Memo from the PC police: "African-American" now offensive

You can't make this stuff up. Not the Bee reports that super-woke Brandeis University has updated its widely mocked list of "violent" and "identity-based" terminology ahead of the start of its fall semester.

Added to the compendium of politically incorrect words and phrases that must not be uttered on the Brandeis campus is the term "African-American".

What's wrong with that? Here's what the Brandeis PC police say: "For Black folks born in the United States, hyphenating their identity can be interpreted as othering. Some folks do prefer to use African-American, particularly in connection to their ancestral roots, while others may identify with other ethnicities. We recommend using Black as a default, but being open to adjusting if asked to."

Walt would like to know: What's "othering"? Does it mean identifying someone as different, when they (more or less) obviously are different? Is it a form of bullying? "Hey, you! You're not 'same'! You must be 'other'!" I guess that can cut in any direction. I would expect to be "othered" if I strolled through the South Side of Lori Lightfoot's Chicago. I don't know if it would happen at Brandeis. Maybe I just won't go there!

Calgary school principal in hot water for using N-word in discussion with... errr... black students

Apparently the word "nigger", which has been systematically erased not just from the meeja but from our memories, is not totally proscribed after all. Seems it depends who uses it.

A school principal in Calgary -- Canada's ghost-town version of Dallas -- found that out the hard way, having been denounced as a racist etc etc for daring to ask a group of black students why they use the N-word when talking to each other, but get in a frizzy [tizzy? Ed.] if it's used by a person of non-colour.

The meeting between Lianne Anderson, Principal of Saint Michael's Catholic School, and the students was secretly recorded by one of the students. A small portion of it was "shared" with other students and posted online. The students have been suspended for contravening the Calgary Catholic School District code of conduct policy that prohibits recording without consent.

According to CTV News, Ms Anderson can be heard saying, "So how come it's okay for you to say the word 'nigger' in a conversation directed at a group of students of colour?" 

A spokesthingy for the school board said Ms Anderson's comments were made in an attempt to have a "teaching moment" with the schoolchildren about diversity, and the comment was taken out of context.

In the ritual apology and Statement of Wokeness, the spokesperson added, "We have a zero tolerance policy for any racial or discriminatory actions or words that is not tolerated by staff or students." [Eh? Not an English major, I guess. Ed.]  Ms Anderson has been directed to issue her own personal apology and wash her mouth out with soap, but no further disciplinary action will be taken. 

But what about Ms Anderson's question? Why is it OK for black people to call each other "nigger" or (as in Pulp Fiction) "nigga"? Leaders with the Black Lives Matter YYC say the word is harmful only if spoken by the "oppressors". Said Adora Nowfor, who CTV calls the "president of the local iterationof the global movement", "It is never a privileged person’s place to educate or police an oppressed person in their own oppression." Understand, now?

I think we persons of non-colour really should make a greater effort to understand the differences between the way we talk and the way people of colour talk. Here is a guide which I hope you will find helpful. 

And now for something completely Irish...

Myles na gCopaleen was the nom de plume of Flann O'Brien, a columnist for the Irish Times before and during World War II. That's a bit like saying that Walter Cronkite was a reporter for CBS News. Many Irishmen [and Irishwomen! Ed.] bought the paper for no other reason than to see whose ox was the latest to be gored by Mr O'Brien's alter ego.

Myles na gCopaleen sometimes wrote in Irish, at a time when doing so was neither popular nor profitable. He held that the Irish language had far more colour and richness than the language imposed on the Emerald Isle by the English occupiers. He supported with a heart-and-a-half the movement to revive the language. Here is an excerpt from the section of The Best of Myles entitled "Irish and Related Matters".

Irish...provides through its literature and dialects a great field for the pursuit of problems philological, historical and ethnological, an activity agreeable to all men of education and good-will. Moreover, the language itself is ingratiating by reason of its remotesness from European tongues and moulds of thought, its precision, elegance and capacity for the subtler literary nuances...

True Irish prose has a steely latinistic line that does not exist in the fragmented English patois. Here is a literal translation of a letter addressed by Hugh O'Neill to a hostile captain:-

'Our blessing to ye, O Mac Coghlin: we received your letter and what we understand from her is that what you are at the doing of is but sweetness of word and spinning out of time. For our part of the subject, whatever peson is not with us and will not wear himself out in the interest of justice, that person we understand to be a person against us. For that reason, in each place in which ye do your own good, pray do also our ill to the fullest extent ye can and we will do your ill to the absolute utmost of our ability, with God's will. We being at Knockdoney Hill, 6 februarii, 1600.'

