You don’t. No one does. Scotsmen, Welshmen, Irishmen speak English. So do Americans, Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians and – after a fashion – millions in Africa and Asia.
The country that gave the world this magnificent gift is called England, not Britain. And today England celebrates her patron saint, St George, him of the dragon fame. If nothing else, the English language ought to be cause enough for jubilation.
Close to 20 per cent of the world’s population speak English, many in preference to their mother tongues. When a Norwegian talks to a Dutchman, chances are they’ll be speaking neither Norwegian nor Dutch.
When some people I know travel the world, they don’t even bother asking the locals if they understand English. The assumption is that everyone does, enough to take a food order or give directions, if not always enough to provide a satisfactory answer to the lapidary question of a travelling English football fan, “Whatcha lookin’ at, mate?”.
St George, a Greek officer in the Roman army, was born in 275 AD, in what today is Turkey. Having refused to renounce his Christian faith, he was martyred during the Diocletianic Persecution on 23 April, 303 AD, as legend has it.
He was canonised in the 13th century, and a century later, during the reign of King Edward III, St George became the patron saint of England, a country he had never visited. The date of his martyrdom was declared a major feast in England after the 1415 Battle of Agincourt, when the English longbow triumphed over what French history books call la fine fleur de la noblesse française.
It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that, by generously giving her language to the world, England has emulated the self-sacrificial exploits of her patron saint. For, in common with every lingua franca in history, English is rapidly turning into a lamb sacrificed at the altar of globalism. Just look at what happened to the two languages St George probably spoke, Ancient Greek and Latin.
When a language is used internationally for mainly commercial transactions, it becomes merely a means of communication. The physical expression of a nation’s metaphysical essence is thereby turned into a glossary of useful phrases in the last chapter of a travel guide book.
People who think language is nothing but a means of communication probably also believe that man is nothing but an animal. They only see the outer shell of function, not the metaphysical core of essence.
The patois spoken throughout the world is as different from the real English language as a tower block is different from the Tower of London. Both are buildings, both were designed to house people, both have witnessed much suffering. Yet one is a soulless abomination hissing in concrete, while the other is a nation’s soul speaking in stone.
When a language is tossed into the world like a bone off the original owner’s table, it usually bounces back, hurting the thrower. All the meat of essence has been gnawed off the bone.
The language has lost its beauty, its nuance, its endless chain of allusive links and cultural references. It has turned into a functional patois even in its native habitat. Both the language and its original owners gradually lose their indigenous uniqueness. The body becomes a generic collection of limbs and organs, not the physical guardian of the metaphysical soul.
That hasn’t quite happened to English yet. If one looks hard enough, one can still find beautiful English written and spoken. The soul of the nation still occasionally shines through England’s great gift to mankind. And this soul can be reconstructed by understanding the English language properly.
Like its original bearers, English isn’t especially loquacious. It doesn’t have to be: boasting at least twice the number of words of any other European language, English thrives on precise expression. One accurate word is always on tap to do the job other languages have to do with a descriptive phrase.
English discourages and punishes the grandiloquence typical of some other languages that come to mind (sorry, Jean-Pierre). It demands modesty and self-restraint, rewarding concision more lavishly than any other language does. English is the language of unvarnished reason stripped of the outer layers of needless modifiers, redundant clauses and flowery curlicues.
It’s sheer poignant beauty communicated laconically, with a minimum of emotive fuss – a William Byrd motet, not a Mahler symphony; an understated landscape of green fields and gently undulating relief free of violent extremes; a climate neither too hot in summer nor too cold in winter.
As I pile similes and metaphors one upon another, can you see the English soul emerging from underneath? If you can’t, it’s my fault – these may be wrong metaphors and similes. But they do work for me.
Now I’m going to say something that may anger many conservatives, those who envy the Dutch their King’s Day and Americans their Fourth of July. They’d like to have St George’s Day declared a bank holiday, and they are desperate to drape England in red crosses on a white background.
They have a point. There is indeed something aberrant about St Patrick’s Day being celebrated in England more thunderously that St George’s Day. And yes, England’s patron saint is deprived of his due pomp and circumstance for all the wrong reasons.
Many of those who refuse to celebrate St George’s Day find nothing English worth celebrating. Utterly and perversely politicised, they even shy away from the word ‘English’ with its ethnic overtones, burying their Englishness under ‘British’, a political and administrative descriptor.
One can become British by living in the country a requisite number of years (legally, for preference) and taking a perfunctory citizenship test. Yet it’s impossible to become English – one either is or isn’t. It’s the luck of the draw: one either wins what Cecil Rhodes called “first prize in the lottery of life” or one doesn’t.
For some unfathomable reason, asserting Englishness is supposed to offend other Britons, those whose lottery ticket didn’t deliver the jackpot. This is sheer idiocy having everything to do with ideology and nothing to do with real life: the only people offended by Englishness are the kind of Englishmen who read the wrong morning paper.
However, that St George’s Day receives only an understated celebration for all the wrong reasons doesn’t mean that no good reasons exist. I think they do: love of one’s country, like love of one’s family, is a keenly felt yet quiet emotion in England.
An American waving the Stars and Stripes and shouting ‘USA!’ sounds patriotic. An Englishman waving the flag of St George and yelling ‘Ingerland!’ sounds yobbish and, worse still, unnatural.
