Written English is the New Latin

The grammar in many of the undergrad essays that I have been marking is appalling. One manifestation of this is a near-universal inability to use apostrophes correctly. I am convinced that the reason for this is that the write how they speak- and their spoken english simply does not match written english.

Now, written language and spoken language are distinct concepts - one is permanent marks on a page and the other is momentary sound vibrations in the air (1). And they don't need to be in anyway connected; in Medieval Europe people spoke English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Polish etc but all wrote in Latin. But in practice the two concepts aren't distinct: written language is understood by analogy with spoken language - when we read we hear the words in our heads.

This causes problems when the two types of language are similar but not exactly the same. Spoken English (in New Zealand at any rate) does not distinguish between "your" and "you're", "there", "their" and "they're" or "orange's" and "oranges". Neither do many of the undergrad essays which I have been reading. These undergrads, I want to stress, are not stupid people. But, increasingly, these distinctions are not intuitive to them.

That is to say, "your" "their" and "orange's" are the vestiges of the English genitive case, which indicates possession. Spoken English is not a case-based system. The only uniquely pronounced genitive forms left are "my" and "his" (2). What this means is that, although these students have been told the rules, they have very little in their spoken language to use as an analogy for these written concepts. The case system is fundamentally foreign to them (3). It is much more intuitive to express case distinctions using word order and connection words like "to" "from" "for" and "by." I think that eventually the old genitives will be lost altogether - in New Zealand English, anyway.

There is precedent for this, in Latin. Classical Latin had six cases for every word, which it could use to express different notions. So a normal word like puella "girl" had all of these forms:

Cases (4) Singular Plural Nominative puella puellae Accusative puellam puellās Genitive puellae puellārum Dative puellae puellīs Ablative puellā  puellīs

This allowed the Latin speaker to express a wide range of meanings, simply by changing the form of the word. But, around the time of Emperor Augustus, Latin began to experience a number of sound changes; these changes were gradual, but the end result was that the long and short vowels merged and final 'm' disappeared. This seriously impacted on the case system, so that the different forms came to be pronounced:

Cases		Singular	Plural
Nominative		puella	puella
Accusative		puella	puellas
Genitive		puella	puellar
Dative		puella	puellis
Ablative		puella	puellis

Which is problematic, particularly in the singular. Normal people, speaking normal Latin (and quite possibly unable to read) could no longer convey meaning using their case system. Instead they had to do that through prepositions and word order. As a result the modern descendants of Latin, such as French, Italian and Spanish don't use a case system (5). The elites had to have the idea of the case system drilled into their heads in schools, but, by and large, they continued to use the case system in their writing, even though they couldn't pronounce it. The common people apparently continued to enjoy hearing (and thus presumably could understand) classical Latin plays, speeches and masses. Eventually the spoken languages (Old French, Old Italian, etcetera) gained enough prestige to be considered worthy of being written in themselves - but that didn't even begin to happen until the 800's.

This, I think, represents the future of English. But if the Latin analogy is anything to go by, then it is not all bad. For one thing, Latin written in the classical style continued to thrive well into the 1700's - that is, over one thousand five hundred years after it had ceased to be spoken in the classical manner. So we need not fear the 'death of English' any time soon. It even extended its range to places that had no tradition of spoken Latin, like Medieval Germany and Scandanavia. With English's increased adoption as a language of international communication, it is already doing this as well (Note also that when this happened, spoken German continued to thrive - the hope is that local languages will likewise survive the spread of written English).

For another thing, as I have mentioned, the death of spoken Latin facilitated its diversification into several new languages, and with those languages, the development of new cultures. Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French are all noted for their unique literatures and vibrant cultures. The vast Anglosphere, which now contains well over four hundred million native English speakers, and notable for its cultural homogeneity, could well benefit from the diversification of our language.

(1) Or movements made with hands and body in the various Sign Languages - and in fact, I think expressions and body language play a large part in all spoken languages - witness the increased difficulty of communicating with people over the phone.

(2) "her" is an oblique form - it fulfills genitive, dative and accusative functions.

(3) Another example of this is the confusion around the use of "so-and-so and I" vs "so-and-so and me". Both are correct in certain situations, because "I" is nominative (used for the doer of an action) and "me" is accusative/dative (the thing the action is done to). So it should be "Sam and I went to beach", but "a shark attacked Sam and me"

(4) The cases can do several different things and it isn't really important here what those things are, but in case the hypothetical reader is interested:

• Nominative
• The subject of a verb (usually the one doing it) in "The dog sleeps," "the dog runs" and "the dog is fed by its owner" 'the dog' would be nominative in latin
• Both the subject and object of a verb meaning "to be", e.g. "The dog is a corgy" "the dog is tired"
• The vocative case usually looks identical to the nominative, and is used for addressing someone "Hi Stephen!" "Here! doggy!" "Sit, Dog!"
• Accusative
• The object of a verb (the thing that the verb is done to): "the cat chases the dog"
• Duration of time: "the dog howled, for three nights"
• Motion into a place (with a preposition): "the dog went into the house"
• Surprised exclamation "what is rubbing on my leg? The dog!"
• Genitive
• Possession: "Steven saw the dog's owner" and "Steven saw the owner of the dog"
• The whole that something is a part of: "three of the dogs howled" "some of the dogs howled"
• And generally, any noun describing another noun "he has a fear of dogs" or "he saw the movement of the dogs"
• Dative
• An "indirect object" of the verb - common with verbs of giving, "he gave food to the dog" some verbs only have this sort of object - there's usually a sense of motion involved "He ran into a dog"
• An alternative way of expressing possession, especially with a verb meaning"to be" - "The dog of mine is old"
• Purpose of an action "The dog howls for attention"
• What is called a predicative dative: "The dog's health is of concern." 
• Ablative:
• Manner of an action "He shouted with great volume" "The dog ran with great speed" 
• The doer of a passive verb "The dog was fed by the lady"
• The instrument used to do an action "She called her mother by telephone"
• Time when an action occurred "The puppy was born on Tuesday"
• Location where it happened "The dog sat in the yard" "He lived on a mountain" "She went out from the house"
• Phrases that aren't connected to anything else in the sentance, called 'ablative absolutes' "The dog howled, I was surprised"

There are more uses, not all of which fit into neat categories. An important point to make is the English can and does express all these meanings despite largely lacking cases - We use word order and prepositions. Latin used cases and some prepositions.

(5) The only language descended from Latin which retains the cases, so far as I am aware, is Romanian, which still has a combined nominative/accusative case and a combined genitive/dative case.