LEND ME YOUR EAR: ENGLISH 200 YEARS FROM NOW? WE CAN HOPE FOR BEST

As most of us know, the Bill of Rights turned 200 years old this year. So did The Farmer's Almanac. The Special Commemorative Edition of the almanac lists what else dates back 200 years. Would you believe tomato ketchup, commercially-baked crackers, the presidential veto, and women's rights?

The Special Edition also lists what is likely to disappear in the next 200 years, what is likely to remain, and what will be new. Among the vanishing are incandescent light bulbs, checks, cancer, and acne. Expected to remain are television commercials, the generation gap, roaches, and campaign promises. Promises certain to materialize are backyard wildlife habitats, harder ice, fragrant gloves, flexible furniture, and fashionable overalls for farmers.

The English language is missing from every prediction, but we believe it will survive even if no longer recognizable. We further predict that changes wrought by the misuse and misspellings of words will continue, that English-speaking peoples will continue to misquote, to coin isms and izes, lift words and phrases from foreign countries and that teenage slang will still be a foreign language to adults.

Some time back, a TV commentator declared that the West has again been "dubbed" by the wiles of Saddam Hussein. Dub has many meanings, from conferring knighthood or a nickname on someone, to changing a soundtrack in an original composition. The word wanted was not dubbed, it was duped deceived. Another TV announcer deplored the "incertaincy" of Saddam's actions. In time, "incertaincy" may replace or become an alternate for uncertainty, granted enough communicators cooperate.

In recent weeks, we have heard "far from the maddening crowd" on radio and TV. As students of my generation learned in high school or college, the well-known 19th century novelist Thomas Harty write a novel titled "Far From the Madding Crowd" that became an instant classic. Very likely, someone heard another say "madding" and thought he should correct the speaker's careless pronunciation of maddening; others may have liked the expression and picked it up. Even so, we feel sure the author's title will survive.

So many isms and izes continue to surface. I've done a bit of research on the origin of the habit. Both suffixes go back to the beginnings of Christianity, and by the third century the words baptize and baptism were in common usage. Christians of the third and fourth centuries were also known to Christianize, and the Greeks Hellenized whomever they could. Meaning they tried to get them to adopt Greek ways. They even tried to Grecize them, heaven help us and our language.

Sir Horace Walpole, remembered in literary circles for his terror novel "The Castle of Otronto", published in 1764, once wrote a letter to a friend contending that he "would soon squabble about socianism, or one of those isms." Somewhere along the line, socianism must have lost out to socialism, but the isms continued to proliferate.

Like prayer, isms continue without ceasing. A Clinton supporter announced that "Clinton understands Tennesseeism." An airline critic tells us that "TWA is still trying to avoid thunderstormism, a metaphoric coinage meaning conflict among likely buyers. Dr. Don Higginbotham, president of the Southern Historical Society, has come up with filiopietism. Derived from filial and piety, it refers to the attitude of southerners during the secession upheaval, when the southern states were bent on forming a confederacy. Southerners were belligerent about their roots. We know some who still are.

In Time magazine, Aug. 31, we read what European modernism has primitivized artist William Johnson. Whatever the cause, today's pseudo-primitive art, we feel, has gone too far. Some of us could do as well with our toes.

On a talk show, a clergyman-turned-psychiatrist has declared that we have desacredized life. Charles Krauthammer, one of Time's top-flight writers, puts the clergyman's thought on a more personal level. The speeches of Bill Clinton and Al Gore, Krauthammer avers, are "orgies of self-adulation marking the full Oprahtization of America." Rush Limbaugh is apt to take issue with this. Listen to his talk show, he advises us, "and take advantage of the greatest free education institution in the world."

Teenage slanguage is so evanescent that our examples may be outdated already. At last query, Dude, Rap, and Brit differed widely. Dude meant Hello in Dude. Yo was Hello in Rap. In Brit, Hello was Oil.

You take it from here. My fondest hope is that 200 years from now, adult Americans will still be speaking and writing what is called English or American English not some international or Third World concoction that is even less intelligible than teenage slang has ever been.