Farnsworth's Classical English Style

Ward Farnsworth

• Verlag: David R. Godine, Publisher
• Jahr: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781567926668
• Thema: Personal Development
• Thema: Writing & Presentation Skills

"An original and absorbing guide to English style. Get it if you can."— Wall Street Journal Say it with style—on paper or in person. This book explains why the best writing sounds that way, with hundreds of examples from Lincoln, Churchill, Douglass, and other masters of the language. As Farnsworth says, "Explaining a precept may take just a few words, but only examples can make it familiar to the ear. So we will consider examples from writers and orators who all have lessons to teach."Farnsworth shows how small choices about words, sentences, and paragraphs put force into writing and speech that have stood the test of time. What was the secret? Knowledge of choices in the selection of words, the arrangement of sentences, the creation of a cadence. Now that knowledge can be yours through hundreds of examples of the very best use of rhetorical devices, classical cadence patterns, hyperbole and much more. This is must for anyone who wants to speak or write with clear, persuasive, enjoyable, unforgettable style. "A storehouse of effective writing, showing the techniques you may freely adapt to make music of your own."— The Baltimore Sun

Chapter One

Simplicity

There are two ways to say almost anything in English: with little words or big ones. More precisely, you can say most things with older, shorter words that have Germanic (or “Saxon”) roots, or with longer words that came into the language more recently – perhaps six or seven hundred years ago – from French, and before that from Latin. Our first topic is the difference between those types of words and how to choose between them.

1. Two languages in one. English is a language built mostly out of two others. Much of it was founded on the language of invaders who came to Britain around 450 a.d. from Anglia and Saxony, in what is now northern Germany. We don’t know much about the language spoken in Britain before then (Common Brittonic); in any event, the languages the invaders brought with them turned into the tongue we now call Old English, or Anglo-Saxon – the language of Beowulf. Many people now associate the expression “Anglo-Saxon” with England. If you want to understand how the English language works, it helps to grasp that those terms refer originally to places in Germany.

About 600 years later the French invaded Britain, and they, too, brought their language with them. Unlike the Germanic languages already there, the French of the new round of invaders was derived from Latin. The new French competed with Old English, and the eventual outcome was a language – modern English – built out of both.

This process of making a new language out of two old ones took several hundred years. Often words with similar meanings from the two languages were both turned into English words, such as make (Saxon) and create (from French), or need (Saxon) and require (from French). There have been many contributions to the language from elsewhere, too, so this account is oversimplified for the sake of brevity. The point is just that most common things still can be said using Saxon words or Latinate words. And those terms themselves are approximations. We will use “Saxon” as shorthand for words of roughly Germanic origin (some might actually have their etymologies in old Norse, etc.). By “Latinate” words we mean any derived from Latin (though in a few cases their roots might be Greek).

2. General differences. So English is a mongrel language, and this creates choices for its users. They can pick their words from two lines of descent. The two kinds of words are usually easy enough to tell apart. In a moment we will talk about why; first, though, see for yourself. Here are some examples of Saxon and Latinate verbs, nouns, and adjectives with similar meanings. Observe how the words in the Saxon column are generally different from the words in the Latinate column.

Saxon	Latinate	Saxon	Latinate
See	Perceive	Luck	Fortune
Ask	Inquire	Share	Proportion
Come	Arrive	Shot	Injection
Let	Permit	Break	Respite
Eat	Ingest	Small	Diminutive
Break	Damage	High	Elevated
Mark	Designate	Fair	Equitable
Grow	Cultivate	Good	Favorable
House	Residence	Next	Subsequent
Tool	Implement	Last	Final
Kin	Relatives	Right	Correct
Talk	Conversation	Tight	Constricting

We could go on with these lists. It’s a fine parlor game to name a Latinate equivalent for every Saxon word you can think of. You can do it even if you don’t know any French or German. Saxon words are shorter, and in their simplest forms they usually consist of just one syllable. Latinate words usually have a root of two or three syllables, and then can be lengthened further and turned into other parts of speech.

The simplest guide, useful often but not always, is this: if a word ends with -tion, or if it could be made into a similar word that does, then it almost always is derived from Latin. Same if it easily takes other suffixes that turn it into a longish word. Thus the Latinate word acquire can become acquisition or acquisitive; but the equivalent Germanic word get doesn’t take new endings in this way. It can change tenses or forms (into got or getting) but it can’t be turned into a four-syllable noun or adjective the way acquire can.

Now consider some more specific differences between the two kinds of words.

3. Sound. Saxon words tend to sound different from Latinate words in ways distantly related to the sounds of the modern German and French languages. Many Saxon words have hard sounds like ck or the hard g. Latinate words are usually softer and more mellifluous.

4. Tone: high vs. low; formal vs. informal. When French arrived in England it was the language of the conqueror and the new nobility. A thousand years later, words from French still connote a certain fanciness and distance from the gritty, and Saxon words still seem plainer, less formal, and closer to the earth. If you want to talk clinically about something distasteful, you use the Latinate word for it – the one derived from old French: terminate or execute (Latinate) instead of kill (Saxon).

And as you would expect, forbidden words – “swear words” – tend to be Saxon. The most famous taboo word in the language is a good example, being short (a “four-letter” word) and ending with the familiar hard sound; its precise etymology is unknown but probably Germanic. The Latinate equivalent – copulate – is longer, sounds softer, takes suffixes, seems more distant from the act, and can be said in polite company. Anyone can think of other examples that work the same way. These distinctions used to be understood more widely, and could be made a subject for public comment more easily than they are today.

Now comes this flagrant specimen of the noble Lord’s inexactness. I purposely use that long and rather French word because I wish to be Parliamentary in what I say.

Cobden, speech in the House of Commons (1862)

The removal of the duty will serve one good purpose, and that will be to undeceive – or, if I may frame a strong Saxon word, to unfool – the farmers who have been deceived and fooled by political oratory and literature for so many years to believe that increasing prices are due to the tariff.

Williams, speech in the Senate (1913)

Mr. Tillman. The Senator always quibbles, however, if I may use that word, in some of his answers. I do not say that offensively. Mr. Spooner. The Senator has used the word “quibbles.” He did not intend it to be offensive – Mr. Tillman. No, indeed. Mr. Spooner. But it is. Mr. Tillman. I will take it back, and I will ...