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The English language is in my opinion taking a downhill turn, and if one was to use such terms as 'decline' or 'corruption' to describe the process I would not disagree. The language is the only one I ever learnt, and English was my best subject at school. Furthermore, living as I do in Australia it is about the only language I hear spoken except by a few immigrants every now and then. However I do not think I am terribly biased when it comes to issues within the language, even if perhaps I am just a little bit more pro English than an absolutely rational person.

A lot of the cause of my appreciation for the language and why I despise the present trends in its usage can be attributed to my reading. I was always good at reading and some of my favorite reads as a young child were the Secret Seven books, Famous Five books and various other books. Many of my favorite books even at a young age were not very recent, and whilst I enjoyed reading the Goosebumps, Harry Potter and similar series, I always preferred the writing style of earlier books.

Many of the books I have read and enjoyed are from the early 1900s and late 1800s, and some of my favorite books are the Sherlock Holmes novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie's works, the works of Dickens, Verne, P G Wodehouse etc. I have never much cared for the later 1900s fictional writing style or the 2000s style. Indeed as much as I enjoyed reading the Harry Potter series, I liked it for its adventure and story more than its writing style which I found bland, and a touch mundane.

Then again I am certainly no fan of the earlier styles of English as used by Chaucer or Shakespeare. I find this English to be outdated and unformed, like a clay pot still being made on the potter's wheel, whereas the English of Dickens and Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie is the finished glazed pot. The English of Harry Potter has cracks and wear, and the 'English' of 'l33t sp33k' and 'txt' message English I would consider a smashed pot, strewn in pieces in a muddy puddle crawling with vermin in some dark alley way.

As much as I accept that all languages change over time, and that so do all things, I still stand by that the early 1900s and late 1800s was the pinnacle of achievement of the language and of literature itself. I never cared for the wrks of Virginia Woolf or other experimental modernist writers, but was perfectly comfortable reading Enid Blyton's works or The Catcher in the Rye.

I guess one of the areas I really resent in the modern use of the language is slang, and the way in which it is spoken. Slang can have character, and so too can its speakers, and I am sure that many stories would be less lively without the likes of those who speak English in a less eloquent fashion, indeed to have a book written in a dull mundane fashion, in a minimalist and cardboard way, like with Harry Potter, where you may as well be watching the movies, is as bad.

Not only in literature is this an issue. It is in everyday communication that you see the greatest ravages of the decline of the English language. Especially with regards to the youth of today. I am a rare exception of those of my age (18), for I do not have friends or a mobile telephone or AIM. Thus the way I talk is less influenced by Big Brother, American Idol and Total Drama Island than by those works which I have read from the preceding two centuries.

Thus in my opinion English came to an apex around 1900, and the region of 1850-1950 is roughly the height of the language's achievement. I would put the decline around 1950-present. As much as it is a matter of opinion, I like to think that the English of Dickens and Christie is a superior one to that of Rowling and R L Stein.

Learn more about this author, Mark Waybill.
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