quit your books, 600 00:27:00,822 --> 00:27:02,790 Or surely you'll grow double. 601 00:27:02,890 --> 00:27:04,824 The sun above the mountain's head, 602 00:27:04,926 --> 00:27:06,518 A freshening lustre mellow, 603 00:27:06,627 --> 00:27:09,187 Through all the long green fields has spread, 604 00:27:09,297 --> 00:27:13,131 His first sweet evening yellow." 605 00:27:13,234 --> 00:27:14,963 Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy 606 00:27:15,069 --> 00:27:17,503 planted their garden here, behind the cottage, 607 00:27:17,605 --> 00:27:19,436 with wild flowers they found on their walks 608 00:27:19,540 --> 00:27:21,531 rather than with cultivated hybrids. 609 00:27:21,642 --> 00:27:24,167 It was much the same with the language of his verse. 610 00:27:24,278 --> 00:27:27,441 Poetry wasn't supposed to use such simple language. 611 00:27:27,548 --> 00:27:29,482 Dr Johnson had said it clearly. 612 00:27:29,584 --> 00:27:32,178 "The most splendid ideas drop their magnificence 613 00:27:32,286 --> 00:27:34,777 if they're conveyed by words used commonly 614 00:27:34,889 --> 00:27:37,255 upon low and trivial occasions," he said. 615 00:27:37,358 --> 00:27:39,417 And Johnson thought that Shakespeare had ruined 616 00:27:39,527 --> 00:27:42,121 the tone of "Macbeth" by using the word "knife"... 617 00:27:42,230 --> 00:27:44,596 a tradesman's word used by butchers and cooks, 618 00:27:44,699 --> 00:27:45,927 as he put it. 619 00:27:46,033 --> 00:27:49,332 Wordsworth warned that readers who were used to what he called 620 00:27:49,437 --> 00:27:51,962 "the gaudiness and inane phraseology 621 00:27:52,073 --> 00:27:53,540 of many modern writers" 622 00:27:53,641 --> 00:27:56,735 will perhaps frequently have to struggle in reading his work, 623 00:27:56,844 --> 00:27:59,574 struggle with feelings of strangeness and awkwardness. 624 00:27:59,680 --> 00:28:02,877 They will look around for poetry. 625 00:28:02,984 --> 00:28:04,178 "Books! 626 00:28:04,285 --> 00:28:06,185 'Tis a dull and endless strife, 627 00:28:06,287 --> 00:28:09,154 Come, hear the woodland linnet, 628 00:28:09,257 --> 00:28:10,815 How sweet his music; 629 00:28:10,925 --> 00:28:14,019 On my life there's more of wisdom in it. 630 00:28:15,162 --> 00:28:17,790 And hark! How blithe the throstle sings! 631 00:28:17,899 --> 00:28:19,764 And he is no mean preacher; 632 00:28:19,867 --> 00:28:21,494 Come forth into the light of things, 633 00:28:21,602 --> 00:28:24,196 Let Nature be your teacher." 634 00:28:28,242 --> 00:28:30,540 Wordsworth was reviled for many years 635 00:28:30,645 --> 00:28:31,942 by critics and other poets 636 00:28:32,046 --> 00:28:34,571 for daring to bring poetry to the voice of the people. 637 00:28:34,682 --> 00:28:37,947 In a way, to give it back to its bedrock of Old English. 638 00:28:38,052 --> 00:28:39,986 A few years before, in 1 790, 639 00:28:40,087 --> 00:28:42,453 Thomas Paine had written the "Rights Of Man", 640 00:28:42,556 --> 00:28:44,251 also in the plain style, 641 00:28:44,358 --> 00:28:45,256 to demonstrate 642 00:28:45,359 --> 00:28:48,294 that simple language could carry precise thought. 643 00:28:48,396 --> 00:28:51,365 That a work of such influence on political ideas 644 00:28:51,465 --> 00:28:53,262 and a young poet who was to exercise 645 00:28:53,367 --> 00:28:56,530 even greater influence on poetic practice should agree 646 00:28:56,637 --> 00:28:58,867 opened up what's become a major thoroughfare 647 00:28:58,973 --> 00:29:00,338 for the English language. 648 00:29:00,441 --> 00:29:02,409 Despite its exhilarating taste 649 00:29:02,510 --> 00:29:04,740 for excess, obscurity, and the arcane, 650 00:29:04,845 --> 00:29:07,780 its promiscuous nature now led English poetry and prose 651 00:29:07,882 --> 00:29:11,409 to the depth of meaning and feeling and nuance 652 00:29:11,519 --> 00:29:13,987 which could be mined from plain English. 653 00:29:14,088 --> 00:29:15,555 It's possible to imagine a world 654 00:29:15,656 --> 00:29:18,648 without the influence of Paine, Wordsworth, and their followers, 655 00:29:18,759 --> 00:29:20,351 and one of its aspects would be 656 00:29:20,461 --> 00:29:22,793 that a language separate from ordinary English 657 00:29:22,897 --> 00:29:24,831 was the only language in which high thinking 658 00:29:24,932 --> 00:29:26,991 and profound feeling could be expressed. 659 00:29:27,101 --> 00:29:29,729 There's a sense in which Wordsworth kept English true 660 00:29:29,837 --> 00:29:32,362 to its old tried and tested self. 661 00:29:32,473 --> 00:29:36,102 He saved and celebrated and gave lasting literary energy 662 00:29:36,210 --> 00:29:40,442 to the ancient language of ordinary speech. 