That seems to me to be an exceptional achievement in the sphere of written nastiness and the original exudes the charm attaching to all instances of complete precision in the use of words....

It is...dangerous to discourage the use of Irish because the revival movement...is a valuable preservative of certain native virtues and it is worth remembering that if Irish were to die completely, the standard of English here, both in the spoken and written word, would sink to a level probably as low as that obtaining in England, and it would stop there only because it could go no lower.

Further reading: "Clichés for the age of the coronavirus" (click on the sidebar at right), and "Two Irishmen discuss the coming election", WWW 29/7/20.

10 Canadianisms that baffle Merkans and other non-English speakers

Back in September, we did a piece on Canadian English -- "Puck off, eh, hoser!" -- which a number of readers found both helpful and entertaining. In the spirit of enlightenment for which WWW is famous, we return to that theme. This is a service to those Floridians (and other Americans) about to be visited by Canucks, or folks from south of the border planning a trek into the Great Not-so-white North.

Walt is inspired and informed by "55 Canadianisms You May Not Know or Are Using Differently", an article written by Jules Sherred for the GeekMom website. Talking to Americans, Ms Sherred found them often "baffled" over what she calls her "Canadian English".

So she did a survey of 175 people from the USA, Canada, and other Commonwealth countries to find out how familiar they were with certain terms heard commonly in Canada, but not so commonly elsewhere. She came up with a list of 55 Canadianisms. Poor Len has contributed explanations and comments on ten of them. We begin with...

Yes, Michelle, it's a tuque, and a nice one too, bearing the logo of the most successful professional sports team of all time...anywhere! Americans might call this a wool hat, or a ski cap, or a knitted cap. People in Britain or Australia haven't a clue. For more on the tuque (or toque or touque) see "Hey hosers - what do you call that cap on your head?", from CBCNews.

You can bet that 1000s of people in Toronto are wearing tuques this week, even in the house. That's because they are without hydro. (And it's not Rob Ford's fault!) "Hydro" is short for hydro-electric power. In many Canadian provinces, hydro is the chief source of light and heat. And many providers of "electricity" (as it's called elsewhere) use the word "hydro" in their names: Manitoba Hydro, Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro, and BC Hydro. In Ontario, the main provider is called Hydro None.

Homo milk -- milk from transgendered cows marketed to members of the LGBT community. OK, just kidding. The term is actually short for "homogenized milk" -- milk with 3.25% butterfat. Calling homo milk "homogenized milk" isn't strictly accurate, since most of the milk sold in supermarkets and elsewhere is homogenized, regardless of its fat content.

Those who prefer beverages stronger than milk should learn about mickeys, two-fours and twenty-sixers. In the USA, a "mickey" might be a short form for "Mickey Finn", a drink laced with chloral hydrate or some other stupefying agent. [How old are you? That term was last used 90 years ago! Ed.] In Canada it refers to a 12-ounce bottle of liquor, sometimes curved to fit in one's back pocket -- a "hip flask".

A "two-four" is a case -- sometimes known as a "square" or a "flat" -- of 24 bottles (not cans) of beer. And we mean real Canadian beer, not the American stuff that's like a couple having sex in a canoe. A "twenty-sixer" is a 26-ounce bottle of liquor. The term is still used, even though the bottle actually contains only 24 ounces (or 750 ml), roughly the equivalent of an American "quart", which of course is what it's called in the US of A.

Hey... what do you call that thing along the edge of your roof, where the ice is building up on top of the leaves you didn't clean out in the fall? Americans and people living in Commonwealth countries generally refer to is as a "gutter". Canadians call it an "eavestrough", and Ms Sherred says the term is virtually unknown in any other country.

What do you put in your coffee or tea [Wozzat? Ed.] if you don't have (or are allergic to) milk or cream? Americans might use "creamer" or "non-dairy whitener", the same stuff Canadians call simply "whitener" -- any powder or liquid used to whiten coffee of tea [Wozzat? Ed.]

