This past week, our country’s brightest, prepubescent minds gathered right here in Washington DC to compete in the 83rd Scripps National Spelling Bee. Yet, what should have been a couple of days of glory-basking enjoyment for these eggheads was interrupted by a confrontation that surpasses that of the bullies that stuff them in lockers and take their lunch money.
Protestors.
Though there weren’t many and their chants may have barely been heard, their cause resonates loudly with me. Like all public demonstrations, they were looking for reform. It was not the education system that they wanted to see drastic changes in per say; these individuals wished to amend the very way the English language spells its words. What do I mean you may ask? Here’s an example from The Christian Science Monitor article:
According to literature distributed by the group, it makes more sense for "fruit" to be spelled as "froot," ''slow" should be "slo," and "heifer" — a word spelled correctly during the first oral round of the bee Thursday by Texas competitor Ramesh Ghanta — should be "hefer."
Apparently, the English language is just too difficult to spell which, to me, implies that those that take the time to learn the proper spelling have an unfair advantage in today’s world. It doesn’t make such sense to me either.
I’m not going to waste my time arguing against their demands. It’s obvious that their petition is just illogical – even the fifteen year old brother of one of the Spelling Bee contestants challenged this group’s nonsensicality. If anything, English is unique in that it is made up of words, or origins of words, from a variety of languages. English is a smörgåsbord of Nordic tongues, a bonanza of Spanish idioms, a blitzkrieg of German terms, along with cameos of Italian, and one where using French is clichéd. Even classically “American” words have surprisingly distant origins – the hokey term of “fella” comes from the Arabic word for an ordinary person.
But before I go on to make this a post about protecting the English language from those who don’t know any better, I will humbly stop myself at the risk of being a hypocrite. About a month or so ago, I was shocked by an article from The New York Times that pertained to prominent French figures, including President Nicolas Sarkozy and those associated with the International Organization of the Francophonie, looking to preserve the French language. They felt that something must be done.
What’s wrong with that? Why should I feel guilty about defending the English language as it stands now and be critical of the French wanting to do the same with theirs? It implies a sense of elitism that those that know it properly are, in fact, correct while those who don’t are simply wrong. While within the current confines of the grammatical and phonological structure that would be true, the extending colloquial and lexical realms might say otherwise. And who are the originators of the language to say theirs is still the “correct” way once they put it in the hands of others? For example, in regards to the French, their issue doesn’t necessarily lie within France’s borders but rather outside of them. Only 65 million out of the 200 million French language-speakers actually live in France while the rest reside in Canada, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, neighboring European nations, and Africa. In fact, roughly half of those that speak French live in African countries such as Benin, Cameroon, and Togo (my favorite name for a country by far, by the way). After all, there’s even an African country whose name is French: Côte d’Ivoire.
Ignoring the total irony that it was through colonization that it was France that brought their language to these far-off lands, the French are now claiming that their version of fraçais is the absolute manner of speaking it, and are therefore discounting everyone from Algeria to Quebec to Vanuatu. Sarkozy even stated, “Defending our language, defending the values it represents – that is a battle for cultural diversity in the world,” arguing that the other influences seeping into French from across the globe must be dealt with, otherwise the sanctity will be forever tarnished. Yet, I have to imagine that even within France itself, there are variations of the vernacular and idiomatic expressions – I would bet it’s noticeable in Paris alone. Language is reflective of the culture, so to say that someone in Mali or Haiti is less legitimate in his or her understanding of the language than a Parisian is an unfair testament. While the foundations of the language may be shared, their varying experiences as cultures, as well as their geographical positioning, over the past several centuries, or even millennia, have lent to these adaptations that should celebrate this diversity, rather than “defend” and “battle” it.
After a semester of finally taking Italian, I was excited to watch a film in the language with my new breadth of knowledge. Netflix kindly brought me Gomorrah, an Oscar-nominated movie from just a couple of years ago. I popped it into my DVD player, eager to ignore the subtitles and just plunge straight into the language. Sadly, I was immediately lost – I even rewound it several times to match the words that I knew I was familiar with in the subtitles to match with what they were saying, but to no avail could I figure it out. I admitted defeat and read along for the next hour and a half, barely recognizing even the simple terms here and there.
Did I just not know the language? I don’t think so, since I felt I had a pretty strong, albeit basic, grasp. As I so often do, I did some research. I discovered that, since the movie dealt with organized crime in Naples, the characters spoke in the dialect of the region: Neapolitan. I then found that there are Tuscan, Venetian, Corsican, Sicilian, and many other dialects as well. It had not crossed my mind that in a country (whose area compares to Arizona, which itself balances amongst different languages) that has a history of being several independent kingdoms that were united no less than one hundred and fifty years ago, that there would be assorted localisms within its political boundaries and just assumed that taking “Italian” would be all encompassing. While some may seem the same to the untrained ear, apparently others, such as Neapolitan, are distinctly different that communication with compatrioti, or fellow countrymen, from other regions of their shared nation becomes difficult.
Frankly, I think that’s kind of cool. Even within the United States, we have similar rhetorical and syntactic situations. “Pop” and “soda”, “hotdish” and “casserole”, and “supper” and “dinner” are differences that I encounter daily in Minnesota and here at home, respectively. As influences begin to immerse themselves into a culture, one can only expect that the language will evolve - in recent decades, the isolated Basque language has begun to adopt vocabulary from its Spanish neighbors. As this evolution takes place, it becomes unique to a certain locale or society and reaches the point where it becomes an identifying trademark of a specific area. You never mistake a Southern drawl, a Boston blue-collar accent, or the tubular inflections of a Valley girl with their associations nor, to a certain degree, should you. There’s a fine line between judging and being familiar with a certain aspect of a person’s character, and as long as you can differentiate between the two and respect that it doesn’t necessarily define the individual, you can also appreciate someone’s heritage and the manner of speaking that goes along with it.
Language represents culture. That’s why Latin is a dead language, because no one speaks it anymore. That’s why the infamous, French-speaking King Leopold II of Belgium was so reviled by the Flemish population in his country for never having bothered to learn their language. Likewise, it’s why his enforcement of French in the Congo dehumanized the indigenous population as he suppressed their tribal tongues and, ultimately, led to the loss of their cultural identity. It’s why my roommates in Spain immediately recognized that I had some kind of Latin American background based on my diction. It’s why a jagged New York accent can be intimidating and pushy while someone’s from Nebraska seems cozily inviting. It’s why ESPN hires a bunch of English and Irish commentators for their soccer coverage during the World Cup, because it just doesn’t seem fitting coming from Americans who do not typically appreciate the sport.
While I hope whoever our English equivalent is to the International Organization doesn’t given in to the protestors’ pleas, if that is truly what the people want then who am I to sit in my ivory tower and tell them they are wrong. I have a friend who is an English major who told me that she believes that adverbs will disappear from our grammatical structure in the coming decades, but if that’s how a majority of the population speaks nowadays then there is little point to mandate rules that nobody follows. I wud hate to c it happen - it wouldnt b gr8, it wouldnt b gud, but if thats wat da ppl want 2 do and reflex who we r as a sosiittee, then thats how it gos.
P.S. I couldn’t quite figure out how to work this last bit into the flow of languages evolving part, but since I did the research, I’m just going to share this paragraph with you anyways:
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