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Good morning. Reed Hoffman, one of the founders of Linked In, tells us that typing is over and voicepilling is here. This is the word he has coined to capture the way, he says, we are set to bypass keyboards. After the quill the pen, then the typewriter, the text, the voice note鈥 but in voicepilling entire articles, essays or books - everything actually - is spoken directly to the machine for production. Hands-free. Is voicepilling a word that will stick? Sounds unlikely but who knows? New words seem to be invented more rapidly than ever but then language is always being born again. At an open mic event I was at this week one poet used the beautiful expression 鈥榮onder鈥 - the kind of neglected word from Chaucer or Shakespeare which etymologists and crossword compilers love to rediscover. Sonder is defined as one鈥檚 realization that each person you pass by 鈥榠s the main character in their own story, in which you are just an extra.鈥 The definition comes from John Koenig in his Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, a collection of words he created to capture emotions that he says, 鈥榳e feel but don鈥檛 have the words too express鈥. Some words or phrases disappear, some morph into new meaning鈥 while others stick around for ever. Few writers have had more stickability than William Tyndale. The 500th anniversary of his English New Testament is currently being celebrated in an exhibition at the British Library and, from next month, at St Paul鈥檚 Cathedral. Tyndale believed it shouldn鈥檛 only be priests who could access the Bible, but that everyone should hear it in everyday English. His translation, published in 1526, was so popular that when King James commissioned his 'Authorized Version鈥, nearly a century later, the royal translation team ripped ninety percent of their text straight out of Tyndale. His phrases continue to haunt the language: 'from strength to strength鈥; 鈥榝or better or worse鈥; 鈥榣ead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil鈥; 鈥榮alt of the earth鈥 and 鈥榝ight the good fight鈥. Tyndale was after a poetic language understood by ordinary people and was so successful that, as someone said, 鈥楴o Tyndale, No Shakespeare鈥. Or as playwright David Edgar put it: 鈥楴o Tyndale, No Kindle鈥. But in democratizing religion, in translating the divine into the human, he was branded the 鈥榤ost dangerous man in England鈥 and burned at the stake. The political powers could see, to use another of his phrases, 鈥榯he writing on the wall鈥. Words are dangerous. Once you can speak the divine in your own tongue then you can bring god down from heaven onto earth and decide for yourself what your religion means for your life. You can, as Tyndale wrote, 鈥榣et there be light'
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