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Oct. 31, 2004 Americans, including myself, tend to use slang instead of proper English. In college my English professor would put a red line through the phrase “a lot of.” You see, a “lot” is a piece of ground. We say things like “aint it true.” Instead of saying “isn’t it true.” We really botch the language. In fact, we have assimilated so much slang into our culture that it’s perfectly acceptable. After all, we need only put it in the dictionary and it is suddenly okay. I’m not a stickler for the proper use of our language. I’m from Indiana and Hoosiers certainly have some quirky ways of speaking. I had a literature professor that told our class that we Americans not only butchered our language, but other countries sometimes had a better command of our language than we did; he was a Palestinian. That’s cool. It’s our language and we can do with it as we wish, but I love our language even if it is a little stiff and at times unconventional. However, I have a problem with our nation’s leaders, educators, and professionals believing that folks really don’t have to learn our language in order to live here. Well, technically I guess it’s not a requirement, but my forefathers and my wife’s forefathers had to learn English if they were going to live here. Actually, my forefathers were Irish, but they still had to drop their dialect to be understood. My wife’s family tree leans toward the Italians. They felt it necessary to learn our language in order to understand the culture they were joining. I think it was part of the glue that kept our country united. We were a melting pot of ethnicity but we could all speak English.
As a kid I remember going to the grocery
store and hearing older folks speaking English,
but it was covered with thick German drawl or a
thick Italian drawl. Yet they could be
understood. During those days Americans didn’t
create translate schoolbooks into German,
Italian, French, or Polish. The Germans,
Italians, French, and Polish learned to
understand the schoolbooks. The opposite seems
true today. We are bending to the will of
immigrants. Seems to me that we are bending
more to the will of immigrants than we are to
the needs of our own. For example is every
business in America accessible to the
handicapped? Or, does the Braille writing on
drive-through ATM machines make up for that? I
say if you’re coming to America learn to speak
our less-than-perfect language.
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