New and Noteworthy. - books on language, tanks, travellers' letters, Writers' Britain series - book review

Contemporary Review, August, 2002

Language, its history and the rules governing its use, introduce this month's survey. From CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS we have The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language published at [pounds sterling]100.00 or US$150.00 and prepared by Professors Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum in collaboration with thirteen other experts. The aim of this massive guide (1842 pages) is 'to bridge the large gap that exists between traditional grammar and the partial descriptions of English grammar proposed by those working in ... linguistics'. Its procedure is to eschew a 'diachronic' or historical description of English and instead to give a 'synchronic' or 'descriptive grammar of general-purpose, present-day, international Standard English'. By present-day the authors mean from the 1950s to the present. As befits our democratic age the Grammar never proscribes something as incorrect. 'I ain't got no bananas' is not so much 'wrong' as something which conflicts with 'the principles that govern the construction of wor ds and sentences in the present-day language'. Sometimes this approach borders on the pedantic.

In the absence of any rule governing the cases of pronouns the authors conclude it is not 'wrong' to say 'They invited my partner and I to lunch'. One sometimes wonders if there is no 'Queen's' or 'correct' English, why publish grammars at all? Having expressed these reservations, this latest publication must now stand as one of the best analyses of modern English. As an error-free guide it will do little to improve what in the authors' eyes is not at fault in the first place.

The second title dealing with language is Prof. John H. McWhorter's The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language published by WILLIAM HEINEMANN at [pounds]16.99. This history, first published in the US last year, is a personal look at the history of language and in particular, at how the earth's 6,000 current languages arose out of a single language spoken which dates back to about 150,000 B.C. The somewhat 'folksy' approach may put off some British readers but there is real scholarship here and a sense that the history of how and why we speak the way we do is both interesting and fascinating. The value of this history is the way in which the author transmits his life-long enthusiasm for language and its multi-faceted history.

The final new release is Andrew Dalby's Language in Danger: How Language Loss Threatens Our Future and is published by ALLEN LANE: THE PENGUIN PRESS at [pounds]18.99. The author, a classicist as well as a linguist, is perhaps used to dealing with 'dead languages'; except in the case of Classical Greek and Latin, the term should actually not be used. His concern is with languages that are disappearing when the final speaker stops using them: of the languages used today the estimate is that half will have disappeared by A.D. 3000. This matters because man's knowledge and experience of history are embedded and transmitted in specific languages. Anyone who translates between languages knows how difficult it is to express thoughts in another language. To understand fully one needs to know the language used. In this survey the author looks ahead, at the shift in language, the spread of 'national languages', the growth of English as a world language (outside the confines of the EU where French predominates, at least officially) and the disappearance of 'minority languages'. The author argues his case well and shows the poverty from which we shall all suffer if the present trend is not reversed.

There are fashions in historical writing as in everything else in life and one of the latest is for books on the use of tanks in the last war. CONSTABLE has brought out Panzerkrieg: The Rise and Fall of Hitler's Tank Divisions {[pounds]20.00} by Peter McCarthy and Michael Syron. The history of Nazi Germany's military and diplomatic successes was, to a large degree, due to the tank. Hitler's tank corps or Panzerwaffe, were used to bring about the Anschluss with Austria and the destruction of Czechoslovakia. Its value in military terms was exaggerated by Nazi propaganda and the actual tanks were not as efficient as portrayed. In addition, Hitler's military incompetence often undermined their value on the battlefields of Europe and North Africa. What made the six tank corps superior was 'the quality of its officers and men'. As the authors show in this well organised and well written study, on 'the tactical and operational levels, the panzers remained unsurpassed right to the end'. Surviving manuscripts suggest that the Panzerwaffe was actually stronger in May 1945 than in September 1939. Defeat came from air superiority in the west and numerical superiority in the east. However their legacy was to revolutionise modern warfare and to perpetuate the work of their greatest exponent, Heinz Guderian, in the armies of the Allied victors.

On a more personal level, CASSELL has published Stuart Hill's By Tank into Normandy: A Memoir of the Campaign in North-West Europe from D-Day to VE Day ([pounds]19.99). In these recollections the author, whose 8th Armoured Brigade played such an important role in the Normandy Invasion, looks back on the long march that took him from Southampton to Hanover. The excitement of a grand adventure mingles with the tragedies and losses and even now the memory of a friend's death 'still hurts'. His aim was to tell his readers how 'distressing, ghastly, harrowing, horrific, fearsome and deplorable' war really is but in so doing he has also given them a story of bravery and comradeship that should inspire.