Most of the people who actually think they're the ones who care about language, the kind of absolute arse-witterers who write letters to newspapers... moaning about the confusion of disinterested and uninterested and thinking that they're terribly educated and that they really understand language, and they know the derivation of words, someone has said “less when they meant “fewer”. That's not being a guardian of language. Being a guardian of language is enjoying language and understanding it, and if people understood it for a second, the philology as it’s called, the history of it, you'd realise that language is changing all the time. --Stephen Fry, Jonathan Ross Interview
An amazing opinion by an unequivocally intelligent man. While watching said interview, the whole ‘Ris Low and her amusing word creations’ along with the general public’s criticism of her “abhorrent” butchering of the English language. Believe me, I do not believe that their criticism was unwarranted, and to say I never partook in ridiculing her would be hypocritical. But what Mr. Fry so elaborately explained, English is an ever-expanding, ever-changing thing. Unlike, say French, which has an authority overseeing the weeding out of improper French words, the English language is malleable and words consistently take on new definitions and discard old ones (e.g. meld and book).
Hence, her habit of making up new words can hardly be criticized. After all, even The Bard himself, whom we consider to be an English legend, made up words half the time. In fact it is said that he had a larger vocabulary than English itself. Yet while his creations have lasted and evolved through the centuries and it is quite clear that Ms. Low’s words are more of a linguistic dead end, to ridicule her based on her creations is highly hypocritical of us, as we praise Shakespeare for his ingenuity. Naturally, of course, one is not recommended to use her words, as they are reminiscent of a more juvenile thought process.
Also I see no reason for discrimination against her lack of ability to speak English. There are many contestants, on the international stage, who cannot converse in English at all, yet they are provided with translators, why then is Singapore so insistent on giving an impression that English is our language. By doing this cripple our representative, when instead they could have aided her to “shine” by providing a translator to assist.
That being said, I am glad the current holder of the Ms. World title was the one sent instead, for in my opinion she far exceeds the top 2 in terms of beauty and even perhaps, eloquence.
It is late and I have little more to say on this subject except that if people wish to invent words, a smidgen of creativity and maturity is desired lest we end up with words like “Boomz” and “Shingz” and god knows what else, which, while not wrong, I feel is certainly far from desirable. And now a final quote from Stephen Fry, from the same interview.
“In London, our dear, beloved metropolis, you will see Medieval, Tudor, Elizabethan, Georgian, Queen Anne, Victorian, Edwardian, art deco, modernist, brutalist buildings all jostled together; it’s a very higgledy-piggledy city.”
“Now English language is like London; a mongrel mouthful, whether we know it or not, of Chaucer and Milton and Dryden and Pope and Shakespeare and Dickens and American South Central and ghetto rap and Chicago and Australian convict talk and legal and naval and military. Every phrase we utter is an equivalent of London: it is both vulgar and procession, it’s both grand and squalid. And that is exactly what human beings are it seems to me. It’s both animal and noble. And people who try to aggrandize language into something that is right or wrong. You might as well say a person is right or wrong, but for existing. It’s just arse-gravy. No, it’s not acceptable. It’s very peculiar.”
