From time to time I am inspired to revisit my body of published work, or just ideas I had a while back but never completed. Sometimes I find stuff that is at least somewhat relevant to current events. The essay below was originally written in 2012. Things have actually gotten worse. Jack-booted thugs with official cover will assault and potentially kill you for either actually not speaking "English" or even just looking like you might not speak English.
We are definitely going in the wrong direction.
English dammit!!
It all started with me on one of my standard rants. I was bitching (online) about the degradation of the meanings of words by large-scale misuse. Specifically I was complaining of the misuse of the word "decimation". Literally, it means to destroy one tenth or, ten percent. Most of the time that I hear it, it is being used interchangeably with "devastation". Of course I, and those on my side, argued that words have to mean something or they are useless. The other team argued that ours is a living language and the common usage of the word was the primary determinant in it's correctness or definition. While I can understand their point, I was/am not convinced.
I've always loved words. I was one of the nerdy kids that would read the dictionary for fun. My little brother and I used to delight in making long, serious-sounding statements that were complete gibberish but that used lots of big, obscure words. We had to know the correct usage of the words so that we could be sure we were making no sense at all. (To this day, he still writes/speaks gibberish. He's a lawyer.) That fascination with words, and the concurrent high level of specificity in speech, resulted in many folks assuming I had more formal education than I actually have. (Or maybe it was the lack of specificity in the speech of others that was the driver.) Overall I would have to say that my early fascination with words has served me well even if it has made me a bit inflexible.
Don't get me wrong, I'm down with the whole living language thing. I would posit that no semi-serious student of words could be elsewise. I simply do not consider ignorance of the actual definition of a word as reasonable impetus for growth in my language. In looking at a dictionary, I have always been fascinated by the origins of the words I use (I don't always remember the origins or etymology but, I'm interested right then.). It is fairly amazing how many commonly used words are either derived from or stolen outright from languages that do not resemble American English in the least. French, Greek, Latin, indigenous-American languages, Yiddish, and even Russian are all common contributors of words to our vocabularies. Those words represent, in my not so humble opinion, reasonable growth in our language. Technology is another significant and rational inducer of linguistic growth. If you've ever logged on to the internet using wifi to google something on your laptop or PDA, you know what technology brings to the table. Slang, which seems to involve a lot of using old words in completely new ways, is another growth contributor that I can live with even if sometimes, it irritates the hell out of me.
Of course, this whole discussion is probably completely superfluous. I recently heard yet another radio-enabled right-winger calling for people to speak English if they are going to live in this nation. Given the righteous indignation with which he delivered his call to linguistic arms, I can only assume that he was really, REALLY serious. I can only assume that he wants to wipe out all the completely foreign words in our language. He must surely have no tolerance for words which did not exist when this nation was formed. English and sneezes would surely be codified into law as the only things that could issue forth from a mouth. I'll just bet that a lot of you hicks and rednecks are in trouble as well because grammar is an important part of the language. End your sentence with an "at" and that guy wants to cut your tongue out (to be fair, so do I. That is really irritating). Misuse further and farther and you will be deported to whichever nation of inferior idiots that will accept your linguistically heretical ass. It will be great for teachers. They will finally know what the language will look like in a hundred years, just like it did a hundred years ago minus all those foreign words, and be able to teach it authoritatively.
Or I suppose that the speechifying republican could have been displaying a bit of self disdain instigated by his lack of facility with foreign language. In any case, all of the calls for a law mandating English as the official language and requiring that business be transacted in that language have a couple or three major flaws that would make any lawyer challenging the law giddy in anticipation of a sure win. In this country, the majority of us speak a decreasingly regionalized version of American. That language is similar to English however, no native English speaker would ever confuse the two. There is no accepted definition of English except perhaps the Oxford English Dictionary in conjunction with The McGraw-Hill Handbook of English Grammar and Usage. And of course, no true conservative wants to fund the government agency that would be tasked with enforcing the law and adjudicating such arguments of usage as are sure to arise.
The correct use of words and grammar would have to be a basic tenet of any movement to have an official language declared. My early appreciation for words has not, to my observation, become more common among the youth of today (or the adults for that matter). I have heard those calling for others to "speak English" mangling the language horribly even as they issue their call. I have heard teachers get the usage wrong. Until you can fix those little problems, until every good Amur'kan actually knows and has an appreciation for their allegedly naturally spoken language, it makes no sense to waste breath trying to force anyone else to do that which we apparently abhor.
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