Thursday,
August 21, 2008
English: Official Language
? Press #2 For Italian ????
The
ANNOTICO Report
Yes,
English should be the Official Language , BUT we have
a huge chore of teaching Native born Americans to speak it properly.
Most
of us butcher the language in a variety of ways. During a recent TV weather
broadcast, for example, I heard a young woman interject the word
actually 16 times in three minutes, to no apparent purpose
whatsoever. Most college graduates think a reflexive pronoun is some
sort of stretching exercise. Other allegedly educated Americans would tell you
that a dangling participle is a Greek porno star.
Many
Americans get along with in daily conversation.only
the 20 or so words or expressions Five of these are variations
of the F word. The remainder includes dude, oh my
god, whazzup?,
cool, Brittany, awesome, totally,
score and weed. Get these and a few others down pat and
youll be, like, totally accepted, even if you
just got off the plane from Regurgistan.
If
we ever legalize a second language, in addition to English, I hope it is
Italian. Thats a beautiful language, romantic, colorful, with curved,
lugubrious vowels cascading upwards into the night. Another good thing
about Italian-speaking people is that they can express themselves so well with
their hands and other body parts. The average Italian, if suddenly struck dumb,
could still deliver dozens of meaningful messages just by winking, rolling
his/her eyes, raising his eyebrows, putting his finger against his cheek and
twisting it (his finger, not his cheek), or crooking his elbow while clamping
his hand forcefully against his opposite bicep.
Si Habla
Official Lingo?
Bob
Driver
Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2008
Theres a movement out there calling for
English to be officially decreed our national language. Many members of this
group are dismayed that Spanish is making such inroads into our culture.
Today, when you
telephone a company or government agency, chances are fairly high a voice with
a lousy Spanish accent will cut in and say something like, Si dica Espanol, punchola
la numero uno key, por favor. Translation: My half-sisters
first name is Punchola. Which
tends to get nobody anywhere, phone-wise.
Some Americans
favor a federal law requiring all newly arrived immigrants to learn English
within two years after landing on our shores. A virtue of such a law is that it
would create a need for 6 million new teachers of English as a second language,
thus reducing our unemployment rate.
On the other
hand, is it fair to demand that foreign-born citizens learn to speak English
when only about 37 percent of native-born Americans are able to speak or write
decent English? Most of us butcher the language in a variety of ways.
During a recent
TV weather broadcast, for example, I heard a young woman interject the word
actually 16 times in three minutes, to no apparent purpose
whatsoever. Most college graduates think a reflexive pronoun is some sort of
stretching exercise. Other allegedly educated Americans would tell you that a
dangling participle is a Greek porno star.
Of course,
things could be made easier on immigrants if they were asked to learn only the
20 or so words or expressions that many Americans get along with in daily
conversation. Five of these are variations of the F word. The
remainder includes dude, oh my god, whazzup?, cool,
Brittany, awesome, totally, score and
weed. Get these and a few others down pat and youll be, like, totally accepted, even if you just got off the
plane from Regurgistan.
If we ever
legalize a second language, in addition to English, I hope it is Italian. Thats a beautiful language, romantic, colorful, with curved,
lugubrious vowels cascading upwards into the night. Another good thing
about Italian-speaking people is that they can express themselves so well with
their hands and other body parts. The average Italian, if suddenly struck dumb,
could still deliver dozens of meaningful messages just by winking, rolling
his/her eyes, raising his eyebrows, putting his finger against his cheek and
twisting it (his finger, not his cheek), or crooking his elbow while clamping
his hand forcefully against his opposite bicep.
Still another
useful second language would be Scottish. The Scots tend to be silent much of
the time, and what a blessing that would be, most days. The reason theyre
so quiet, at least while among non-Scots, is that few people can understand
what a Scot is saying, so why should he/she bother to speak? When he/she does
utter a sentence, it will usually contain the words wee,
bonnie, nicht, haggis
and lets go beat up on a Brit!
Getting
back to Spanish: no one can accuse Latinos of dragging their feet in adopting
American pop culture. Of the 20 or so TV channels I pay $11 a
month to watch, four of them are Hispanic. Their programming is dominated by
straight knockoffs of American shows: (A) talk shows featuring unhappy, whining
persons accusing other people of cheating, bullying, theft, meddling, incest
and halitosis, and (B) courtroom contestants arguing over who should pay for a
$28 flask of perfume allegedly stolen from Maria by an ex-girl friend bent on
seducing Marias landlords auto mechanic. I try to watch a few minutes
each day to improve my Spanish vocabulary. Im getting
real good at understanding por que, casa, mujer
and corazon. If Spanish is ever
ruled a second
Send Bob
Driver an e-mail at tralee71@comcast.net.
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