Mongrel

A Mongrel

Mongrels have hybrid vigour. They don’t have dodgy hips, squashed faces or the inability to give birth. Mongrels have a large and varied gene pool. Lucky for Shakespeare and Milton that they had a mongrel to work with and were able to swell its gene pool through invention.

The English language is a huge rampaging mongrel with verbal teeth capable of making mincemeat of the known and unknown universe. Over the centuries it has welcomed, ingested, digested and assimilated all immigrants. The Greeks brought us an orgy (Greek) of words with which to philosophise (Greek) Belligerent (Latin) Romans fought their way into our lexicon (Greek).

I can’t help feeling that my doppelgänger (German) would be as inspired by Brocken Spectres (German) as I am, and would experience no schadenfreude (German) for those unfortunate to have missed the experience. Is there a word more chic (French) than chic? But the French bickering (Dutch) over ‘le weekend’ is surely a cul-de-sac. Our mongrel (Old English) is no ugly (Norse) lapdog (Anglo-Saxon). Pundits (Sanskrit) should not kowtow (Mandarin) to those who are leary (Irish and Gaelic) of being didactic (Greek) and causing boredom (Charles Dickens – Bleak House). Macho (Spanish) thugs (Hindi) amongst us should be an itsy-bitsy (Hungarian) bit embarrassed (Portuguese) about the race (Italian) to write garbage (Arab) concerning dingos (Aboriginal) being a horde (Polish) of mongrels.

Well enough garbage (Arab), I rest my case (with relief). We should not worry about Americanisms such as ‘snuk’, which has snuk into English, or there being less uses of fewer (I know, it hurts) because the mongrel evolves and is bigger even, than the ‘Radio 4 listener’. Darwin and Wallace would applaud but what would be the sound of one hand clapping (Zen, Japanese). It would be an impossibly mammoth (Russian) task to fix English in time, although there are those who try. I must get a grip it is becoming addictive (Latin).

English is the lingua franca (Ironically, French) because we have invaded, been invaded, traded, travelled, accepted immigrants, absorbed cultures and created colonies. Perhaps the latter is the most significant – the Americans have promulgated (Latin) their mongrel (no insult) form of English around the world and we monoglot islanders have benefited. They open their hoods and walk on sidewalks and their astronauts don’t have space walks, they have extra vehicular activity. As much as anything it is American companies that have dispersed English – Coca Cola’s verbal ‘co-lateral damage’ (American) is perhaps preferable to the forms with which we have become familiar in news reports.

Parentheses (Greek) are ubiquitous (Latin with descendants in English, Finnish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Romanian) in this passage. Perhaps brackets (Medieval French) are best kept for attaching shelves to walls?

According to chaos (Greek) theory, when the linguistic butterfly flaps its wings it creates a global hurricane of words. Chaos is from the Greek word Khaos, meaning 'gaping void’ which is as good a way to end as any before popping over the nearest lairig (Gaelic).