It turns out that the Australian version of English is the most highly evolved version on the planet, at least according to our understanding of a book. We breezed through a couple of chapters of John McWorther’s “The Power of Babel,” while eating scrambled eggs and bacon on Lygon Street last Saturday.
McWorther makes the valid point that language evolves. In practical terms, that means common usage literally erodes sounds and syllables from longer words. The Latin word for woman (femina) eventually becomes the French “femme” (sounds like fahm.)
And we always thought that the French were just verbally lazy. But this insight does help us in our running linguistic battle with out Australian colleagues. It occurs to us that the Australian habit of shortening most words and ending them with “y” or dropping the sounds of certain vowels is part of the evolution of the language. So there you go—Australia, at the vanguard of Anglo Saxon culture.
And how about some more on evolution? An evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, Oliver Curry, says that in 100,000 years or so, the human race will split into two sub-species. You’ll have, “a tall, slim, intelligent privileged class, and a short, squat, ugly, dim-witted race of servants.”
Sounds like “The Time Machine,” by H.G. Wells doesn’t it? Only Wells called the two groups the Eloi (the privileged class) and the Morlocks (the underprivileged class.) We have no idea how evolution is working these days, whether it’s selecting for traits that promote individual survival, or for species survival as others suggest.
But the convenient and artificial separation of the world into two groups reminds us of a few other useful quotations, “There are two types of people in the world, those that are Chuck Norris and those that are not.” Or this one, perhaps more useful, “There are two types of people in the world, those that believe in false dichotomies and those that don’t.”
Dan Denning
The Daily Reckoning Australia
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About the Author
Dan Denning is the author of 2005's best-selling The Bull Hunter (John Wiley & Sons). He began his financial publishing career in 1997 and has covered financial markets form Baltimore, Paris, London and, beginning in 2005 Melbourne. He’s the editor of The Daily Reckoning Australia and the Publisher of Port Phillip Publishing.
Comment by Derek on 29 October 2007:
Australians speak English? Are you sure? The last time I spoke with an alleged "Aussie," I didn't understand a word. Didn't you mean devolve, not evolve?
As far as the matter of the human species dividing in 100,000 years into two varieties is concerned, I wonder where the scientist who made this prediction is living--because we already have those two varieties, the suave, rich, jet-setting bunch, and the fat, beer-swilling masses who support Bush (aptly named, don't you think?).
Comment by Coffee Addict on 29 October 2007:
The verion I like best is Tok Pison. Designed to be a simple, straight forward, effective and fun communication medium.
The convoluted structures and inconsistent rules of other forms of English are of no benefit.
New Guinea coffee is also a great remedy if you (like me) are starting to feel like a doomsday crackpot on the issue of markets and economics.
Comment by dean on 29 October 2007:
In the section Dan had for useful quotations (where Chuck Norris gets a mention - God knows why), you might consider one of my favourite quotations namely: "There are only two kinds of people in this world - Australians, and those that wish they were Australian"
Comment by Pier Johnson on 30 October 2007:
It's "Anglo-Norman", not Anglo-Saxon.
After 1066, the Normans erased systematically erased the Anglo-Saxon culture -- the rules and rulers.