The English Language
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘The English Language’
The English language is the most valuable part of our national heritage, and the patriotic citizen is careful to treat it with respect.
Hilaire Belloc ran in the same head-spinning literary company as GK Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw. In this essay, he urges us to think of the English language as our most prized possession, neither to be put under glass in a museum, nor to be mangled in the media, but used thoughtfully and responsibly, because one day it will be the only record of what kind of people the English were.
Sir George MacMunn traces Kipling’s masterly handling of English and of storytelling to reading the King James Bible aloud.
In his biography of Rudyard Kipling, Sir George MacMunn drew attention to the impact on Kipling’s work, in prose as well as in verse, of the Authorized or ‘King James’ translation of the Bible, published in 1611 under King James VI and I. MacMunn reminds us that reading the King James Bible out aloud is one of the best and most proven ways for a writer to gain an appreciation of good English — and good stories.
Benjamin Franklin recalls the disciplines he put himself through on the way to becoming one of America’s literary giants.
Ben Franklin’s father, to head him off from going to sea, apprenticed him at twelve to his elder brother James, a printer in Boston, Massachusetts. Eager to improve his command of prose writing, Ben entered into an informal writing competition with another boy from his neighbourhood, John Collins, on the subject of women’s education; but this only made him acutely aware of his shortcomings.