We All Need English
Sat., May 8, 10:36 AM
You are a GRAMMAR GODDESS!
If your mission in life is not already to preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!
How grammatically sound are you?
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Well, of course! But let me expound...
We All Need English
After trashing good old arithmetic recently, I suppose I should say something about learning English. And why we all need a familiarity with it.
The United States is a country where one can hear many different languages. If you have been fortunate enough to grow up speaking a language other than English, you should be proud of it. And certainly, we should provide translations for those whose English is inadequate. Nevertheless, we all need to be comfortable in English.
Whether you like it or not, English is the business language of the world, as Latin was the international language a few hundred years ago. When an Italian does business with a Japanese, they speak English. An Israeli lecturing in Mexico speaks English. And because this is the way of the world, you are doing your children a disservice if you don’t insist that they learn to speak and write English.
I once worked with a black man who insisted that his son speak formal English at home, no matter what they spoke in the street. He knew the boy would be ignored in whatever profession he chose unless he could speak good English. My dad, who spoke only Yiddish until he started school, brought us up speaking only English, so that we wouldn’t encounter the problems (or embarrassment) he had.
In Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein wrote “…the largest of the human tongues made it inevitable that English would become the lingua franca of this planet…despite its barbaric accretions – or because of them.” And he didn’t even know about the internet! But the versatility of English, its ability to coin and to use new words when needed – that’s something you don’t readily find in other languages. You certainly don’t have to write in formal English all the time, but I think you have to know the rules before you can break them. My English skills were crucial when I worked for editors. But they became my most valuable asset when I worked for people from other countries. And that was about the most enjoyable work I ever did. I’m still pretty much of a stickler for good English usage, even in a law office. Boss Lawyer asks me to write letters and doesn’t seem to mind when I slip out of Lawyerspeak and into English.
It was years after I had left school before anyone ever explained to me why Shakespeare was so unusual. We read what he wrote – perfectly good, “ordinary” words – and never realize that they didn’t exist until Shakespeare made them up! Furthermore, immigrants brought expressions from their native tongues into the American English they learned; English absorbs them all.
Of course, the best way to learn English is to speak it, to hear it, to read it. The best teachers we know make the students want to do just that. But they’re hindered if their pupils are starting at kindergarten age. We once thought it was second nature to talk to a baby, but somehow there seems to be a problem.
I hear radio spots urging parents to talk to the baby; I don’t understand that. But then, that’s one of my quirks. No baby talk. No pointing instead of asking. You could ask any speech therapist who screened my kids. No problem talking – just a lot of difficulty trying to shut them up!