663 00:29:41,415 --> 00:29:43,383 "One impulse from the vernal wood 664 00:29:43,484 --> 00:29:45,179 May teach you more of man; 665 00:29:45,286 --> 00:29:47,345 Of moral evil and of good, 666 00:29:47,455 --> 00:29:50,288 Than all the sages can." 667 00:29:53,260 --> 00:29:56,525 Meanwhile, away from Wordsworth's simple rusticity, 668 00:29:56,630 --> 00:29:58,655 among fashionable and elegant society, 669 00:29:58,766 --> 00:30:02,167 how you spoke was a key to your social standing. 670 00:30:02,269 --> 00:30:05,033 And nowhere was more fashionable than Bath. 671 00:30:05,139 --> 00:30:06,629 If you could not talk properly here, 672 00:30:06,741 --> 00:30:08,231 you were inviting ridicule. 673 00:30:08,342 --> 00:30:11,937 Richard Brinsley Sheridan, son of Thomas the Elocutionist, 674 00:30:12,046 --> 00:30:14,446 set his comedy "The Rivals" here 675 00:30:14,548 --> 00:30:17,108 and gave us one of the most ridiculous speakers of English 676 00:30:17,218 --> 00:30:19,015 in its history. 677 00:30:19,120 --> 00:30:21,384 WOMAN: There, sir, an attack upon my language. 678 00:30:21,489 --> 00:30:22,854 What do you think of that? 679 00:30:22,957 --> 00:30:25,551 An aspersion upon my parts of speech. 680 00:30:25,659 --> 00:30:26,990 Was ever such a brute. 681 00:30:27,094 --> 00:30:29,426 Sure, if I reprehend anything in this world, 682 00:30:29,530 --> 00:30:31,862 it is the use of my oracular tongue 683 00:30:31,966 --> 00:30:34,867 and a nice derangement of epitaphs. 684 00:30:34,969 --> 00:30:38,268 The glorious Mrs Malaprop under full sail, 685 00:30:38,372 --> 00:30:40,499 putting the wrong words in the right places. 686 00:30:40,608 --> 00:30:41,973 Her name comes from French... 687 00:30:42,076 --> 00:30:44,442 mal a propos, meaning "inappropriate". 688 00:30:44,545 --> 00:30:48,276 It entered the dictionary in 1 849 as "malapropism". 689 00:30:48,382 --> 00:30:50,441 "Make no delusion to the past," she says, 690 00:30:50,551 --> 00:30:53,076 and "She's as headstrong as an allegory 691 00:30:53,187 --> 00:30:54,882 on the banks of the Nile". 692 00:30:54,989 --> 00:30:56,752 She could represent Sheridan's dig 693 00:30:56,857 --> 00:30:58,654 at his father Thomas's pedantry. 694 00:30:58,759 --> 00:31:00,784 But she's also a reflection of a society 695 00:31:00,895 --> 00:31:02,385 in which the education of women 696 00:31:02,496 --> 00:31:05,056 was widely thought to be unnecessary. 697 00:31:05,166 --> 00:31:06,428 But that was changing. 698 00:31:06,534 --> 00:31:09,196 Richard Sheridan's grandmother had had no education, 699 00:31:09,303 --> 00:31:11,794 but his mother was an accomplished writer. 700 00:31:11,906 --> 00:31:13,237 At the turn of the 1 9th century, 701 00:31:13,340 --> 00:31:16,332 more and more women were reading as well as writing. 702 00:31:16,444 --> 00:31:18,742 Subscription libraries were making books 703 00:31:18,846 --> 00:31:21,781 widely and cheaply available to more and more readers. 704 00:31:21,882 --> 00:31:23,179 Female readers created 705 00:31:23,284 --> 00:31:25,411 an appetite and a market for novels, 706 00:31:25,519 --> 00:31:27,350 works of romance and sensibility 707 00:31:27,455 --> 00:31:31,050 which earned little respect or no respect among intellectuals. 708 00:31:31,158 --> 00:31:33,558 Yet out of this atmosphere, and out of this city, 709 00:31:33,661 --> 00:31:36,027 came a woman who helped the novel to be recognised 710 00:31:36,130 --> 00:31:39,293 as writing in which wit, brilliance, depth, and variety 711 00:31:39,400 --> 00:31:41,527 could find expression every bit as impressive 712 00:31:41,635 --> 00:31:42,533 as could be found 713 00:31:42,636 --> 00:31:45,400 in the more established forms of poetry and drama. 714 00:31:45,506 --> 00:31:47,440 The novel, especially her novels, 715 00:31:47,541 --> 00:31:49,941 became the benchmark for good English. 716 00:31:50,044 --> 00:31:50,442 She was, of course, Jane Austen, 717 00:31:52,346 --> 00:31:54,337 whose prose was to clarify the English 718 00:31:54,448 --> 00:31:56,109 of that Enlightenment/Romantic era 719 00:31:56,217 --> 00:31:58,708 to a crystalline standard never achieved before 720 00:31:58,819 --> 00:32:00,184 and rarely since. 721 00:32:00,287 --> 00:32:02,050 In a way, she became the academy 722 00:32:02,156 --> 00:32:05,125 Dr Swift and Dr Johnson had dreamed of. 723 00:32:05,226 --> 00:32:07,217 WOMAN: "And what are you reading, miss?" 724 00:32:07,328 --> 00:32:11,731 "Oh! It is only a novel," replies the young lady, 725 00:32:11,832 --> 00:32:13,094 while she lays down her book 726 00:32:13,200 --> 00:32:16,033 with affected indifference or mounting shame. 727 00:32:16,137 --> 00:32:19,595 It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda; 728 00:32:19,707 --> 00:32:21,698 or, in short, only some work 729 00:32:21,809 --> 00:32:25,006 in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, 730 00:32:25,112 --> 00:32:27,637 in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, 731 00:32:27,748 --> 00:32:30,342 the happiest delineation of its varieties, 732 00:32:30,451 --> 00:32:33,215 the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, 733 00:32:33,320 --> 00:32:36,653 are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language. 