You could also stir it into your kid's pablum. Purists (and IP lawyers) would like that to be spelled with a capital P, as it is a trademarked name. But, I hear you ask, what is it? Pablum is a processed cereal for infants originally marketed by the Mead Johnson Company in 1931. It was developed by genuine hosers at Toronto's famous Hospital for Sick Children. Nowadays it's a Heinz product, in spite of which the word must be regarded as 100% Canadian!

Ms Sherred says the word really stumped non-Canucks, with suggested alternatives ranging from "infant cereal" and "Gerber" through "baby food" and -- in Commonwealth countries -- "rusk". [Wozzat? Ed.]

Finally -- and still on the subject of food -- we have "all-dressed", a phrase which can be applied to pizza, potato chips (not crisps!), hamburgers or hotdogs. Whatever you're having "all-dressed" comes with all the trimmings -- the works... everything... Ms Sherred says all-dressed chips are "as Canadian as poutine and maple syrup".

Footnote: Domino's and Boston Pizza, which sell takeout pizza on both sides of the World's Longest Lightly-defended Border, report that Americans, on average, ask for only one topping (other than tomato and cheese) on their pizzas. Canadians get three.

Another footnote: Mickey D's is now marketing poutine, but only in Canada. Walt finds this hard to understand, since a bowl of fries, cheese curd and gravy should be a terrific seller in the USA.

Puck off, eh, hoser!

Still (more or less) on the subject of the glories of the English language... In anticipation of a trip north of the World's Longest Undefended Border, Ed. has been trying to increase his vocabulary of Canadian English. His text is Casselman's Canadian Words, by (not surprisingly) Bill Casselman (1995, Copp Clark Ltd., Toronto).

I dipped into it while Ed. was on his break, and, in the chapter on "Sports", learned a new word. The word is "puck-off", which Casselman says "is not a lisped obscenity. Puck-off was the original and now obsolete term for a face-off in hockey, that high-adrenalin moment when the referee drops the puck into play. The name had to be changed because of frequent alteration of the first letter."

I'll bet 99% of you hosers didn't know that! For Americans and other non-speakers of Canajan English, Casselman explains "A hoser is the all-Canadian, beer-swilling, tuque-headed yokel, as popularized by Bob & Doug Mckenzie, TV characters created by SCTV stars Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas." Now you know.

Recommended reading: Canajan, Eh! and Speaking Canadian English, both by the late Mark Orkin, a cunning linguist if ever there was one. Walt has autographed copies of both.

Was Rachel Jeantel speaking "Black English" or "Ebonics" or what?

The first thing we must do is identify Rachel Jeantel for those who weren't following the Trayvon Martin controversy closely. Rachel is a BBW from the `hood, and was on the phone with Trayvon Martin at the time of the confrontation with George Zimmerman at the end of which Trayvon was dead. She was thus the prosecution's star witness at Mr. Zimmerman's trial.

If you search "Rachel Jeantel" on YouTube, you can find Ms. Jeantel's testimony in its entirety. But will you be able to understand what she's saying? Counsel for the defence made much of the fact that he was having difficulty doing so. His many requests for repetition or clarification of what she said were seen by some as an attempt to denigrate [No puns, please. Ed.] her intelligence/education/integrity.

In other words, the defence was accused of racism, of trying to discredit Ms. Jeantel and her testimony based on who she was and how she spoke. Among those hollering "racism" was John McWhorter, a professor of linguistics and editor of the ultra-liberal New Republic. Interviewed on "All In" by the very PC Chris Hayes, Prof. McWhorter asserted that Ms Jeantel was merely speaking "Black English", and very articulately too. If her answers weren't clear to the judge and the jury, it was because they were "crackers", the whole lot of them.

But is there such a thing as "Black English"? If so, is it a generally acceptable part of "the linguistic bounty that is America" (to quote Hayes)? Prof. McWhorter declined to debate the issue on Fox News, but Jehmu Green and Brian Benjamin, both persons of colour, had at it. Here's what they had to say.



Mr. Benjamin said there's no such thing as "Black English". Ms. Green adopted Jesse Jackson's characterization of the "language" as a "garbage dialect". Whatever "Black English" may be, she said, "it's not a language that's going to get you to graduate from high school, to go to college, to find a job, or to keep a job."

As you watch the video, you can't help but be impressed by both debaters' command of proper English. (I was tempted to write "the Queen's English", but hey, it's America.) They don't speak "Black English", at least not on TV.

