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Want to Write Well? Get Anglo-Saxon with It.
William Zinsser writes about the Latin, Norman, and Anglo-Saxon version of some words. When you need some information you can simply ask. If you want to be fancy you can pose a question. But only the truly sophisticated will interrogate.
Boris below observes the genius behind Churchill’s style is in moving between these different variations at the right moment. When Churchill really wants to grab the audience and make a memorable point he goes to the pre-Norman, Anglo-Saxon vocabulary that they know. Zinsser would approve as he advises us to cut out the clutter and get simple with word usage to produce great writing.
Anyone else think Boris would make a wonderful MasterClass course on rhetoric?
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Published in Literature
Like. Like. Like.
Sounds like an interesting technique to consider. Could some of President Trump’s success come from this plain-speaking approach?
Did someone call for an Anglo-Saxon?
They say brevity is the soul of wit.
A quote I’ve internalized and often revisit (probably not enough) is from Mark Twain, who supposedly apologized to an editor for the length of a submitted essay, saying that if he’d had more time to complete it, it would have been shorter.
It occurs to me, in light of my smack down on the recent Mona Charon post thread, that brevity is also the soul of snark.
Maybe I should approach this idea with more moderation. Or less bourbon. One of the two.
Mr. Johnson speaks of the anaphora, but one of the primary Anglo-Saxon tools for binding lines together was alliteration. Of course, in a sense, the repetition of anaphora does provide some alliteration, but it’s a rhetorical tool that also helps create the visceral effect. One sees it commonly in headlines, especially sports headlines: Sox Slaughter Seattle. Churchill gets a bit of this effect in:
The “so many” and “so much” ties the whole together even more.
Took an Old English/Anglo-Saxon course in college. Towards the end, we read Beowulf in the original. Like the Homeric poems, it is thought this poem represented an entirely oral tradition, and we were taught that many of the phrases that repeated themselves (like Homer’s “rosy-fingered dawn”) were mnemonic devices to aid the reciter in remembering the lines.
Of course, we know-it-all’s walked around campus hailing each other with the poem’s opening:
“Hwaet!!”
which as I recall means something akin to “Listen up!!” or even more venacular, “Yo!”
I think it’s risible (note the use of the non-Anglo-Saxon term) that there is a Wikipedia in Anglo-Saxon.
That’s impressive!
Google Translator would be fun too if it offered Anglo-Saxon as a choice.
A big part of it is the rhythm, however achieved.
I definitely think people underestimate his talent in this regard. Make America Great Again is simple and memorable. And then there’s the use of the superlatives.
I’ve never been particularly impressed by his off-the-cuff performances. Some people repeat themselves for emphasis. Trump sounds like he’s waiting for his brain to catch up with his mouth.
Cool.
Where I have the time to write and rewrite, the last step I take is, where I can, swapping all words that came into English from the Old French, Middle French, and Latin for Anglo-Saxon or Old English words, and as many po-ly-syl-la-bic words for those with only one. Some terms of art, though, have to stay. It takes time and work to find just the right word or string of words, but almost everything reads better in the end.
Peter will tell you that when you write for someone else you have to be able to internalize their rhythms and intonations to be successful. Who could do this for Churchill better than Churchill? He was an outstanding writer and understood the difference between words meant to be read and words meant to be spoken.
He would have made a helluva an actor.
It is fascinating that 1000-year-old additions to the language are still viscerally felt as not quite authentic, even (especially?) by those who don’t know the origins of these words.
I recently learned of an even older distinction in the English language, courtesy of the linguist John McWhorter. He points out that no other Germanic language has the “meaningless do” in questions and negations (e.g. I do not think so… Do you think so?)
This structure is Celtic, and it preceded the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain. It took many centuries for it to start to appear in written English. It was considered a feature of “vulgar” English, spoken by the low-class Celts and those who hung out with them.
There seems to be a remnant of that today. If you hear someone say, “I think not!”, or “I haven’t any idea!”, you would expect that person to be from the upper class. But I think most would regard that person as “putting on airs”.
Do you agree?
I think not.
New pen names:
WrongAngles
Yakety Sax
I’ve always got my real name.
Thank you. That was great.
“Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.”
Why is “human conflict” a better choice than “war” for what Churchill wanted to convey ? I think the reason is that “human conflict” includes battles on the physical plane but implies there are other types of battles and includes those as well. There’s almost, about “human conflict”, the echo of Saint Paul talking about “powers and principalities”.
I agree, war is quite specific, but human conflict is a larger sphere that includes war and things that are re resolved before war.
Churchill’s inspired way of speaking is only possible, I think, when a talented person is very steeped in the history, literature, and religious literature and sentiment of a culture.
A talented person can learn all the rhetorical devices Boris Johnson recognizes in Churchill’s speeches without being anywhere as near to being able to move people with words as he would be if he gained a deeper historical and cultural understanding of the people whose language he wants to speak.
What I learned from Churchill: Never be afraid to repeat a phrase for dramatic effect. I had an English teacher that would have eviscerated me for it. I always imaged her correcting The Great Man thusly:
Winston – Do not be so repetitive. If you must list places where you believe one should fight separate them with commas, such as “We shall fight on the beaches, landing grounds, towns, etc.”
A few years ago, I was struck by the use of “I haven’t any” by the children in the original Little Rascals films. I believe that this form was much more common then. Even the Three Stooges used it if I recall correctly.
I am willing to take the Celtic, but not the French.
But the French weren’t really the French. They were Vikings.