734 00:32:36,757 --> 00:32:38,691 BRAGG: The world of Austen's novels 735 00:32:38,792 --> 00:32:41,590 is one in which a single man in possession of a good fortune 736 00:32:41,695 --> 00:32:43,128 is in want of a wife 737 00:32:43,230 --> 00:32:44,219 and a single woman 738 00:32:44,331 --> 00:32:47,061 in want of a husband in possession of a good fortune. 739 00:32:47,168 --> 00:32:49,068 But they have to prove themselves worthy... 740 00:32:49,170 --> 00:32:50,728 to each other and to society. 741 00:32:50,838 --> 00:32:52,100 They are judged. 742 00:32:52,206 --> 00:32:54,606 There's a whole lexicon of social acceptability 743 00:32:54,708 --> 00:32:56,175 in Jane Austen's work... 744 00:32:56,277 --> 00:32:58,006 words like "agreeable", "appropriate", 745 00:32:58,112 --> 00:32:59,511 "delicacy", "discretion", 746 00:32:59,613 --> 00:33:01,444 "eligible", "order", "propriety", 747 00:33:01,549 --> 00:33:03,983 "respectable", and "unfit". 748 00:33:05,586 --> 00:33:07,850 Yet Jane Austen has her boundaries. 749 00:33:07,955 --> 00:33:09,013 The language of the streets 750 00:33:09,123 --> 00:33:10,852 is kept firmly outside the Austen door. 751 00:33:10,958 --> 00:33:12,289 The language of bodily parts 752 00:33:12,393 --> 00:33:14,953 was not allowed in the Austen parks and drawing rooms. 753 00:33:15,062 --> 00:33:15,960 In her own way, 754 00:33:16,063 --> 00:33:18,588 Jane Austen was every bit as masterful and controlling 755 00:33:18,699 --> 00:33:21,497 as the men whom time has seen her surpass. 756 00:33:21,602 --> 00:33:23,467 Her own proper and correct use of English 757 00:33:23,571 --> 00:33:25,835 has permeated the minds and sensibilities 758 00:33:25,940 --> 00:33:28,101 of hundreds of thousands of her readers. 759 00:33:28,209 --> 00:33:29,767 Swear words would never do. 760 00:33:29,877 --> 00:33:32,505 The human body had become the great unmentionable 761 00:33:32,613 --> 00:33:33,773 of Jane Austen's time, 762 00:33:33,881 --> 00:33:34,848 and to deal with it, 763 00:33:34,949 --> 00:33:37,782 English had produced a fantastically inventive list 764 00:33:37,885 --> 00:33:38,943 of euphemisms. 765 00:33:39,053 --> 00:33:42,284 These are all polite terms for the male organ 766 00:33:42,389 --> 00:33:45,051 from popular speech or writers of the 1 8th century... 767 00:33:45,159 --> 00:33:47,457 not that Jane Austen or any of her heroines 768 00:33:47,561 --> 00:33:50,291 would have let them pass their lips. 769 00:33:50,397 --> 00:33:53,833 Tailpipe, pilgrim's staff, 770 00:33:53,934 --> 00:33:58,268 Captain Standish, silent flute, 771 00:33:58,372 --> 00:34:01,535 pike of pleasure, mutton dagger, 772 00:34:01,642 --> 00:34:05,476 Cupid's torch, chink-stopper, 773 00:34:05,579 --> 00:34:08,446 Nimrod... the mighty hunter, 774 00:34:08,549 --> 00:34:11,040 His Majesty in Purple Cap, 775 00:34:11,151 --> 00:34:12,948 beloved guest, 776 00:34:13,053 --> 00:34:16,318 picklock, pleasure pivot, pump-handle, 777 00:34:16,423 --> 00:34:19,984 dear morsel, and Dr Johnson... 778 00:34:20,094 --> 00:34:21,152 because there was no-one 779 00:34:21,262 --> 00:34:24,993 that Dr Johnson was not prepared to stand up to. 780 00:34:25,099 --> 00:34:27,329 It can seem comical today, 781 00:34:27,434 --> 00:34:29,959 as though avoiding the word could avoid the thought. 782 00:34:30,070 --> 00:34:32,868 But that's a testament to the power of language. 783 00:34:32,973 --> 00:34:35,567 It was all part of putting English in its place. 784 00:34:35,676 --> 00:34:38,668 English was treated by the self-appointed censors 785 00:34:38,779 --> 00:34:41,942 as if it were an unruly mob, a subversive faction, 786 00:34:42,049 --> 00:34:43,380 a party of revolution. 787 00:34:43,484 --> 00:34:46,112 And reputation was no armour against their assault. 788 00:34:46,220 --> 00:34:47,312 It was the 1 8th century 789 00:34:47,421 --> 00:34:49,184 that first took the scissors to Shakespeare, 790 00:34:49,290 --> 00:34:50,780 removing hundreds of lines 791 00:34:50,891 --> 00:34:53,257 with words like "whore" and "strumpet" and "devil". 792 00:34:53,360 --> 00:34:55,055 This prudery, as we would see it, 793 00:34:55,162 --> 00:34:56,629 was a product of the society 794 00:34:56,730 --> 00:34:58,459 whose idea of elegance and decorum 795 00:34:58,565 --> 00:35:00,465 had produced Johnson and Jane Austen. 796 00:35:00,567 --> 00:35:02,694 It was the ultimate result of Johnson's notion 797 00:35:02,803 --> 00:35:05,169 that language was the dress of thought 798 00:35:05,272 --> 00:35:08,571 and that heroic sentiments were degraded by common words. 799 00:35:08,676 --> 00:35:10,940 Remove the words, remove the thought. 800 00:35:11,045 --> 00:35:13,138 But English wasn't going to lie down. 801 00:35:13,247 --> 00:35:15,147 Johnson, remember, had also objected 802 00:35:15,249 --> 00:35:16,841 to the use of trade terms. 