Wlaffyng chyteryng, harryng, and garryng grisbyttyng

From A long decline from The Economist. The younger generation has long been a disappointment, particularly with regard to their unmannerly language.

THE English language, we all know, is in decline. The average schoolchild can hardly write, one author has recently warned. Well, not that recently perhaps. It was William Langland, author of "Piers Plowman", who wrote that “There is not a single modern schoolboy who can compose verses or write a decent letter.” He died in 1386.

English has been getting worse ever since. In 1387, Ranulph Higden, a Benedictine monk and historian, found the culprit in language mixing: “By commiyxtion and mellyng, furst wiþ Danes and afterward wiþ Normans, in menye þe contray longage ys apeyred and som useþ strange wlaffyng chyteryng, harryng, and garryng grisbyttyng.” That is to say (in case your Middle English is rusty) that English speakers had taken to “strange, articulate utterance, chattering, snarling and harsh teeth-gnashing”, bad habits he put down to the mixing together of Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Norman French.

Just how long?

Have young people too lazy to learn to write been with us since the very beginning? A collection of proverbs in Sumerian—the world’s first written language—suggests that they have. “A junior scribe is too concerned with feeding his hunger,” contends one. “He does not pay attention to the scribal art.” It seems that the slovenly teenager, not to mention the purse-lipped schoolmaster, is at least 4,000 years old.

As one might imagine, the folks commenting over at Language Log have some fun with the Middle English passage.

chips mackinolty said,
February 10, 2015 @ 9:46 am

630 years of prescriptivism? Certainly 630 years of "gnashing of teeth"!


Robert Coren said,
February 10, 2015 @ 11:24 am

I have to say that I find the word wlafferynge strangely attractive.


Chris Waigl said,
February 10, 2015 @ 11:57 am

*Love* wlafferynge, chiterynge, harrynge, and garrynge.


Dan Curtin said,
February 10, 2015 @ 2:53 pm

I nominate "grisbayting" as word of the year for 1385!


Ray Girvan said,
February 11, 2015 @ 12:12 pm

I'd translate "harrynge" as "aaaar-ing", as in Talk Like a Pirate.

I am going with wlaffyng chyteryng, harryng, and garryng grisbyttyng as my favorite because it describes so much of the tweeting, posting, and punditing of today. What was old is new again.