Is it dangerous to accept changes to our language? Does doing so amount to moral relativism?
“Let me explain briefly why language change is actually a good thing for Christians who love God and his word.” - Mark Ward
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…..is some of the changes, like the hullaballoo about the TNIV and gender inclusivity, seem to “wall off” a lot of literature of the past under the notion that it will not be understandable to people of today. Now certainly scholarship does not end with Luther or Spurgeon or whoever, but at the same time, something in me recoils at the notion that Spurgeon or Luther or whoever will not be intelligible “sans translation” because they used “grammatical gender” (“he” can refer to a he or she) and the like.
One picture that’s especially telling to me is the fact that when I received a copy of “My Utmost for His Highest” about 20 years back, I looked and saw that it was a revision of the original 1914 (?) text. It struck me as somewhat obscene that we can only read Chambers “in translation”, because that would mean that most of our laws, court decisions, and the like would also be hard to understand for us.
I also appreciate what our Jewish friends have done in this regard; since Jews have been a literate people since antiquity, their languages don’t seem to change as much as Gentile languages. Yiddish is, for example, pretty much Middle German (from around 1300-1400 AD) heavily accented by Hebrew, and of course modern Hebrew would be, with the exception of some new words added, be intelligible to Moses. It’s far different from a modern American trying to read The Canterbury Tales or Beowulf in the original, though Chaucer is newer language than Yiddish, and Beowulf is of course far newer than the Torah.
So yes, languages change over time as societies change, meet other societies, adopt new words, and the like, but we need to be very careful of activists misrepresenting things like grammatical gender to “win the argument” by putting the classic resources in various areas out of circulation.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
that would mean that most of our laws, court decisions, and the like would also be hard to understand for us.
Well they are hard to understand… the further you go back.
There’s nothing we can do about this…
but we need to be very careful of activists misrepresenting things like grammatical gender to “win the argument” by putting the classic resources in various areas out of circulation.
I agree that we need to “be careful,” but it’s a caution toward our own thinking. Probably also it means that, as Christians, more intentionally using our own language (biblical language when possible). But “our own language” isn’t really the same as “the accepted language in our culture” in x range of years.
I’m all for rejecting “chronological snobbery” (as Lewis put it) against those long dead. But there’s an equal and opposite error of assuming that if it’s older (often only a few decades older!) it must be better.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
What I’m getting at regarding the documents of the not too distant past is not merely that they are difficult to understand already, but rather that people are starting to use the “language has changed” argument to wall off use of those older documents altogether. No doubt that it’s hard to understand legal documents, even for lawyers—that’s why we have case law after all—but my argument is that something worse is afoot.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
I don’t have a good feel for that either way. I get your point better now, though. I haven’t come across cases where law is set aside because the language has changed—at least, I don’t recall seeing that. But that doesn’t prove anything other than I haven’t seen it.
Where is that going on?
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
I’m not sure what sort of changes Mark is proposing should be accepted.
And I would not agree that the modern use of “she” for a man acting as a woman is a change in meaning. “She” is being used to refer to a 3rd person female.
Other words like “ze” are changes in language because they refer to something not referred to by previously existing words.
I do not mind these words being added to the dictionary. They have a meaning that is new. I’m not going to use them, but I understand what someone who is using them intends.
Discussion