803 00:35:16,950 --> 00:35:19,680 Trade terms had no place in Jane Austen's world, 804 00:35:19,787 --> 00:35:21,049 but trade terms 805 00:35:21,155 --> 00:35:25,524 were about to reinvigorate the English language. 806 00:35:30,097 --> 00:35:30,495 [Water gurgling, steam hissing] 807 00:35:44,311 --> 00:35:47,940 In 1 7 56, the Scottish engineer James Watt 808 00:35:48,048 --> 00:35:50,642 was working on improving the steam engine. 809 00:35:50,751 --> 00:35:53,447 This is a model of one of his designs. 810 00:35:53,554 --> 00:35:56,079 Watt was very tight-lipped about his ideas, 811 00:35:56,190 --> 00:35:57,316 but one of his friends 812 00:35:57,424 --> 00:36:00,154 reported the work to another of his friends. 813 00:36:01,862 --> 00:36:03,420 MAN: The condenser's the thing. 814 00:36:03,530 --> 00:36:04,758 Keep it but cold enough, 815 00:36:04,865 --> 00:36:06,423 and you may have the perfect vacuum, 816 00:36:06,533 --> 00:36:08,433 whatever be the heat of the cylinder. 817 00:36:08,535 --> 00:36:10,400 I also learned that the great difficulty 818 00:36:10,504 --> 00:36:13,029 was to make the piston tight. 819 00:36:13,140 --> 00:36:15,574 Piston, cylinder, condenser. 820 00:36:15,676 --> 00:36:17,576 This is the new language of steam power. 821 00:36:17,678 --> 00:36:18,872 And in the same recollection, 822 00:36:18,979 --> 00:36:21,709 we read about the eduction pipe, the steam vessel, 823 00:36:21,815 --> 00:36:24,613 the reservoir, the air pump, and the siphon. 824 00:36:24,718 --> 00:36:27,482 English was called up for the new technology. 825 00:36:27,588 --> 00:36:29,146 Watt's condenser was the key 826 00:36:29,256 --> 00:36:31,315 to efficient and practical steam power, 827 00:36:31,425 --> 00:36:33,359 and it changed the world. 828 00:36:53,714 --> 00:36:56,182 The industrial revolution had arrived. 829 00:36:56,283 --> 00:36:59,616 The machines of the 1 9th century are still a great attraction, 830 00:36:59,720 --> 00:37:02,655 as we can see here at the Museum of Science and Industry 831 00:37:02,756 --> 00:37:03,688 in Manchester. 832 00:37:03,791 --> 00:37:06,453 But now they're historical curiosities. 833 00:37:06,560 --> 00:37:09,529 Then, they were the cutting edge of technology. 834 00:37:09,630 --> 00:37:11,564 In 1 851, the Great Exhibition 835 00:37:11,665 --> 00:37:13,656 of the Works of Industry of All Nations 836 00:37:13,767 --> 00:37:15,962 opened in the purpose-built Crystal Palace 837 00:37:16,069 --> 00:37:17,593 in London's Hyde Park. 838 00:37:17,704 --> 00:37:20,605 It was a display of manufactured goods of all kinds, 839 00:37:20,707 --> 00:37:23,198 and the greatest attraction was the machine hall. 840 00:37:23,310 --> 00:37:26,245 Queen Victoria was an enthusiastic visitor. 841 00:37:26,346 --> 00:37:29,076 In a lengthy and acutely observed diary entry, 842 00:37:29,183 --> 00:37:32,118 she wrote, "Excessively interesting and instructive. 843 00:37:32,219 --> 00:37:35,916 Here was every conceivable invention." 844 00:37:37,591 --> 00:37:39,354 Here were some of the industrial world's 845 00:37:39,460 --> 00:37:42,861 and the English language's newest arrivals... 846 00:37:42,963 --> 00:37:45,693 hydraulic power, centrifugal pump, 847 00:37:45,799 --> 00:37:49,098 lithograph, electro-plating, 848 00:37:49,203 --> 00:37:51,068 dynamograph, 849 00:37:51,171 --> 00:37:54,834 and, grandest of them all, anhydrohepseterion, 850 00:37:54,942 --> 00:37:57,137 which cooked potatoes in their own juice. 851 00:37:58,545 --> 00:38:02,140 Practical inventions frequently roped in familiar terms. 852 00:38:01,949 --> 00:38:03,610 The men who built the machines 853 00:38:03,717 --> 00:38:05,378 were often clock and watchmakers by trade, 854 00:38:05,486 --> 00:38:07,283 and they brought their language with them. 855 00:38:07,388 --> 00:38:11,688 Wheels, teeth, pinions, leaves, pivots. 856 00:38:12,660 --> 00:38:14,958 Beasts of burden lent their names 857 00:38:15,062 --> 00:38:17,053 to the mechanical beasts which were replacing them. 858 00:38:17,164 --> 00:38:18,893 There was the donkey engine, 859 00:38:18,999 --> 00:38:23,333 which had its output measured by the new standard of horsepower. 860 00:38:23,437 --> 00:38:25,803 In the cotton mills, 861 00:38:25,906 --> 00:38:28,136 there was Samuel Crompton's spinning mule 862 00:38:28,242 --> 00:38:30,710 and other inventions, including the roving billy 863 00:38:30,811 --> 00:38:32,642 and the spinning jenny, 864 00:38:32,746 --> 00:38:33,940 which may be derived 865 00:38:34,048 --> 00:38:36,278 from the common names for male and female animals, 866 00:38:36,383 --> 00:38:38,681 as in billy goat and jenny ass. 867 00:38:38,786 --> 00:38:41,220 But the classical languages, Latin and Greek, 868 00:38:41,322 --> 00:38:42,880 were also employed by scientists, 869 00:38:42,990 --> 00:38:44,014 either through diffidence 870 00:38:44,124 --> 00:38:46,422 or wishing to claim a distinction for their discipline 871 00:38:46,527 --> 00:38:48,358 which matched anything in antiquity. 