grammar

So English is officially our official language and I think it’s a GREAT idea. In fact, I think it’s so great; all red-blooded American citizens who’ve been in this country for several generations should step up and do their part to actually learn their language. As I see it, there are two issues with English as our official language—one is based in our past; the other is based in our future.

I’m from Mi’waukee (if you’re a native you never pronounce the “l.”) Truth: I’ve asked someone to “come by me once” and my mother asked me to “reach me down the diapers from the top shelf, once.”

When I followed my husband “up nort” I learned an affirmative was “oh, yaaaaah” and punctuated by “fer da crie!” I got used to it when we stopped at a friend’s house for “one, two, tree beeres” but was confused when she ended every sentence with “an’ so?” Until someone told me she was saying “and so” I thought she had recently lived in Germany.

Now add the Dutch, Norwegian, Belgian, and Polish into the mix and the mother tongue becomes even more muddied. And I wonder how it will affect the future.

Our new lingo is fueled by speed and designed for iPads and cell phone keypads. And it’s trickling into tweets, texts, Vimeo and more.

Be becomes B, why becomes Y, see turns into C, okay is K, and two, to and too are all 2. Is it enough that most people interchange your and you’re but in our new shorthand ur is the rule?

We’ve moved from a world where we read the printed word to a world where we listen to it. And we don’t make much time to do either. In business, we ask WIIFM and request to have items EOD before TGIF.

So if you combine the new cyberslang with our Wisconsin dialect, do you get statements like: “CUL8R for beers, once?”

The English language is richly beautiful because it borrows and changes words from different cultures, new immigrants and emerging trends. It will continue to evolve. But we have to remember that you can’t learn to improvise until you first learn the melody, so learn English as a national language for everyone, not just new citizens.

G2G. K?

If you’re interested, find me at mkathrynschmidt@gmail.com.