Nor is "Black English" the mangled language misused by Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll in the old (and very politically incorrect) radio and TV sitcom, Amos 'n' Andy. Messrs. Gosden and Correll were white actors who wrote and spoke in the artificial "dialect" of the minstrel show tradition -- a caricature of the way American blacks really spoke, even back in the day.

Back in the 60s, "linguistics experts" like Prof. McWhorter coined another label for the "language" they now call "Black English". They called it "Ebonics", and defined it as African-American Vernacular English, "a distinctive lect of English spoken by many African-Americans". There's a book about it -- Ebonics, the True Language of Black Folks -- but that doesn't make it a language.

What is "Ebonics" then? The Urban Dictionary calls it "a poor excuse for a failure to grasp the basics of english [sic]. When in doubt, throw an "izzle" sound in the middle of any word of just string random thoughts together and insinuate that they actually mean something. When backed into a corner, you can always claim that it has something to do with a sort of symbolism or is a defining trait that makes your race great, versus own up to the fact that it is essentially laziness at it's [sic]finest.

Ms. Jeantel wasn't speaking "Ebonics", nor was she speaking "Black English". What Ms. Jeantel speaks is the idiom of the `hood, the language spoken by poor blacks -- and white and Latinos -- who grow up in certain parts of American cities. It is not the language used by the likes of Ms. Green and Mr. Benjamin, or Prof. McWhorter. It is that of folks who are poor and uneducated and happy to remain the latter if not the former. It doesn't mean they're bad folks or dumb folks, only that they are what they are -- members of a distinct and growing American underclass.

The apostrophe is... like... such a problem... y'know?

Apparently Walt and Richard Nordquist are not the only ones concerned about the decline in standards of written and spoken English. Comments on yesterday's post have come from:


Agent 2 - What a relief to know that the apostrophe catastrophe is grinding on someone else. I see it everyday but of course it is not on something that has spellcheck. Signs in stores, or flyers, "store hour's" and "two pizza's" plus the name "the Caruso's (when it is not possessive!)


I am not a daughter of an English teacher. I have trouble with dangling participles and when to use lay, lie, who and whom, however can usually avoid those in a conversation, but you can't avoid seeing an apostrophe and that really makes you look dumb!

Agent 17 - It won’t do any good as it has metastasized, but please attack the creeping misuse of “I am like”. I even hear it from TV talking heads.....aaaargh!

Unfortunately, William Safire has shuffled off this mortal coil, but his column "On Language" marches on in the New York Times. [Shouldn't there be commas after "column" and the close quote mark following "Language"? Ed.] Walt also recommends the collection of columns published under the same title in 1980 and reprinted umpteen times since.

And... this is for Ed.... the UK news and satire magazine Private Eye has for years ended the letters column in its print edition with a section now called "Pedants Corner". The previous title was "Pedant's Corner", but a pedant argued that, since there were many contributors, it should be called "Pedants' Corner", and... you get the point. Perhaps Ian Hislop and Richard Nordquist are related? We should be told!

If you love Elmo, crap your hands!

One of the things Walt misses about no longer living in China [Just in case any readers were wondering. Ed.] is the amusement of reading notices, signs and other documents written in Chingrish.

Chingrish, for those not familiar with the term, is a strange and hilarious amalgam of misspellings and mistranslations used by Chinese who believe that they can speak/write English. "Of cos I speak good Engrish! I got CET-4!"

One example that always made me smile was the little sign in the Renrenle supermarket showing shoppers where to find the "CHEWING GUN".

Perhaps the product was to be found just an aisle or two over from the "Rocking Elmo" pictured here. To be fair, though, I believe the admonition to "Crap Your Hands" is actually Japlish, first cousin to Chinglish.

The picture was posted on the ChairmanLOL website, which has hundreds of similar examples. Mind you, the Chinese and Japanese are not the only ones to mangle the language of Shakespeare and Churchill. Horrible examples of "Engrish" as she is spoken around the world -- including so-called English-speaking countries -- can be found at Engrish.com. Walt invites to read, laugh, and see if you can do any better!

Updates and miscellany

As I write, Flt Lt Ace McCool and his crew are winging their way eastward to Mali. They are flying the Royal Canadian Air Force's backup Globemaster, not the one that got stuck on the runway at CFB Trenton this morning. That's all ye know and all ye need to know about the capabilities of the Canadian Armed Forces.

