It isn't nice to have the bad habit of floccinaucinihilipilification.

"If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur."

-Doug Larson.

 

The English language makes no sense. Today, we have over a million words, and our language continues to grow. We create this language out of 26 letters of the alphabet; these handful of letters that we learn in kindergarden are used to make up words such as floccinaucinihilipilification. Yes, that is a real word. Google it if you don't believe me. We have this incredibly long word made up of 28 letters to describe the simple act of belittling other's achivements and estimating things as worthless. What about the fear of long words? Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia. You know there is a phsychologist somewhere getting a kick out of that. Or what about a galimaufrey? A tall awkward fellow, a hog's snout, or and individual who owns far too many baubles for his own good, a galimaufrey is not a word to forget. Do you know any of these words? I certaintly have trouble pronouncing them, let alone defining them!

 

The thing that strikes me is the thought that Shakespeare's Old English only had about 40,000 words. He wrote timeless classics that high school students suffer through using a fraction of the words we have today. What would he have done with words such as mignardise (gentleness) or Chiengora (yarn weaved from dog hair) at his disposal? Would his works be even better and more defined if he had more words at his disposal? Or would "Hamlet" have suffered if Shakespeare had terms such as spamalytics (computer scientists use this term to investigate spam emails)?

 

Shakespeare's greatness was in the language he used. He created words when his language wasn't enough. If he'd had all of these words, his true genius would not have been challenged. In fact, his greatest works might have even suffered from a broader spectrum of language. Less is more; this phrase is said for a reason. Although we work with 26 letters, we create combinations that can make your head spin; and that's before you throw in words from other languages.

Shakespeare's genius is in the simplicity of the language he worked with. Had he been dealing with the million or so words we have today, I doubt he would have had the chance to shine and manipulate language the way he did. Had Shakespeare's language been as 'developed' as our langauge, we might have nothing to suffer through in English class.