Tuesday, May 17, 2005
International Enquirer
More from Michael Quinion’s World Wide Words.
This is a good answer to a question that’s been on my mind, but it doesn’t address a related puzzle: since the National Enquirer uses the “e” spelling and the Philadelphia Inquirer the “i,” does that make the “e” spelling sleazy?
(Earlier from WW Words: to foot the bill)
Q. In your issue of 23 April you wrote “Earnest enquirers wish to
know.” The Latin for “he said” is “inquit”. Hence it always seems
correct to me to use the English “inquired” rather than “enquired”.
How say you? [Barry Shandling, Toronto]A. As you might guess, I rather disagree.
Arguments from etymology are always hard to justify, because there
are many thousands of examples of words that have shifted sense or
spelling since they arrived in English. Language is as language
does: if native speakers choose to change words or the way they use
them, that’s something we just have to accept. Then there’s the
difficulty of defining what you mean by “correct”, since usage can
vary a lot between various communities of speakers, each of which
will firmly assert that their own way of doing things is right.This one’s particularly awkward, for both these reasons. The Latin
origin is the verb “inquirere” (based on “quaerere”, to ask or
seek, which is also the source of “query”). However, the first
examples of the English verb - in the thirteenth century - began
with “en-”, or even sometimes “an-”. This is because the prefix
became changed in its passage into English; it arrived via Old
French, in which the word was “enquerre” (modern French has
“enquérir”). Educated people in the fifteenth century began to be
persuaded under the influence of Latin that it really ought to be
spelled “inquire”, not “enquire”. But educated opinion didn’t
prevail, and the two forms have continued in use in parallel in
British English, roughly in equal frequencies, down to the present
day.However, in recent times British people have developed a difference
of meaning between the two forms. “Enquire” tends to be used for
general senses of “ask” (I might enquire after your health, or
enquire about some fact or other), while “inquire” implies a formal
investigation (as in the legal forum called a public inquiry). But
this isn’t absolute by any means, and British English is being
influenced by American English, in which “inquire” and “inquiry”
have long been the standard forms (though the “en-” forms are not
entirely unknown even there, albeit in rather formal situations;
also “enquiry” is relatively more common than “enquire”).
Australian English stands in much the same position as British
English and is subject to the same forces. Canadian English, as so
often, is split between American and British styles, though
favouring the American.