Quick, what do you call the 600th anniversary of something? The 200th is a bicentennial. The 300th is a tricentennial. After that it all gets a little hazy. I hope a reader will enlighten me, though, because this year marks the 600th anniversary of a significant development in English Common Law. Read on.

How are you described in your will or on your title deed. In much of the UK, USA and Canada you are probably identified by your given and surnames, as well as your place of residence and your occupation. Like this: Walter Whiteman, of the City of Springfield and County of Nassau, Orthoepist.

We owe that very specific form of description to the Statute of Additions, enacted in England in 1413. [Yes, Kramer. It's "statute", not "statue". Ed.] Happy whatever-ennial.

In my review of Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue, I pointed out that the author speaks -- rather a lot, actually -- of two of the Anglo-Saxon words for the female genitalia. The more common of the two was, in Chaucer's day, relatively harmless, certainly not the C-bomb that it has become today. Speaking of C-bombs, though, Bryson tells us later in the same book that the corresponding word in Danish is "cock". Can any Danish-speaking reader verify this? Sounds like a cock-and-bull story to me.

"Mother Tongue": a great book about the world's greatest language

WARNING! "Dirty words"!
This book review contains two four-letter Anglo-Saxon monosyllables relating to a part of the female anatomy. If you're the kind of person who never looked up "dirty words" in the dictionary as a kid, read no further.

Someone who speaks several languages is multilingual.
Someone who speaks two languages is bilingual.
Someone who speaks only one language is English.

Indeed. English... or American. Most other countries seem to have accepted the altogether sensible concept that having a second (and third or fourth) language enriches a person, figuratively if not literally.

Not native English speakers. Those who are fortunate enough to have the language of Shakespeare as their mother tongue seem to subscribe to the belief of an American evangelical preacher who told his flock that "if English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!"

Many English speakers seem to think that if anyone's going to learn a new language, let it be the NON-English speakers. And the rest of the world seems to agree. In China alone, there are more people learning -- or attempting to learn -- English than there are English speakers in America. 99% of them will wind up speaking Chinglish, but at least they're trying.

I am fortunate to be a native speaker of English. I learned it at my mother's knee and other low joints. My mother was a teacher of the Queen's English, the queen being Victoria. From her -- my mother, not the queen -- I inherited a high regard for proper English usage. And from reading the work of good writers I developed admiration for clever and creative writing.

By "good writers" I mean the likes of Mark Twain, H.L. Mencken, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, P.J. O'Rourke, and the inimitable Bill Bryson. One thinks of Mr. Bryson as a travel writer; indeed, most of his better books have been about travel. (African Diary sucked, but that was a charitable project and I think Bryson didn't put a lot of time or effort into it.)

But Bryson has more strings to his bow than travel writing. He is quite the cunning linguist, with a keen interest in the English language. And he has written a fine book about it, called Mother Tongue (William Morrow 1990; Penguin 1991).

Mother Tongue is not a dull book of rules for English grammar and spelling. Although it does contain chapters on both topics, it is both fascinating and laugh-out-loud funny. It is filled with trivia about not just things (words) but people.

For instance, Bryson paints an unflattering portrait of Noah Webster, who appears to have been quite an unpleasant man.

He worked tirelessly turning out endless hectoring books and tracts, as well as working on the more or less constant revision of his spelling and dictionaries. In between time he wrote impassioned letters to congressmen, dabbled in politics, proffered unwanted advice to presidents, led his church choir, lectured to large audiences, helped found Amherst College, and produced a sanitized version of the Bible in which Onan doesn't spill his seed but simple 'frustrates his purpose', in which men don't have testicles but rather 'peculiar members', and in which women don't have wombs (or evidently anything else with which to contribute to the reproductive process).

Of course Bryson does talk about the marvellous English vocabulary, about the words... All of the words, including two words for the female pudenda. Readers of Chaucer, he tells us, will frequently encounter "cunt", one of the seven words George Carlin said you can't say on TV.

Brits will know, but Americans may not, that there is a slightly milder Anglo-Saxon monosyllabic synonym, "twat", which was used by such illustrious writers as the poet Robert Browning, in Pippa Passes.
Then, owls and bats,
Cowls and twats,
Monks and nuns, in a cloister's moods
Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry.

