Stephen Fry, and why he's wrong.

According to the invariably inaccurate Yahoo! Answers, the average vocabulary of human Americans currently hovers around 10,000 words.

I'm unconvinced, partially because the cited "source" for the Yahoo! Answer is actually an article attempting to disprove that 10,000 words in the average vocabulary.  But mainly because I'm pretty sure the average American can name more than 10,000 fast-food brands.

I kid, my American readers (although I would argue that simply clicking on a page and staring blankly at a large cacophony of letters doesn't technically count as reading). An American with a vocabulary of 10,000 words is unlikely to be able to list 'cacophony' as one that they understand.

This is a relief to me, as I have used it incorrectly.

But that doesn't matter.

Because you don't know what it means.

Let us unshackle ourselves from the burden of any further introduction in which I make points that will later be relevant. No, instead we sally forth onto the main event.

I am troubled by the future of the English language.

When people talk to me and use phrases like "bored of", I get annoyed.
Then they get annoyed at me because I'm annoyed.

"Why does it matter?" they ask "you still understand what I mean"

The smarter and pseudo-smarter amongst them may quote Stephen Fry, who once said on QI (and I paraphrase):

"Language must change. It always has done, and to try to stop it now is foolish".

I must disagree, Stephen, I must.

See, I think it would be a perfectly rational statement if it were not for one thing. One thing that has revolutionised us, and continues to do so:

The internet.

Let me explain. English is a fairly universal language. Though apparently not as common a first language as Spanish or Mandarin Chinese, it by far the common second language.

There are estimated to be over 1.025 billion people who speak Mandarin Chinese to a reasonable degree. 845 million of those are native speakers.
English only has about 350 million native speakers, but has over 1.5 billion who understand it to some degree.

Ergo, English is the most important language for overcoming international barriers and establishing meaning. It is therefore absolutely vital that we preserve it as close to its taught form as possible.

What good is 1.5 speakers of English all speaking a completely different type of English that no-one understands. The internet has broken down barriers. We are now more able to communicate than ever before.

We need to keep the English language as what it is, because without it, we lose our best chance to improve the only thing that can ever help us empathise with the world around us: communication.