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Peter Cochrane's Hard Drive 1999 A word with Dr Johnson IF you walk through an old English graveyard and look at headstones dated earlier than 1800, and certainly before 1755, you will find a rich variety of spelling and transposition of characters. For example: forrest instead of forest, laye instead of lay, Jayne instead of Jane, u and v transposed, and, instead of "s" a large "f" shaped character - which is now in common usage as the integration sign in calculus. During this period the English language was incredibly rich, flowery, still developing and free from generally applied rules, definitions or dictionaries. It took the resolute character of Dr Samuel Johnson and a team of six clerks to set about the standardisation of the language between 1746 and 1755. For the first time words were recorded, described, with meaning, use and the spelling defined. Johnson's work was not without its critics as he believed language should evolve and be flexible, and many wanted the rigidity of the French academics who took over 40 years to complete their first dictionary. At the outset of this forbidding project Johnson wrote of his task: "I survey the Plan which I have laid before you, I cannot, my Lord, but confess, that I am frighted at its extent, and, like the soldiers of Caesar, look on Britain as a new world, which it is almost madness to invade. But I hope, that though I should not complete the conquest, I shall, at least, discover the coast, civilise part of the inhabitants, and make it easy for some other adventurer to proceed further, to reduce them wholly to subjection, and settle them under laws." What would Johnson have given for a PC? He could have completed his task in a fraction of the time, and continued to expand his dictionary beyond the 40,000+ words his team compiled. Today electronic dictionaries have accumulated more than 90,000 key headers and more than three million entries, and our language is becoming even more evolutionary in the common usage of expression and the generation of new terms. What would Johnson think of LASER becoming laser, for example? Today acronyms become words in less than a decade, and we generate them at an increasing rate. When I first arrived in industry from university I was amazed at the dominant use of acronyms in engineering and management. On my first major project I compiled a list of more than 200 key acronyms essential to conversation and comprehension. Today, the personalised dictionary on my laptop has more than 20,000 entries specific to my areas of study and work. Within a decade I expect this personal (and partial) dictionary first to rival and then to eclipse the first efforts of Samuel Johnson and his team. But I did not set about compiling this curious dictionary, it just grew from the first day I started to use a PC, with every document another addition or two. Johnson was moved to compile his dictionary because an age of reason was having difficulty coping with the freedom and anarchy of the base language, and educated opinion demanded that something be done. We may never pass that way again, but is interesting to contemplate the bringing together of all the electronic dictionaries at some similar epoch. Peter Cochrane holds the Collier Chair for the Public Understanding of Science & Technology at the University of Bristol. His home page is: |
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