09-02-1996
I take my hat off to all those who have donated their time and energy in the valiant effort to preserve our mother tongue. There is hardly a major American city today that is free from the assault on our native language. The federal government spends millions of our hard-earned tax dollars to print books and documents and post signs in a myriad of foreign tongues, all intended to aid and abet foreign-born newcomers in an attempt to dodge their linguistic responsibilities. You can walk into, if you dare, many neighborhoods in our cities and go for blocks on end without hearing a syllable of even broken English. It is our duty as responsible of this society and parents to speak out to rectify this problem. With these recent legislative proposals, we finally have a means of tearing down our Tower of Babel and instead erecting a Fortress English where no one will ever mispronounce the name of our fair land.
I have a few suggestions to improve the present linguistic morass. For starters, why don’t we establish our own English Language Academy similar to one the French have to defend the integrity of their own Gallic language. We could appoint wordsmiths like William Safire as our first line of defense against foreign invasion of our speech and writing.
One of the duty s of this academy would be the total elimination of alien words and phrases. Terminology from abroad peppers our everyday vocabulary, our arts, our business, our science, law, and politics. And while these foreign “tourists” may spice up a sentence, they crowd out native-born terms, leaving them in a heap of disuse. For example, some people use “adios” when a simple native “goodbye” would easily suffice. Phrases such as mano-a-mano, and gesundheit should drop off the chart of usage. Why do we say “chic” when “stylish” will do just fine. French and other foreign languages give us nothing but trouble. We probably never would have had marriage infidelity if some perverted francophile had not introduced the ménage-à-trois. America’s favorite sidedish French fries does not sound very native. One should be ordering American fries, and that’s that.
There are a whole host of other words and phrases that foreign-loving elitists have foisted on us: deus ex machina (only wimpy gods need stage props), kindergarten, ennui, and Hagen Daz (though I would like to keep their French silk flavor). Just think all the pain and toil we’ll save for true American kids who have been forced all these years to memorize these foreign terms. Oh yes, and what about those Latin words. They spell nothing but trouble. I’d like to have a buck for every Latin term dropped into the language by crafty lawyers or charlatan doctors just to keep us in the dark about their machinations. No more sine qua non, no more compos mentis, and thank goodness no more argumentum ad hominem. Pro bone (though I do like Cher), outta here. Actually, you couldn’t get me to take a worthless buck, what with all that foreign writing on the other side … e pluribus unum sure sounds socialist to me.
And even the English language has got its own identity crisis. We should be careful about letting in phrases from fringe cultures. Do they really think they speak English in Nigeria, or India, or Australia? I hear good’ay mate and I say, what? And all that ghetto talk. It started with jazz, then soul, then all those exploitation films, now it’s rap, and who knows what else.
© 1996, Kenneth Koziol. All rights reserved.
