Death of Literature

Death of Literature

“Are you crazy?” Samantha asked.

“I prithee your highness.” Jessica answered.

“Hai, stop talking this nonsense words.”

“Fie, fie. Wherefore thou art not using Shakespearean language?”

“No. Because I want to be expressive.”

“Hark. Mark my words. Anon why we can’t use Shakespearean language?”

“It is dead. No one can understand that. By the way we are going to get our class test marks and corrected papers of Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare.”

“Oofoo…”

We are only writing exams on Shakespearean Literature but we are not using the language.

The following will help you to understand the concept:

A variety of terms distinguish the kinds of languages and vocabularies that exist outside the mainstream of standard, formal language. Here are eight words and phrases that denote specific ideas of language usage.

1.     Argot: An argot is a secret language used by various groups – eg. schoolmates, colleagues.

2.     Colloquial Language: Colloquial Language is informal language that is not rude, but would not be used in formal situations.

3.     Creole: A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language that has developed from a simplified version of a language. Creoles share more grammatical similarities with each other than with the languages from which they are phylogenetically derived.

4.     Dialect: Dialect is a form of a language that is spoken in a particular area and that uses some of its own words, grammar and vocabulary.

5.     Jargon: Jargon is a language where many special words or expressions used by a profession or group that are difficult for others to understand.

6.     Lingo: Lingo is a language. The special language used for a particular activity or by a particular group of people.

7.     Lingua Franca: A lingua franca is a language often adopted as a common tongue to enable communication between speakers of separate languages.

8.     Slang: A vocabulary of terms employed in a specific subculture is slang.

9.     Vernacular: A vernacular is a native language or dialect, spoken by the ordinary people of a country or a region.

Is it death of language or death of literature?

Several weeks ago (3^rd July, 2014), Johnson (an Economist) discussed his debate with Nicholas Ostler about the lingua franca of the future. Johnson thinks that English has a very long run ahead of it. Mr.Ostler sees English’s time as coming to an end, to be replaced by machine-translation tools that will remove the need for people to learn to speak, read and write a lingua franca. But we agreed that whatever the long run might look like, the next few decades are set. No language has anything like a chance of displacing English.

Take Hindi language for an example. Rig  Veda  is accepted as the starting point of Hindi literature. Rig Veda was written in Sanskrit language. It was later translated into common man’s languages such as Pali, Prakrit and Apabhramsa languages. Sanskrit is accepted as a mother language of Hindi as well as all Indo-European languages. But the question is why the language is not prevalent at present.  This is called death of literature.

This is my idea. If a Vernacular (see box) or a Lingo develops itself and constructs its grammatical rules and becomes a Creole, after a few decades the same Creole will change into a Jargon and slowly becomes a Vernacular. The Vernacular becomes Dialect and starts to count its days.

The literal language becomes so old, affected by old thoughts because of not accepting new ideas, the same literal language becomes unpopular among the people.  The language fails to satisfy the changing needs of the people and prevails only among the elitist class. It becomes shunned by the majority. This is how the sophisticated Creole changes itself into a Dialect. Then the death of the literal language follows.

The empty place of the literal language must be occupied by a popular Vernacular and the Vernacular starts walking tall up to some age. Even though Jesus and his disciples primarily spoke Aramaic, the common language of Judea in the first century AD, the bibles which were written in the languages of Aramaic, Hebrew and Koine Greek are not popular. Lord Gautham Buddha selected Pali language which was a common language of that time to spread his thoughts when the literal language had been Sanskrit. Death of literature causes birth of a new language.

So please answer the texts if your son or daughter (even grandson, granddaughter, son-in-law and daughter-in-law) texts you – “hw r u? shal I nd ma frs r com ter. pls. Lost yer t ws g8 pleasr.” Because it is not an argot but a common language. Be ready our eng lang is in its end of days.

**************