Re: "Nu-CU-lar Man"

["Scott Schrade" <schrade@akrobiz.com>]

> If you find time please read Bill Bryson's  book "Mother Tongue" which 
> is quite an amusing and intelligent book on the subject.

Thanks for the recommendation.  And I recommend to you H.L. Mencken's 
"The American Language."

> > > & many imposed "rules" are only attempts to make the masses speak in 
> > > manner conforming to something called "Standard English," which in 
> > > reality does not exist.
> 
> I'm afraid it does, in its pure form. 

Mencken's book recounts dozens of attempts by both English & American
intellectuals who tried to aggresively impose what they believed to be the cor-
rect rules of their respective languages.  The lucky ones had some of these rules
survive while most were ignored by the masses.

My point is that language, English & American English, is too varied for there 
to exist one dialect which can be called "standard."  Even more absurd is the 
thought that one should strive to emulate that dialect in order to attain some
sort of perceived perfection in speaking & writing.

> English is such a difficult language - but one capable of great beauty - that it 
> needs grammatical rules to maintain itself.

But these "rules" continue to die, modify themselves, or see new ones created
generation after generation.  Herbert Agar in the New Statesman said in 1931:

    The English should try to cope with their philological ignorance.
    They should train themselves to realize that it is neither absurd nor
    vulgar that a language which was once the same should in the 
    course of centuries develop differently in different parts of the 
    world.  If such were not the case, we should all still be speaking
    a sort of Ur-Sanskrit.

    At any rate, when the Englishman can learn to think of American
    as a language, and not merely as a ludicrously unsuccessful at-
    tempt to speak as he himself speaks....then there will come a great
    improvement in Anglo-American relations.

> No one in the UK is forced to speak "standard English" anymore; in fact,
> grammatically correct English is more and more difficult to find being
> spoken, as what is known here as "Estuary English", which is a peculiar
> combination of the London and Essex county accent, combined with glottal
> stop failures, slang and abbreviations endemic in Australian soap operas
> is more and more the accent and language commonly used.

Are the people who speak with this accent acknowledged by the Queen as
purveyors of the current "Standard?"  Perhaps some sort of proclamation in
the post?  And God forbid, what would happen to one of these purveyors if
he or she broke a "rule?"

> > > The "learned" English have long complained about the "crudeness" of
> > > American English.  
> 
> Quite right. When you bastardise a beautiful language the way you do -

Bastardise?  Sir, we Americans *colorized* your language -  much for the
better, of that there can be no doubt.  One of your own, an English journal-
ist named Frank Dilnot, speaking about the many colorful & descriptive add-
itions American English was supplying to the language wrote in The New 
America in 1919:

    Show me the alert Englishmen who will not find a stimulation in
    those nuggety word-groupings which are the commonplace in
    good American conversation.  They are like flashes of crystal.
    They come from all kinds of people - who are brilliantly innocent
    of enriching the language....The American tongue, written or spok-
    en with its alteration from the English of England, is a potent and
    penetrating instrument, rich in new vibrations, full of joy as well
    as shocks for the unsuspecting visitor.

> Ummm, have a look at Mother Tongue to see just how much of "English
> English" you have retained and adopted....... sauce for the goose....

And don't you shy away from Mencken's "The American Language" for
*our* side of the story.

> Unfortunately, I'd agree with you in terms of management psychobabble
> and general pyschobabble, but really, when you invented Valley English
> did you really make a significant contribution to the language?

One could ask the same of your Cockney!


Your friend from across the pond,

- SCHRADE in Akron