George Orwell portrays great points to show us what is going wrong with the English Language. When he is explaining what’s wrong with it, as a student you feel responsible. It’s an interesting thought because we are never told by teachers to use longer and stronger words, but we deem it necessary to do so anyways. Our misuse of words, phrases, and the lack of expressing our thoughts are slowly killing the English language.
Firstly, students and kids misuse words all the time; whether it’s using words we don’t know or shortening their spelling. Nowadays, kids learn how to operate a computer by the age of 7 or 8. Although kids are portrayed as energetic and hyper when it comes to typing we are the complete opposite. When I’m chatting online with someone I tend to shorten words like: thx, 2morw, u (you), y (why), r (are), ttyl (talk to you later), and many more. Orwell says, “Written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided, if one is willing to take the necessary trouble.” He’s completely right, these bad habits can be avoided; all we have to do is type a couple of extra letters and slowly we’ll get rid of the habit. Furthermore, students make another huge mistake; they use words they don’t know. While constructing sentences we have this urge to make them seem smarter, and so we right-click on our mouse and replace a word with one we do not truly understand. This makes the sentence confusing and it also does the opposite of what we want; it doesn’t sound smart, it sounds like you don’t know what you are talking about. Moreover, we also use very drastic words when they are not appropriate. Orwell says that words like phenomenon, liquidate, and utilize are, “Used to dress up simple statements.” These words shouldn’t fit in our daily vocabulary. For example, you can’t say, “I got an F! The problems I am going to have at home will be of gigantic proportions,” because anything that is of gigantic proportions doesn’t happen frequently and it represents something that would affect a great deal of people. Orwell also establishes another problem with these words, “ The words freedom, patriotic, realistic, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another.” He’s right, we cannot say stuff like, “I love my country; I’m a patriot!” The fact is we don’t know what makes a patriot; one cannot just claim to love one’s country and become a patriot.
Secondly, we constantly use phrases just because they seem to flow well or because it is common. The fact is that by doing so, we get rid of what makes us unique writers. Orwell states, “… there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves.” Whenever we hear something that sounds good and flows well we tend to use it in our writing. What we forget is that we didn’t come up with those words, we just found a place to put them in. By using other people’s words and sentences we are making a collage instead of inventing unique sentences and ideas. Additionally, metaphors are also constantly misused. Much like phrases when one writes an essay one uses pre-made metaphors instead of creating them. In order to show us how metaphors are being misused Orwell even provides us with an example, “THE HAMMER AND THE ANVIL, now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer.” These mistakes would stop occurring if one took the time to comprehend what one is writing.
Lastly, often times when we get to a controversial subject we tend to express our thoughts in different ways than what we actually believe. In order to sound more ‘politically correct’ we modify our thoughts and present our arguments with a bunch of lies attached to it. We feel as though by saying something to direct like, “I believe that it was good thing when the U.S dropped the nuke on Hiroshima,” we are bad people. The fact is, we are not. We are simply expressing our opinions. Orwell says, “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” If we compromise with our language too much we may end up believing our own lie. Modifying our language takes away our opinions. Orwell agrees with this fact when he says, “Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of then atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties.” One shouldn’t disregard their opinion simply because it may sound ‘politically incorrect’; this is why it’s called an opinion, it’s what you believe and no one should have an affect on that.
The English language faces many problems, but they are all extinguishable. If we work on our writing and understand what we are writing then these mistakes should be gone automatically. It is only logical that when one writes a paper one is meant to know the meaning of what they are writing. While writing, we have to stop using shortcuts and start being original. If this happens then the English language will get its elegance back!
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