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English. Just Plain English. |
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Contributed by Michael Brainstorm
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Friday, 09 September 2005 (read 1703 times) |
Not too long ago, I was shopping with my wife at an outlet mall. Now
normally I wouldn’t have done this because I hate shopping, but I
didn’t have much choice in the matter so I tried to make the best of
it. Which is to say that I tried really hard to pay attention to
everything that was shown to me and not get bored.
As we went into a shoe store, my wife made a perceptive comment
to me. To be honest, I was very proud of her because not only did
she say this, it was also a good idea for an article and
I always love it when I don’t have to come up with an original
idea.
We were in the slip-on shoe area and there were a lot of Indian-styled
slippers, from India,
not Native American. My wife said, “Look at how we cater to
their culture.” And I came out of my trance, looked around, and
sure enough, there were loads of boxes with at least 20 different
styles of Indian slippers.
I have to admit I was a bit surprised considering I was in a store in
Wisconsin. I honestly didn't think we had that much of an
Indian
population. Of course, just because I don't realize it doesn’t
mean Wisconsin doesn’t have a large Indian community. Obviously
it's large enough to warrant all these slippers.
Anyway this got me thinking, and I realized (not for the first time,
mind you) that I have noticed a definite shift away from things that I
would consider “distinctly American”. For instance, in the
town where I live, there continues to be an increasing amount of
Hispanic people who are moving into the area. This in and of itself doesn't bother me, but they aren't bothering to learn English. In
fact, they’re not even bothering to advertise or put up signage in
English: it’s all being done in Spanish.
This is the part that bothers me. We live in the United States of
America. And we speak English – you know, American
English (as opposed to English English). I expect (and I don’t
think it’s a lot to ask either) to be able to walk into any shop in
America, and be able to converse with the shop keeper in English.
I don’t care if it’s bad English,
I don’t expect everyone to be
fluent, but I do expect some small grasp of the language. If the
shopkeeper wants to speak his native tongue to his employee or anyone
else,
I don’t care. I just want to be able to speak and be spoken to in
English.
Of course I will probably be dead a long time before any politician
thinks of introducing legislation to make American English the national
language. Usually politicians won’t do anything that doesn’t get
them elected, or keep them in office, and trust me this sounds like
the kind of thing that our pansy-ass, hyper-sensitive, politically
correct, unintelligent society would find horrifying.
So, there it is boys and girls. And for your homework, noodle over this
for awhile: What would it be like if we had a national language that
every one was expected to know and understand in order to be licensed
to sell anything, drive a car, sell bait, any of those business that
need a license to be legal.
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Monkey Pile 