872 00:38:48,462 --> 00:38:50,657 They took the Greek terms logos, meaning "word", 873 00:38:50,764 --> 00:38:52,493 and nomia, meaning "distribution", 874 00:38:52,600 --> 00:38:56,366 and named new fields of inquiry "-ologies" and "-onomies". 875 00:38:56,470 --> 00:38:58,529 Like biology, petrology, 876 00:38:58,639 --> 00:39:00,300 taxonomy, morphology, 877 00:39:00,407 --> 00:39:02,307 palaeontology, ethnology, 878 00:39:02,409 --> 00:39:04,036 gynaecology, histology, 879 00:39:04,144 --> 00:39:06,806 carcinology, agronomy, geonomy, 880 00:39:06,914 --> 00:39:09,280 phytonomy, and entomology. 881 00:39:10,618 --> 00:39:12,415 In the first part of the 1 9th century, 882 00:39:12,519 --> 00:39:13,781 these islands had become 883 00:39:13,887 --> 00:39:16,617 the world's leading scientific and industrial nation, 884 00:39:16,724 --> 00:39:19,625 and the language became an engine which drove it forward. 885 00:39:21,662 --> 00:39:24,961 "Engine" is a word with a long history in the English language. 886 00:39:25,065 --> 00:39:26,327 For instance, in the Middle Ages, 887 00:39:26,433 --> 00:39:28,094 it meant "skill" or "talent". 888 00:39:28,202 --> 00:39:31,069 Then it became a machine, a weapon, or a snare. 889 00:39:31,171 --> 00:39:33,298 Now it became part of the steam engine, 890 00:39:33,407 --> 00:39:34,704 or the locomotive engine, 891 00:39:34,808 --> 00:39:37,641 and then, in 1 829, the word "locomotive" itself shifted 892 00:39:37,745 --> 00:39:39,679 and stood alone as a noun. 893 00:39:39,780 --> 00:39:42,772 The railway brought new meaning to a whole set of words. 894 00:39:42,883 --> 00:39:45,681 "Track" and "line" were both applied to the metal rails. 895 00:39:45,786 --> 00:39:47,549 Their junctions became "points". 896 00:39:47,655 --> 00:39:49,350 "Coach", "carriage", and "wagon" 897 00:39:49,456 --> 00:39:51,287 all left the road and rode the rails, 898 00:39:51,392 --> 00:39:53,860 while "lorry" began its life as a railway word 899 00:39:53,961 --> 00:39:55,553 and made the journey in reverse. 900 00:39:55,663 --> 00:39:58,131 "Stations" had been places for ships and troops 901 00:39:58,232 --> 00:39:59,756 before the word was first applied 902 00:39:59,867 --> 00:40:00,959 to the building behind me... 903 00:40:01,068 --> 00:40:03,935 Liverpool Road Station here in Manchester. 904 00:40:04,038 --> 00:40:06,233 [Whistle blows] 905 00:40:16,317 --> 00:40:19,286 And behind the locomotive was the train of carriages; 906 00:40:19,386 --> 00:40:20,353 a line of them 907 00:40:20,454 --> 00:40:23,184 in the same way that English had spoken of a train of followers 908 00:40:23,290 --> 00:40:24,814 or the trailing train of a dress. 909 00:40:24,925 --> 00:40:26,893 Within 1 0 years of its first use, 910 00:40:26,994 --> 00:40:29,861 the train meant the locomotive as well as its carriages. 911 00:40:29,963 --> 00:40:31,191 The world was on the move, 912 00:40:31,298 --> 00:40:33,163 taking words and their meanings with it. 913 00:40:33,267 --> 00:40:35,531 What chance now of the 1 8th-century ideal 914 00:40:35,636 --> 00:40:37,035 of ascertaining or fixing it 915 00:40:37,137 --> 00:40:40,903 when words were dealing with so much that was new? 916 00:40:57,624 --> 00:40:59,819 Other words were shifting in meaning, too, 917 00:40:59,927 --> 00:41:02,395 reflecting massive social changes. 918 00:41:02,496 --> 00:41:04,760 Factories had been foreign trading stations 919 00:41:04,865 --> 00:41:06,196 in the 1 7th century. 920 00:41:06,300 --> 00:41:09,963 Mills had once been places to grind corn. 921 00:41:10,070 --> 00:41:12,300 Now they both meant places of manufacture, 922 00:41:12,406 --> 00:41:14,306 and they were getting larger. 923 00:41:14,408 --> 00:41:16,035 The word "industry" had moved away 924 00:41:16,143 --> 00:41:18,737 from the idea of individual diligence, or work, 925 00:41:18,846 --> 00:41:21,371 and come to represent a whole institution. 926 00:41:21,482 --> 00:41:23,609 So had "labour" and "capital", 927 00:41:23,717 --> 00:41:26,811 as the forces they described gathered pace. 928 00:41:26,920 --> 00:41:29,650 These aren't simply changes in the meaning of words. 929 00:41:29,757 --> 00:41:31,850 They represent changes in people's lives, 930 00:41:31,959 --> 00:41:34,291 hundreds of thousands, millions of them. 931 00:41:34,395 --> 00:41:36,625 In the mills, it was often children 932 00:41:36,730 --> 00:41:38,561 who took the cans of cotton fibre 933 00:41:38,665 --> 00:41:39,859 from one machine to the next. 934 00:41:39,967 --> 00:41:41,696 If output slowed down, 935 00:41:41,802 --> 00:41:45,169 blame was levelled at the child who carried the can. 936 00:41:47,274 --> 00:41:50,141 Some workers, like those at Quarry Bank Mill at Styal, 937 00:41:50,244 --> 00:41:51,142 were fortunate. 