The Englishmen I know and love aren’t given to effusive emotions of any kind: they don’t scream their feelings at all and sundry. This quality of self-restraint is as appealing in the English nation as it is in the English language, that embodiment of Englishness.
As long as the English love their Englishness, I for one don’t mind a dearth of red crosses displayed in windows. And if the English no longer love their Englishness, no amount of screaming and flag-waving will cure that deadly national malaise.
“To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely,” wrote Edmund Burke and, for me, England still meets that requirement. As long as the world’s loveliest language continues to be spoken as it should be, even by dwindling numbers, England will continue to be loved the English way: passionately, deeply, poignantly – yet quietly.
Happy St George’s Day!
This ties nicely with yesterday’s entry. You may not want to make comparisons with Nabokov, but as a non-native speaker of English, you write more beautifully than 99.9% of those born to it (including your humble servant).
Of course Saint Patrick is celebrated more than Saint George. Saint Patrick is the patron of the poor, oppressed Irish, Saint George that of the colonizing, imperialistic, oppressing English! In addition (for some reason), Saint Patrick is associated with overindulgence in alcohol. I have ideas on how to associate Saint George with some modern vices, but I shall not write them down.
Each year as the ides of February approach, I wonder why of all the feast days, Saints Valentine and Patrick happened to catch on with secular society. Saint Valentine seems to have been debauched the more, as most refer to 14 February simply as “Valentine’s Day”, dropping the “Saint”. Is celebrating him with commercialized romance better than not celebrating at all? I believe so, as each year some number of persons might ask “Who was Saint Valentine?”, and through some research, be brought closer to Truth.
Happy Saint George’s Day! (Oh, dear! As I typed that, I was reminded of the article from January that mentioned the worship of George Washington and described the The Apotheosis of Washington in the Capitol dome. I suppose we could celebrate Saint George’s Day here in America, too – in our customary obnoxious style. Though some of us would clandestinely direct it to the original Saint George.)
Thank you, I suppose I have my moments every now and then. After writing professionally for some 45 years, one picks up certain skills. Everything else is extra, but professional technique is a must — and I’m afraid it’s very hard to acquire without systematic practice and self-training. When a professional musician says this, few people will argue. Of course, one can’t play concerts without appropriate training, lifetime pracrice and experience. Goes without saying. But everyone writes something occasionally, and I know quite a few people who say they are going to write a book when they retire. Few of them ever do. They start, turn out a few pages and screech to a stop. Things just refuse to come together as they should. Some of them are intelligent people with plenty to say. They just were never trained (or self-trained) in how to say it well. As for writing in English — well, since I was in my first year at university I’ve read compulsively and almost exclusively in English. And of course, I’ve lived in an English-speaking environment for 53 years now, hardly ever speaking Russian. English may not be my mother tongue, but it’s certainly my first language now. Hence in my hubris I measure myself against other professional Anglophone writers, not against all native speakers working in other firelds. That wouldn’t be fair to them.
I used to write more than I do now, and I certainly have expectations above my skill level. The most disturbing is the loss of my ability to write immature, humorous poetry. I used to regale my friends with song parodies, using current topics – usually from sports. There have been a few occasions where an article here has called out for such a parody, but my old brain cannot fashion more than two or three lines. As we Americans used to say, “Use it or lose it.”
Actually, when I was courting Penelope, I wrote her a dirty (or ‘immature, humorous’) limerick every day. She still keeps them as a memento of my take on lyrical poetry, but refuses to show them to anyone. Still, that genre of verse worked as well as any madrigal: we are still together 40 years later.
You write efficient plain English. Hardly anybody does that nowadays.
It’s likely that the lady to whom I addressed my sonnets thirty years ago has never shown them to any one, since her husband hasn’t killed me yet. My sonnets were probably cleaner than your dirty limericks, but were composed for a dirtier purpose.
What men and women who propose to write three-volume novels and epic poems in their retirement don’t understand is that time speeds up when one is old. Every day has hardly got started before it’s over. I was out weeding this afternoon, and there is no doubt that the sun moves faster through the sky than it used to!
Canonised in the 13th Century? St George the Martyr was venerated in the days of Constantine the Great. This legalistic Roman idea of “canonisation” is puzzling to both Orthodox and Anglicans.
You English ought also to remember your secondary patron, St Edward the Confessor (October 13th), and never forget King Charles the Martyr (January 30th). But too much is known about them to make them plausible sponsors of Soccer hooliganism.
But make a note of May 19th, when the Roman and Orthodox Churches join in celebration of St Dunstan of Canterbury, one of the last English saints of the undivided Church, and perhaps the greatest since St Augustine the Missionary (May 26th).
You English? I can see you didn’t believe me when I said one could become British, but not English.
Yes, I don’t agree with you.
Nobody can become British without becoming either English, Irish, Scottish or (God forbid!) Welsh. To claim to be merely “British” is like claiming to be merely “European” without being French or German or whatever.
You are indisputably English in your tastes, your habits and your allegiance. There is not the slightest tinge of Scotland, Ireland or (God forbid!) Wales in you.
Moreover, you’re obviously a Londoner.
Thank you. This is one of the nicest things anyone has ever told me.