Although it had the same meaning in 1841 as it does now, Browning somehow thought "twat" meant a piece of headgear for nuns. Bryson writes:
The verse became a source of twittering amusement for generations of schoolboys and a perennial embarrassment to their elders, but the word was never altered and Browning was allowed to live out his life in wholesome ignorance because no one could think of a suitably delicate way of explaining the mistake to him.

Walt agrees entirely with Ruth Rendell, whose review in the Sunday Times calls Mother Tongue "anecdotal, full of revelations, and with not one dull paragraph". Lovers of the English language will love this book.

Footnote: George Carlin said there are no dirty words, only dirty thoughts.

The Missing Dollar (math/logic puzzles!)

Previous posts about Chief Theresa Spence -- the icon of the Idle No More "movement" -- have mentioned the damning auditor's report into mismanagement of the millions of dollars doled out by the Canadian government (read Canadian taxpayers) to her band council. Under the supervision of her boyfriend -- a bankrupt -- taxpayers' money just vanished, paid to persons unknown without proper documentation or, indeed, sometimes without any documentation.

The story reminded Walt of an article that appeared in the University of Toronto Magazine about six years ago. Marcel Danesi wrote about "contrary-to-expectation" puzzles, designed to show how susceptible human logic is to the power of deceptive language.

The use of numbers and language to confuse the reader was known to the ancient Greeks, and persists to this very day in such things as misleading advertising. Case in point: TV infomercials that promise you a great deal on, say, padded bras, and then tell you they'll send you a second set of the same, absolutely free. Of course you pay extra for the shipping and handling of the bigger package, but hey, it's free, right?

This works because many people have trouble understanding mathematical logic if a set of numbers is presented in a deceptive manner. A classic brainteaser (Danesi writes) was described by R.M. Abraham in Diversions and Pastimes (1933). Here is The Missing Dollar.

Three women check into a motel. The women are charged $10 each for their rooms, or $30 in total. (Hey, this was in 1933, remember!) Later, the manager discovers that he has accidentally overcharged the three vacationers. Their rooms cost only $25 in total, so he gives a bellhop $5 to return to them.

The sneaky bellhop knows that he cannot divide $5 into three equal amounts, so he pockets $2 for himself and returns only $1 to each of the women.

Here's the conundrum. Each woman paid $10 originally and got back $1. So, in fact, each woman paid $9 for her room. Therefore, the three of them together paid $27. If we add this amount to the $2 that the bellhop dishonestly pocketed, we get a total of $29. Yet the women paid out $30 originally. Where is the other dollar?

Figured it out already? Here's another one.

A customer in a bookstore gives a sales clerk a $10 bill for a $3 book. (Still 1933, I guess.) The clerk, having no change, takes the $10 bill across the street to the record store (definitely 1933!) To get it broken into $1 bills. (Canadian readers can substitute loonies for the singletons.) The bookstore clerk returns and gives the customer the $3 book and seven $1 bills in change.

An hour later the record store clerk brings back the $10 bill, claiming that it is counterfeit. To avoid quarrelling, the bookstore clerk gives the record store clerk ten $1 bills and takes back the $10 note. How much has the bookstore clerk lost?

Answers tomorrow.

Does the Prez really talk like a [you know what]?

You probably didn't see Al O'Bama's speech to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation on Saturday. Walt couldn't make it. But you likely saw a clip on TV or read the transcript.

Associated Press quoted the Prez of the Former Most Powerful Nation on Earth as telling African-Americans to "Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complainin'. Stop grumblin'. Stop cryin'. [My emphasis. Walt] We are going to press on. We have work to do."

Woah! Did the Man really drop his G's like that? Maybe not. Other outlets cleaned up the transcript, making the relevant sentences read "Stop complaining. Stop grumbling. Stop crying." That's the way a college graduate would say it, right? Not to mention a senator or a president.

So why did AP use what a linguistics expert called an "interpretive translation"? On Chris Hayes' MSNBC show, African-American author Karen Hunter called AP's version "racist". [Gee. That didn't even take 24 hours. Ed.] Walt assumes she meant that the politically correct thing to do would be to clean up Al's speech -- specifically including the dropped g's -- so he wouldn't sound like an end-man.