938 00:41:51,245 --> 00:41:53,270 They had model cottages built for them. 939 00:41:53,380 --> 00:41:55,940 But tens of thousands learned a new word, 940 00:41:56,049 --> 00:41:58,779 a word that English picked up off the London streets 941 00:41:58,886 --> 00:42:00,410 from the slang of the poor, 942 00:42:00,521 --> 00:42:03,319 and that word was "slum". 943 00:42:04,792 --> 00:42:07,420 The economic miracle of the industrial revolution 944 00:42:07,528 --> 00:42:08,790 was also a curse. 945 00:42:08,896 --> 00:42:10,329 There was squalor and poverty 946 00:42:10,431 --> 00:42:12,126 on a scale never seen before in cities, 947 00:42:12,232 --> 00:42:13,665 especially in London. 948 00:42:13,767 --> 00:42:17,032 English was using a new word to describe social status. 949 00:42:17,137 --> 00:42:20,538 Instead of old terms like "degree", "status", or "rank", 950 00:42:20,641 --> 00:42:22,006 it now had "class". 951 00:42:22,109 --> 00:42:24,339 And the slums were the realm of the lower classes, 952 00:42:24,445 --> 00:42:26,072 the working classes. 953 00:42:26,180 --> 00:42:27,977 The 1 8th century ideas of proper speech 954 00:42:28,081 --> 00:42:29,343 became stronger than ever, 955 00:42:29,450 --> 00:42:32,817 as the language police sneered at urban working-class dialects 956 00:42:32,920 --> 00:42:35,218 such as cockney. 957 00:42:35,322 --> 00:42:38,553 Would the cockney speech of that time, of the 1 8th century, 958 00:42:40,794 --> 00:42:42,762 have sounded very much like the cockney speech of today? 959 00:42:42,863 --> 00:42:44,888 What would have characterised it? 960 00:42:44,998 --> 00:42:50,493 Typical features would have been the alternation of "F" and "TH". 961 00:42:50,604 --> 00:42:54,404 So, for example, a pronunciation like "barff" 962 00:42:54,508 --> 00:42:55,907 would have been very characteristic 963 00:42:56,009 --> 00:42:57,738 of cockney of that time, 964 00:42:57,845 --> 00:42:59,335 as opposed to "bath", 965 00:42:59,446 --> 00:43:00,606 which would actually have been 966 00:43:00,714 --> 00:43:02,238 a much more refined pronunciation 967 00:43:02,349 --> 00:43:04,579 of what we now would say as "bath". 968 00:43:04,685 --> 00:43:08,519 So a lot of the markers shift their values at that time. 969 00:43:08,622 --> 00:43:10,647 Another very typical one, 970 00:43:10,757 --> 00:43:13,089 often regarded as a kind of vice of the cockneys, 971 00:43:13,193 --> 00:43:15,661 that's by John Walker in 1 791, 972 00:43:15,762 --> 00:43:17,593 was the alternation of "V" and "W". 973 00:43:17,698 --> 00:43:19,029 So, a word like "well" 974 00:43:19,132 --> 00:43:21,623 would be pronounced as "vell", for example. 975 00:43:21,735 --> 00:43:25,068 This was very much a living reality of cockney speech 976 00:43:25,172 --> 00:43:28,767 throughout the late 1 8th century and into the 1 9th century. 977 00:43:28,876 --> 00:43:30,776 But cockney was regarded as uncouth, wasn't it? 978 00:43:30,878 --> 00:43:33,403 It was regarded as a sign of not being educated. 979 00:43:33,514 --> 00:43:34,503 It was looked down on. 980 00:43:34,615 --> 00:43:36,674 No, cockney was certainly regarded as uncouth. 981 00:43:36,783 --> 00:43:39,047 It was the speech, as another writer said, 982 00:43:39,152 --> 00:43:42,019 "of the vulgar provincialists of the metropolis". 983 00:43:42,122 --> 00:43:45,683 I mean, it was something that was lacking 984 00:43:45,792 --> 00:43:48,283 the educated, literate proprieties 985 00:43:48,395 --> 00:43:51,694 which people regarded as the norm to be aimed for. 986 00:43:51,798 --> 00:43:54,767 Do you think, in the end, it was disabling to our society, 987 00:43:54,868 --> 00:43:57,359 that that's what so many people were concentrating on 988 00:43:57,471 --> 00:43:58,369 so very much? 989 00:43:58,472 --> 00:44:02,169 There was certainly a kind of barrier generated by this, 990 00:44:02,276 --> 00:44:05,074 the image particularly of the accent-less voice. 991 00:44:05,178 --> 00:44:07,703 Obviously, the accent-less voice is a kind of myth. 992 00:44:07,814 --> 00:44:09,714 Everyone has to speak with an accent. 993 00:44:09,816 --> 00:44:11,545 But this barrier erected 994 00:44:11,652 --> 00:44:15,315 between those who had managed to shed a regional accent 995 00:44:15,422 --> 00:44:17,788 and those who then had acquired 996 00:44:17,891 --> 00:44:19,882 what we call the non-localised accent... 997 00:44:19,993 --> 00:44:23,451 an accent that didn't reveal your place of birth. 998 00:44:23,564 --> 00:44:27,056 And this set up a problematic fault line in society 999 00:44:27,167 --> 00:44:29,727 which people strove to try and cross. 1000 00:44:29,536 --> 00:44:31,629 You should have put your... 1001 00:44:31,739 --> 00:44:32,933 BRAGG: In 1 851, 1002 00:44:33,040 --> 00:44:34,632 the journalist Henry Mayhew 1003 00:44:34,742 --> 00:44:36,903 identified a new kind of London talk... 1004 00:44:37,011 --> 00:44:40,105 "a cadgers' cant, done on the rhyming principle". 