Arthur E. Rowse - Amglish In, Like, Ten Easy Lessons: A Celebration of the New World Lingo

Preface

When I was growing up in Lexington, Massachusetts, in the 1920s, we had no language arts in my public grade school. We had separate classes in English grammar, spelling, and penmanship run by no-nonsense teachers. Despite having much difficulty twisting my wrist into the prescribed position for perfect penmanship in the Palmer style, I learned to love the language even with its many idiosyncrasies.

I liked to read books about boys going on great adventures and playing tricks on people. They made me want to write for fun or money. But since there were not many such paying jobs for ten-year-olds, I created my own job by starting a weekly neighborhood newspaper. I got the idea when my father gave me a cast-off Remington typewriter after I had spent a day helping him at his office.

My first brush with censorship came early when I put a snide dinner-table quip from my father into print. He had said a neighbors new baby girl had been named Hope because the parents were hoping for a boy. My father made me run a crayon through the disputed sentence. I made sure the words remained visible. (The rebellious quality comes from living in the birthplace of American liberty.)

My first bout with a stilted language came on graduation day after six grades at Hancock School when I was awarded a prize for scholastic excellence. I was hoping for something useful such as a chocolate cake, certainly not a copy of Master Skylark, a Story of Shakespeares Time , published in 1897.

When I opened the book later and read the first page of flowery British prose by author John Bennett about punts... poling slowly on the Avon and April sunlight dancing on the brazen horns and the silver bellies of the kettledrums, I put the book down for good. It was not my kind of English.

After four years as editor and publisher of the Naborhood News , I retired because of issuestodays in-word for such complications as schoolworkthat led to an editorial in the town weekly titled Why Editors Quit. I eventually fell into some higher education, World War II duty in North Africa and Italy, the authorship of a few books, and a string of editing and writing jobs mostly at Boston and Washington newspapers, where some knowledge of formal English was still required.

It wasnt until much later in life that I realized why my neighbors and relatives were willing to pay two pennies to read the Naborhood News . I concluded that it was not for the news, which was little more than a reflection of family dinner conversations. It was to laugh at all my malapropisms and mistakes in grammar and spelling. I remember one headline, bum bites gas man , referring to a neighborhood dog.

By the time my own kids went to public school in Washington, D.C., in the 1960s, language arts were beginning to supplant the much-despised classes in grammar, spelling, and penmanship in some schools, though not yet in our neighborhood school. In fact, unknown to me at the time, the main English teachers association of the country officially condemned separate classes in grammar in 1963, the all-time peak year for verbal SAT scores. I suspect that not many parents knew that grammar had become a dirty word.

In the next few decades, I became increasingly shocked at the failure of many Americansat all levels of societyto absorb the basic fundamentals of their native language. My shock turned into disdain, especially for well-educated people who apparently didnt know the difference between lay and lie , that and which , and other fine points of proper English such as differentiating between subjective pronouns and objective ones.

But I had a linguistic epiphany after George W. Bush became president in 2000. Here was a budding world leader, a man of great privilege enhanced by education at prestigious schools, who appeared woefully unable to mouth a simple sentence without violating at least four or five basic precepts of English. At first, I marveled at how blas Americans were about choosing a leader with such a gross deficiency in his mother tongue.

I joined millions of other people around the world snickering at the way the nations most prominent bushwhacker shredded the language in such funny ways. It was during one of those laugh-ins I finally realized, languagewise, here was a politician who did not speak much differently from other Americans, including at times my friends, associates, and myself.

It also began to strike me that nobody can be a perfect master of English. Indeed, it is an impossibility because of the languages many mysteries and defects. We all make errors when using our native language, regardless of our education.

I began to realize that language errors have become an integral part of the current linguistic upheaval. Even more interesting are the many efforts to be original. New words and phrases are bubbling up at a furious pace, either by accident or design. And those who are not innovators help the process by passing along anything interesting that they encounter. The whole exercise is either a delight or a continuing disaster, depending on your point of view.

I chose the positive approach and became taken in by the charms of informal English, especially the neologisms, the grammatical variations, the innovative texting, the flood of acronyms, the smiley faces, and the disappearance of capital letters and punctuation. I also realized that there is nothing anyone can do to stop language from constantly changing.

The growing informality of American English mirrors what is happening to society itself. Just as most people are now choosing casual clothing, they are also becoming informal with language. It has become the in-way to bond with friends and associates while keeping pace with the latest trends.

I began to catch some of George Ws joviality with language and to recognize the camaraderie and, yes, even excitement that goes with using language in new, more interesting, more enjoyable, more imaginative ways.

I also realized that it was no longer teachers and lexicographers who were shaping language. It was the great masses of ordinary people, especially young musicians, humorists, writers, and general dissidents who were leading the way. The process is a constant, natural churning that no language police or remedial teachers can alter.