So to speak
Melvyn Bragg has a few things to say about the English language. Richard Jinman reports.
Lord Bragg of Wigton, to give him the full title he seldom uses, is a fan of Australian English. Right now, he's rolling the word "dinkum" around his mouth like an expensive claret.
"Dinkum is an Old English dialect word you held onto that we didn't," says the British writer and broadcaster whom most people know as Melvyn Bragg. "It's the same with 'digger'. Then there's words such as 'cossie' and 'pokie'. Australians are constantly breaking words down, shortening them, making them more vivid and completely inventing words from nowhere at all."
This is a natural process, the 65-year-old says.
People were playing with the language in Shakespeare's day, and it is this obstinacy, flexibility and dynamism that have ensured its survival.
Bragg is clearly fascinated by the language he calls "England's greatest success story". His interest was piqued a few years back when he re-examined the heavy northern dialect he spoke as a child growing up in Wigton, Cumbria. He had long dismissed it as a rough little northern dialect, but on closer inspection it revealed itself as an "enormous mongrel mix" - a linguistic cocktail of Old English, Old Norse, Romany, Latin and French.
Spurred by this revelation, Bragg made Routes of English, a BBC radio series that examined the development of the language and the myriad accents and dialects it has spawned along the way. It made him realise that the story of English - its evolution from a tribal dialect spoken by about 150,000 people to a language that is spoken and understood by about 1.5 billion - could make a compelling TV series. The result is The Adventure of English, an ambitious eight-part series that begins screening on SBS on Sunday.
Bragg, who is best-known in Britain as the host of the long-running arts program The South Bank Show, was convinced the potentially arcane subject could engage
a small-screen audience, given the right treatment.
"One of the things that is interesting about English is that everyone who speaks it is fascinated by it," says Bragg, who still speaks with a soft northern burr. "We enjoy our language."
Even so, the series isn't called The Adventure of English for nothing. The story, Bragg says, is "full of cliffhangers and, 'Christ, what happens next?' " It's told as a ripping yarn in which the hero, English, is confronted by rivals, forced underground and occasionally left teetering on the brink of extinction. Yet somehow it prevails to become the muscular language we know today.
Bragg, who is renowned in Britain for his ability to popularise high-brow concepts, is in his element here. He consults with experts and academics, but continually takes the focus back to the streets, where English is spoken, abused and abbreviated by everyone from publicans to prime ministers.
For example, a group of men are shown discussing their soccer team in a London pub. The footage is analysed by a language expert from Glasgow University, who reveals the men are using many Old English words.
Bragg is right when he says Old English - a baffling language when encountered in written form - can be brought to sensuous, richly inflected life when read by an expert. Beowulf, the first great English poem, transports the audience back to a dark, demon-filled world. And the Old English version of the Lord's Prayer sounds remarkably familiar when read aloud.
All this takes place in the first few episodes. In later programs, Bragg visits India, North America, Australia and South Africa to examine the new "Englishes". He describes Australia, with real fondness, as a "hot spot" for the language's incessant evolution.
"Australia is very good at breaking the language into smaller pieces," he says. "A word like 'brekky' is a faster way of doing things and English likes speed. There's more of a kick to 'brekky' than 'breakfast'. It's a wonderfully playful word."
The Adventure of English begins on SBS on Sunday at 7.30pm.