1005 00:44:40,214 --> 00:44:41,374 - Hello, Mick. - Hello, Tony. 1006 00:44:41,482 --> 00:44:43,109 How you going, me old China? 1007 00:44:43,217 --> 00:44:45,412 Tell you what, I was elephant's last night. 1008 00:44:45,519 --> 00:44:47,180 What? Brahms 'n Liszt again? 1009 00:44:47,288 --> 00:44:50,121 I'm just going to go round the Jack Horner. 1010 00:44:50,224 --> 00:44:51,691 You haven't got any pie 'n mash, have you? 1011 00:44:51,792 --> 00:44:53,851 Pie 'n mash? I lent you a cockerel last night. 1012 00:44:53,961 --> 00:44:55,019 Can't keep giving you quids. 1013 00:44:55,129 --> 00:44:57,120 - Deep-sea diver? - No, not today, mate. 1014 00:44:57,231 --> 00:44:59,529 What was you on? That old Amos again? 1015 00:44:59,633 --> 00:45:01,362 - Vera Lynn mix? - What can I say? 1016 00:45:01,468 --> 00:45:02,799 I'm going down the frog 'n toad. 1017 00:45:02,903 --> 00:45:06,031 Meantime, keep out the battlecruiser 1018 00:45:06,140 --> 00:45:07,869 and stay off the Amos. 1019 00:45:07,975 --> 00:45:09,704 BRAGG: Cockney rhyming slang 1020 00:45:09,810 --> 00:45:12,335 became the most relished characteristic of cockney. 1021 00:45:12,446 --> 00:45:15,973 Its wit and innuendo still give it life today. 1022 00:45:16,083 --> 00:45:17,744 MAN: Dinky doos, cus. 1023 00:45:17,851 --> 00:45:19,876 Mushroom would be "Bobby Crush mush." 1024 00:45:19,987 --> 00:45:21,352 Grape, the big hairy ape. 1025 00:45:21,455 --> 00:45:22,922 Donkey barrow, marrow. 1026 00:45:23,023 --> 00:45:25,514 Like you say, the trousers, like, Lionel Blair's flares. 1027 00:45:25,626 --> 00:45:27,025 Claire Rayner's trainers. 1028 00:45:27,127 --> 00:45:29,357 City slickers' knickers. Eartha Kitt's tits. 1029 00:45:29,463 --> 00:45:33,422 BRAGG: Slang is a code, a way of a group speaking to itself 1030 00:45:33,534 --> 00:45:36,059 without being understood by the rest of society, 1031 00:45:36,170 --> 00:45:38,661 so it's constantly reinvented. 1032 00:45:38,772 --> 00:45:40,797 In Victorian times, there were many such codes 1033 00:45:40,908 --> 00:45:41,806 where hidden meanings 1034 00:45:41,909 --> 00:45:43,877 could flout conventional respectability, 1035 00:45:43,977 --> 00:45:46,070 and one of them was found in the music hall. 1036 00:45:46,180 --> 00:45:49,206 Marie Lloyd was once criticised by the moral watchdogs 1037 00:45:49,316 --> 00:45:52,410 for singing, "She sits among the cabbages and peas." 1038 00:45:52,519 --> 00:45:54,885 She responded by changing the words 1039 00:45:54,988 --> 00:45:58,981 to "She sits among the cabbages and leeks." 1040 00:46:02,663 --> 00:46:04,995 200 years after John Locke's call 1041 00:46:05,099 --> 00:46:07,294 for meanings to be defined and clarified, 1042 00:46:07,401 --> 00:46:09,460 none of the self-appointed guardians of English 1043 00:46:09,570 --> 00:46:11,401 had been able to tie it down. 1044 00:46:11,505 --> 00:46:15,066 Words continued to change, to take on new meanings, 1045 00:46:15,175 --> 00:46:18,633 to hide their true faces behind a mask of respectability. 1046 00:46:18,746 --> 00:46:21,977 Here at Locke's old college, Christ Church, Oxford, 1047 00:46:22,082 --> 00:46:24,016 in the 1 9th century, 1048 00:46:24,118 --> 00:46:26,279 Charles Dodgson, a mathematics lecturer, 1049 00:46:26,387 --> 00:46:28,014 invented a fictional character 1050 00:46:28,122 --> 00:46:31,148 who would have given Locke nightmares. 1051 00:46:31,258 --> 00:46:33,886 MAN: "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said 1052 00:46:33,994 --> 00:46:35,518 in rather a scornful tone, 1053 00:46:35,629 --> 00:46:38,029 "it means just what I choose it to mean... 1054 00:46:38,132 --> 00:46:40,464 neither more nor less." 1055 00:46:40,567 --> 00:46:44,025 BRAGG: Dodgson is better known by his pen name, Lewis Carroll, 1056 00:46:44,138 --> 00:46:45,435 the author of "Alice In Wonderland". 1057 00:46:45,539 --> 00:46:48,599 When he wrote "Through the Looking-Glass" in 1 8 7 1, 1058 00:46:48,709 --> 00:46:50,404 he took English further than slang 1059 00:46:50,511 --> 00:46:52,103 and into the realms of nonsense. 1060 00:46:52,212 --> 00:46:54,112 This is the opening of "Jabberwocky". 1061 00:46:54,214 --> 00:46:56,079 "'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves 1062 00:46:56,183 --> 00:46:58,447 Did gyre and gimble in the wabe... 1063 00:46:58,552 --> 00:47:00,281 All mimsy were the borogoves 1064 00:47:00,387 --> 00:47:02,912 And the mome raths outgrabe." 1065 00:47:03,023 --> 00:47:05,856 The only interpreter of this verse that Alice can find 1066 00:47:05,959 --> 00:47:06,857 is Humpty Dumpty, 1067 00:47:06,960 --> 00:47:09,952 who defines words just as he wants to. 1068 00:47:10,063 --> 00:47:12,361 Locke and the language police who came after him 1069 00:47:12,466 --> 00:47:13,763 would not have approved. 1070 00:47:13,867 --> 00:47:16,495 It's nonsense but intellectual nonsense. 