John McWhorter: evaluation

Transcript context

…My question is about official top-down control of language. I can think of two examples, one being the French Academy and their very strict regulation — unofficial — of the French language. And the second is Korea, where Korean language was written in Chinese characters for a very long time. That was used by the aristocracy to keep the population illiterate and consolidate power. What is the effect of that kind of control on the development of a language, and I guess, creativity or innovation or the culture in a larger macro sense? That’s interesting. I’ll just say very quickly, exerting control on language from the top is hard and it almost never works in a real way, with the exception of… For example, in terms of blackboard grammar rules, the only one in English that has really ever worked is the one that says “Billy and I went to the store” rather than “Billy and me.” Almost everybody in this room probably has mastered saying “Billy and I” except when you’re drunk or something like that. That’s because that’s become this matter of shame. But otherwise, all those rules that we learn, the things that everybody breaks all the time, and it never really changes. Now Korea is interesting. If you’re talking about having an utterly opaque writing system that doesn’t fit the language structure meaningfully at all, that’s going to exert a certain downward pressure on the ability of the masses to express themselves in writing, and therefore, you’re not going to have creativity from down below that anybody is going to record because nobody can write. But even there, it’s surprising in that the Chinese writing system — and Korean King Sejong came up with this perfect writing system that is now the envy of the world — the Chinese writing system, I would say, is a great lover of Mandarin Chinese. I’ve been working the past five years on this, and it’s at the point that I can walk by a sign and get most of it and pat myself on the back because I decided I’m going to learn that shit because, I can tell, they don’t want me to learn it, so that is why. [laughter] But the Chinese writing system is an utter, hair-raising, ridiculous, indefensible nightmare. Utter nightmare, created basically for scribes to use among themselves. It’s all like this running joke. And yet, what’s interesting is that ordinary people do use it. It’s amazing what toddlers can take in. It’s amazing what a populous can do. You’re in a Chinese restaurant and the waiter’s doing this. That guy knows thousands of these things. It’s amazing what people can do, but you don’t want to overdo it and have Korean written in Chinese. That was, frankly, if I may insult your country — but it was 600 years ago — that was barbaric. But it’s amazing what people can make do with. iPad question: Miles Davis’s Porgy and Bess — what do you think?…

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