Experiencing language change

We know it happens, but didn’t think it we’d see it in action.

Not long ago our tutor had one of what he calls “recalibrations:” when he suddenly has to adjust to a different sort of world than he was used to.  A student was on the schedule for math, but instead asked for help with a document from her history class.  She did not understand what it said, and in effect asked for a translation.  It was a passage from the Declaration of Independence.

Now, the language of the Founding Fathers is quite different in style from what we use routinely today, and of course a formal political document will differ from (say) a personal letter or email.  But the words are all still there in the dictionary, verbs are conjugated the same way and the grammar is formally identical.  Indeed, we can still be moved by the ringing passage that begins, “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” boldly setting out the political principles of the Revolution.  But the student couldn’t understand what they were saying.  Our tutor did his best to simplify and paraphrase, and he thinks the student gained some grasp of their meaning.

In our time as students, we don’t recall anyone having this much trouble just understanding the meaning of eighteenth-century prose.  It can get dense and discursive, and nineteenth-century novels can seem just tedious; but working out the basic meaning took a little effort, at most.  We’ve concluded that the English language has changed enough in the decades since our studenthood to make earlier works that much more distant and harder to understand.  A chilling thought: if Thomas Jefferson is incomprehensible to many of today’s students, what hope has Shakespeare?

Now, the Declaration does require some annotation and filling-in of background, if for no other reason than we no longer live in a monarchy with an hereditary aristocracy.  In the language of the time, the King could reward a favored courtier or soldier by “creating” him the Earl of Somewhere, raising his social rank.  So “all men are created equal” is a rejection of privilege and rank, not an assertion that we’re all the same.

We are not referring to ephemeral slang and bywords.  “23 Skidoo” was gone by the time of our parents, though they would have understood jiving with the hep cats, as a later generation could seek an experience so groovy it would blow your mind.  Nor are we talking about differences stemming from technological change, as for instance the terms for parts of a horse’s harness fall out of use (in the general population, at least).

We’re not certain, though, just how the language has changed to make the Declaration difficult.  Is it the long, sometimes complex and metaphorical clauses?  Certainly all the advice we’ve received about technical writing emphasizes shortness and clarity.  Or is it just that too many words have finally shifted their meanings too far?

But we never expected to have to translate “We hold these truths” as if it were a foreign language.