by Jackie Liu
Learning a second language is a challenge for most people, and eloquence in the language sometimes seems impossible, especially if it’s English. Jackie Liu explains this feeling, but also shares his realization that one doesn’t need to use “posh” words to sound sophisticated; the secret lies in how they are arranged.
For years, I had an idea of what good English sounded like. I called it High English.
I do not mean that technically. I mean the kind of English that made me stop and listen: educated without sounding academic, formal without sounding stiff, elegant without showing off.
English with posture.
One of my favourite examples came from an absurd place: The Prince, an animated satire about the British royal family. The Queen says:
Too long have I gone without an answer to the one question so dear to my heart.
I paused the video, rewound it, and wrote the sentence down. This, I thought, is High English.
Then I noticed something strange. Look at the words: too, long, have, I, gone, without, answer, question, dear, heart. Almost all are elementary. No rare word. Nothing that would impress anyone on a vocabulary test.
The words are ordinary. The arrangement is royal.
The sentence could have been: โI have gone too long without an answer to the one question so dear to my heart.โ Perfectly good English. But move too long to the front โ โToo long have I gone . . .โ โ and the sentence changes posture. It no longer reports impatience. It declares it.
Then comes โthe one question so dear to my heart,โ and not simply โthe question I really care about.โ Again, the words are simple, but the sentence has ceremony.
Then comes the punchline:
Who the fuck are you?
The first sentence puts a crown on her head; the second throws it across the room.
Somewhere in that joke was a lesson I had missed for years: I had confused difficult English with elevated English. They are not the same thing.
I thought hard English was good English
Growing up in China, I learned English in an environment where difficulty often looked like achievement. A rare word showed vocabulary. A long sentence showed grammar. If another student had to stop and untangle the clauses, that looked advanced.
The Graduate Record Examination (GRE)1 reinforced that idea. I would read a sentence packed with unfamiliar words and think: I cannot write like this. Therefore, my English must not be very good.
Even after I could teach and publish in English, some part of me still imagined another level above me.
Real English. The kind where every sentence entered the room wearing a waistcoat.
Miss Courtney had it
This may explain why I always loved listening to Miss Courtney in Mind Your Language. She could correct someone, dismiss an idea, or express disbelief, and the sentence would remain upright. She did not need obscure words or a raised voice; the authority came from control.
I eventually found a better word for what I liked.
Poise.
That is closer to what I meant by High English. Not pomposity. Not verbosity. Poise. The sentence knows how to carry itself.
It also helped me see another mistake. I had treated spoken and written English as opposites: Casual language belonged to speech; formal language belonged to writing. But a wedding vow is spoken. A judge can speak. A monarch can speak. Spoken English can be elevated too.
Then I remembered Sheldon Cooper
For a while, I wondered whether what I loved was Britishness โ the Queen, Miss Courtney, Rowan Atkinson. Maybe I just liked British people sounding British.
Then I remembered Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory.
Sheldon is American, but he routinely takes an ordinary situation and speaks about it several floors above everyone else. A normal person might say, โI guess I should go out and relax,โ but Sheldon says:
Social convention dictates that I let my hair down at a local watering hole.
The joke works because Sheldon refuses to let the language come down to the size of the occasion. Other people go out for a drink; Sheldon complies with social convention at a local watering hole.
The content is ordinary. The register refuses to be.
That broke my British theory. The Queen sounds royal. Miss Courtney sounds composed. Sheldon sounds overqualified for ordinary life.
The problem was my map
For most of my life, I imagined English on one scale: simple to advanced. Simple words on the left, GRE words on the right. Short sentences on the left, long sentences on the right.
But that map was wrong. There are at least two questions: How difficult are the words? And what register is the sentence using? Those can move independently. A sentence can use simple words and an elevated register. A sentence can use technical words and an elevated register. A sentence can use difficult words and still be terrible.
I have read enough academic prose to know that the last category exists.
This also helped me understand what I had long admired in Rowan Atkinson. His sentences can be long, but they do not feel heavy. A clause knows what it belongs to; a qualification arrives where it is needed.
The sophistication is not always inside the words. Sometimes it lives between them.
I was chasing the wrong thing
I used to think I wanted a bigger vocabulary. I did, and I still do. I thought I wanted more complicated grammar. I did. Grammar gives us possibilities.
But neither was the thing that made me pause The Prince and write down the Queenโs sentence. I was chasing something else: control, register, rhythm, arrangement, poise.
I no longer want every sentence to prove how much English I know. Sometimes a sentence should be long. Sometimes it should turn, qualify, return, and land exactly where it needs to. And sometimes the best sentence is four words.
The question is no longer: Does this look advanced?
The question is: Does this sentence know what it is doing?
I spent years trying to make my English more difficult. What I wanted all along was poise.
That is what High English means to me now.
Not harder words. Not longer sentences. Not English dressed up to impress.
English with control.
English with posture.
Ordinary English standing very straight.
Jackie Liu, PhD, is an assistant professor of communication at Marian University in Indianapolis. His writing explores language, communication, research, and the odd things people notice when they pay too much attention to words.
This article was copy edited by Vilma Indra Vฤซtols, a part-time freelance editor and opera singer based in Toronto.
- A standardized test used by many US and Canadian universities in their admissions process. The test measures analytical writing, verbal reasoning, and quantitative reasoning. โฉ๏ธ