1071 00:47:16,603 --> 00:47:18,070 A clever game with words. 1072 00:47:18,172 --> 00:47:20,538 Quite different from the way the lower classes speak, 1073 00:47:20,641 --> 00:47:22,632 according to an article that Dodgson wrote. 1074 00:47:22,743 --> 00:47:25,473 "A word means what the speaker intends by it," he wrote, 1075 00:47:25,579 --> 00:47:28,446 "and what the hearer understands by it, and that is all. 1076 00:47:28,549 --> 00:47:30,210 This thought may lessen the horror 1077 00:47:30,317 --> 00:47:32,808 of some of the language used by the lower classes, 1078 00:47:32,920 --> 00:47:36,356 which is often a mere collection of unmeaning sounds." 1079 00:47:36,457 --> 00:47:38,925 By the end of the 1 9th century, 1080 00:47:39,026 --> 00:47:41,085 attitudes to the class system and language 1081 00:47:41,195 --> 00:47:42,822 had been tightly bound together. 1082 00:47:42,930 --> 00:47:45,660 The upper classes spoke clearly and were intelligent leaders. 1083 00:47:45,766 --> 00:47:48,894 The lower classes grunted and were stupid brutes. 1084 00:47:49,002 --> 00:47:49,991 WOMAN: Eeeaaaaoooow. 1085 00:47:50,103 --> 00:47:53,004 MAN: Remember that you are a human being with a soul 1086 00:47:53,106 --> 00:47:55,870 and the divine gift of articulate speech. 1087 00:47:55,976 --> 00:47:58,274 That your native language is the language of Shakespeare 1088 00:47:58,378 --> 00:47:59,504 and Milton and the Bible, 1089 00:47:59,613 --> 00:48:04,141 and don't sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon. 1090 00:48:04,985 --> 00:48:08,546 The story of Shaw's play "Pygmalion" is well-known. 1091 00:48:08,655 --> 00:48:11,215 A professor of phonetics finds a cockney flower-girl 1092 00:48:11,325 --> 00:48:12,792 here in Covent Garden 1093 00:48:12,893 --> 00:48:17,193 and coaches her to speak English like the upper classes. 1094 00:48:17,297 --> 00:48:20,494 What isn't so well known is that Shaw had a serious purpose. 1095 00:48:20,601 --> 00:48:23,832 He thought that the general public obeyed the ruling classes 1096 00:48:23,937 --> 00:48:26,303 because they expressed themselves so elegantly, 1097 00:48:26,406 --> 00:48:28,033 so authoritatively. 1098 00:48:28,141 --> 00:48:30,541 Even their bad ideas sounded convincing 1099 00:48:30,644 --> 00:48:32,202 in upper-class English. 1100 00:48:32,312 --> 00:48:34,678 And when the play was produced in London in 1 91 4, 1101 00:48:34,781 --> 00:48:36,681 there were plenty of bad ideas around. 1102 00:48:36,783 --> 00:48:38,876 The well-spoken politicians were on course 1103 00:48:38,986 --> 00:48:40,419 for the First World War. 1104 00:48:40,521 --> 00:48:42,853 Shaw wanted his play to show 1105 00:48:42,956 --> 00:48:44,685 that there was no magic in good speech. 1106 00:48:44,791 --> 00:48:47,453 He even thought that if he could break the spell, 1107 00:48:47,561 --> 00:48:49,324 he might prevent the war. 1108 00:48:49,429 --> 00:48:51,624 The play caused an uproar, 1109 00:48:51,732 --> 00:48:55,190 but not because of Shaw's ideas about class and pronunciation. 1110 00:48:55,302 --> 00:48:58,362 He broke one of the cardinal rules of polite society 1111 00:48:58,472 --> 00:48:59,370 at the time. 1112 00:48:59,473 --> 00:49:02,533 He put a rude word onstage. 1113 00:49:02,643 --> 00:49:03,701 WOMAN: I must go. 1114 00:49:06,013 --> 00:49:08,675 So pleased to have met you. 1115 00:49:08,782 --> 00:49:11,478 MAN: Are you walking across the park, Miss Dolittle? 1116 00:49:11,585 --> 00:49:13,712 - Lf so, I... - WOMAN: Walk? 1117 00:49:13,820 --> 00:49:16,687 Not bloody likely. 1118 00:49:16,790 --> 00:49:21,386 I am going in a taxi. 1119 00:49:21,495 --> 00:49:25,090 That one word ..."bloody"... was the talk of the nation. 1120 00:49:25,198 --> 00:49:26,688 It caused so much fuss 1121 00:49:26,800 --> 00:49:29,325 that it erased Shaw's serious message. 1122 00:49:29,436 --> 00:49:30,926 When the First World War broke out, 1123 00:49:31,038 --> 00:49:33,404 Shaw could only regret how, as he put it, 1124 00:49:33,507 --> 00:49:35,600 "War can so easily be gilt 1125 00:49:35,709 --> 00:49:37,973 with romance and heroism and the like 1126 00:49:38,078 --> 00:49:41,070 by persons whose superficial literary and oratorical talent 1127 00:49:41,181 --> 00:49:45,413 covers an abyss of godforsaken folly". 1128 00:49:50,390 --> 00:49:51,789 Two centuries previously, 1129 00:49:51,892 --> 00:49:54,224 the Age of Enlightenment had dreamed of order 1130 00:49:54,328 --> 00:49:57,593 and of a unified language ending conflict. 1131 00:49:57,698 --> 00:49:59,222 But it was the First World War 1132 00:49:59,333 --> 00:50:02,029 that would begin the long decline of the social order 1133 00:50:02,135 --> 00:50:03,932 and its idea that you were a better person 1134 00:50:04,037 --> 00:50:06,699 if you spoke proper English. 1135 00:50:11,111 --> 00:50:14,080 Subtitling made possible by Acorn Media