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The Grumpy Grammarian

A case could be made for the hypothesis that the English language is in the process of reverse evolution.*

As any student of language knows, language naturally evolves.  New words are added, and some old words are discarded, with the additions usually outnumbering the discards.  Structural changes occur, though quite gradually.  Old English is significantly unlike the English of Shakespeare's time; Elizabethan English, the language of Shakespeare, differs in many ways from modern English.

Now this natural process has done an about-face and is moving in the other direction.  The shift is gradual; however, as it gains momentum, we have every reason to believe that it will start to occur more rapidly.  We shall, in due course, reach the level of communication achieved by cavemen.**

Reverse evolution is apparent in the spoken language.  We witness it in the increasing use of contracted words, what some linguists are coming to call "the slovenly slur."  We are not referring to the traditional contractions such as can't, don't, and won't but to such neologisms as didja for "did you" and gonna for "going to" (the latter is creeping into the written language as well).  We also have:  wanna (want to) and awta (ought to); wooda, cooda, and shooda (would have, could have, should have) [see below as well]; and such words as getcher (as in, "Gonna getcher picture taken?").  The latest addition is Wassup? ("What's up?").

Another example is smee - the omnipresent slovenly slur for "It's me."  (We shall not engage here in a debate about "It is I," now virtually extinct, versus "It is me," for that debate is becoming redundant as a result of the ascendance of smee.)

Even more evidence of reverse evolution in the spoken language is found in the appearance and proliferation of what linguists are dubbing "the all-purpose grunt."   This refers to the increased use of monosyllables that are utterly devoid of any substantive meaning or that depend entirely upon the intonation of the utterance for what little substantive meaning they may suggest.  Yo, Ay, and Duh come immediately to mind.

To be sure, we have always used all-purpose grunts such as Ah, er, uh, and um to fill in gaps when the neural pathways between our brains and vocal cords appear to be temporarily blocked.  However, the all-purpose grunt is something altogether different.  There appears to be no such neural blockage, for these monosyllables are usually utterances intended to say something, not just gap-fillers.  (Linguists are still not sure whether the brain is functioning on all cylinders when the all-purpose grunt is used, but that is a purely academic matter.)

Perhaps as a transitional phase, some of the all-purpose grunts take the form of recognizable words, such as like and you know (usually pronounced ya'no).  These grunts-in-the-form-of-words are giving grammarians and linguists migraines.  How does one analyze syntax and parts of speech in, "Like he said like it was like too late, y'know"?  One grammarian hit the nail on the head when he said, "Like, why worry about it?  It's like redundancy, y'know."  

Naturally, the reverse evolution of the spoken language is affecting the written language.  As has been noted, gonna is replacing "going to."  Could of, should of, and would of long ago replaced the stuffily grammatical could have, should have, and would have.  It is only a matter of time before coulda, shoulda, and woulda migrate from speech to writing, along with gotta and oughta.  The supposedly correct forms are just grammatical constructs, and traditional grammar is passé anyway.  If those spoilsport grammarians with their annoying rules won't get in step with the crowd, they deserve to become extinct.  We could have a replay of history here.  God or something killed off the dinosaurs; the same fate may befall the grammarians.

Grammarians will become superfluous anyway when the written language completes its reverse evolution from words to abbreviations to hieroglyphs. 

Ironically, technology, which is sometimes viewed as a symbol of the forward evolution of mankind, is playing a major role in the reverse evolution of language.  In chat rooms and, to a lesser degree, e-mail, abbreviations and initials are replacing traditional words, and messages often contain little or no capitalization or punctuation.  Where sentences aren't used, there's little need for syntax.  Chat room denizens consider Internet shorthand to represent progress, and anyone who writes out words or sentences and bothers with capitalization and punctuation is a dinosaur, thoroughly out of date and out of touch.

Some analysts of this reverse evolutionary trend are quite cynical.  They suggest that the abandonment of structure, punctuation, and traditional spelling is a cover-up for ignorance and laziness.  They go so far as to suggest that people who use Internet shorthand are too ignorant to write traditional sentences and too lazy to learn traditional spelling.  They are, of course, merely nitpicking grammarians defending their own turf by insisting on bothersome rules of traditional grammar.  They are the ones who should be chastised for trying to undermine the practical, efficient, time-saving devices that the rest of us use.  What worked for cavemen should be good enough for us.

Recall that the caveman, who existed before the development of sophisticated language and was not shackled by grammatical conventions, apparently represented ideas and experiences via pictures painted on cave walls.  Were these perhaps the Neanderthal counterparts to today's smiley faces?

With a little imagination, we can conjure a time far in the future when today's humans have been almost wiped out, and our replacements are foraging through the achaeological ruins in an effort to determine what we were like.  Finding only smiley faces and some other graphic images, they may consider it probable that we never developed language and communicated in grunts.

If the archaeologists of the future also uncover some ancient video, they may be able to explain why we managed to become fairly advanced in technology but failed to develop linguistically.  They will hypothesize that our brains weren't capable of the lengthy attention span required by more sophisticated language.  "Twenty-first century people," they will conjecture, "could hold in their brains only brief spurts of information in the form of graphic images.  It is therefore not suprising that what writing they had consisted only of symbols that could be grasped without prolonged concentration, and it is probable that they communicated orally in the same manner." 

* There's no precise word for reverse evolution because evolution is supposed to go forward.  That fact may underscore how unnatural this process is.

**The author is aware that he may be cited for contempt by the Gender Police for using the sexist term cavemen.  However, he is uncomfortable with the the terms cavewoman, caveperson, and cavepeople, and using cavemen and/or cavewomen is cumbersome.  Similarly, he will use the generic masculine pronoun, when necessary, to refer to an individual representative of this group.  He begs forgiveness for this breach of political correctness.  He in no way wishes to imply that members of this group were all males or that females did not participate in their culture and language.  In fact, he acknowledges that, without the participation of females in Stone Age activities, none of us would be here today.