Mayday!
No action movie would be complete without a scene of the earnest young lieutenant intoning desperately into his microphone as his craft rocks in the darkness, “Mayday! Mayday! Going down at 42.0539 and -47.7730!”
But why exactly do we call out “Mayday!” when we’re in dire straits? Surely there are 364 other days on which we can get in trouble.
Well, actually, “mayday” is a direct transliteration of the French “M’aidez!”, literally “Help me!” It’s a universal call for rescue.
Languages are the funniest things, disorganized orders where the rules are made to be broken and we make it up as we go along. Words slide in from other languages as if traveling from another dimension.
Our English language may be the world’s closest thing to a universal language, but it in turn is the bastard child of French and German, with more than a little incest from Latin and old Welsh. In a sense, our language is the lucky pidgin which happens to have the most speakers.
Some countries coddle their language as if a sacred thing. France has L’Académie Française, akin to a Vatican for linguistic purity, whose job it is to close the door after the horse has left the barn. English language purists do exactly the same.
Language is nothing but mutually agreed symbols of meaning, whether Received Pronunciation British, or street jive. It is what it is.
And if you think your language is in trouble, send out a Mayday!