But noted linguistics expert John McWhorter argued the g-less version "is actually the correct one," noting that the president's victory in the 2008 election was due, in part, to how effortlessly "he can switch into that dialect." [Emphasis still mine. Walt]

McWhorter argued that "Black English" -- an oxymoron if ever there was one -- is becoming the lingua franca of American youth, and that "America, including non-black America, loves that way of speaking."

Rumour has it that all candidates for the Democractic nomination will henceforward be required to demonstrate their proficiency in the USA's other language -- ebonics. Walt thinks the last contender who spoke really well was William F. Buckley, Jr.

Dear Amy: watch your language!

Agent 17 sent the following e-mail to syndicated advice columnist Amy Alkon.

In today's Palm Beach Post you were quoted numerous times using "I am like".
This is what I would consider more dumbing down of our language.
This seems to be an affliction of today's youth but I cringe when I see it in print from an educated adult columnist.
If you could explain this trend, I would appreciate it.

Here, as it appeared in pbpulse, is Leslie Gray Streeter's article ["puff piece", surely? Ed.] "Syndicated advice columnist and author Amy Alkon wants you to mind your manners!"

And here's what Ms. Alkon said that provoked Agent 17 to write to her. "So there were these kids in there riding on a Razor scooter, and the workers weren’t saying anything, so I told them that they needed not to do that. And their mother scowled at me like 'How dare you parent my child.' And I was like, 'Well, you weren’t doing it.'"

I agree. I'm...like...so pissed when smart people...like...pepper their speech with these...like...y'know...

I'm tempted to blame the decline of our written and spoken language on American education, but British and Canadian speakers do it too. Yes, George W. Bush, an educated man, drops his g's when speaking from the stump. But Tony Blair (M.A., Oxon.) affects the dreadful glottal stop characteristic of the "Estuary English" spoken by the likes of David Beckham. And Mr. Blair commonly prefaces a sentence with "Hey, look...", just as Ms. Alkon starts with "So..."

This debasement of the language of Shakespeare must be deliberate. I believe it's an attempt by the speakers to bring their discourse down to the level of "the common people".

In other words, "dumbing down". Why? So those whose comprehension stops at the second syllable can "relate" to the speaker. Of course. As Prince Charles might say, "It really is...like...appalling."

How many languages is enough?

Let me declare my bias at the outset. I believe in official bilingualism, or even multilingualism for those countries in which there are enough speakers of "minority languages" to warrant it. If you've got 20 or 25 or 30 or 40 percent of the population who speak a language other than that of the majority, their language needs and deserves recognition or protection.

It's a good principle, based on equity and in most cases history. But in practice, it tends to get a bit messy, especially when the number of official languages rises to three or more. Switzerland has four official languages, not including English which does not have official status. In South Africa they went from two (English and Afrikaans) to (I think) nine. India has 15...I think. It's a Babel out there!

The trouble starts when you try to make sure that everything "official" is done in both languages, as they do in Canada. I was reminded of this watching the closing ceremonies of the Olympics yesterday. Here are a couple of paragraphs from today's Canadian Press report.

Organizers promised they wouldn't try to shoehorn in more French to appease critics who said the opening ceremonies were too English-centric. But there was, in fact, more French-language content, some of which didn't feel accidental.

Avila, Yanofsky and Derek Miller joined forces on "Let's Have a Party," which featured French and English lyrics, Furlong struggled through a bit of rough French at the top of his speech and sprinkled more throughout. Lavigne and Fox both exited the stage by announcing "Merci beaucoup."

"Furlong" is the chairman of VANOC, the Vancouver games organizing committee. Listening to him mispronounce the few lines of French which had been written for him was painful. I felt embarrassed for him. But no English-speaking Canadian politician would dare read an entire speech without trying to get out a couple of words in "the other language".

So also we have the crazy debate about which language to sing the national anthem in. The lyrics for "O Canada" were originally written in French. The words are very beautiful, also quite Catholic and chauvinistic, with references to carrying the sword and the cross. Loyal Orangemen can't stand those words!

There have been two or three English versions written since, with nice but quite different words, including "our home and native land", which is objected to (so they say) by immigrants. The political correctness just gets worse and worse.

What is sung now at events like the Olympic closing ceremonies or an Ottawa Senators hockey game is hodgepodge of a couple of lines of English, then a couple of lines of French, and some more English. It leaves even the reasonably bilingual about a half-note behind the music, because everyone is waiting to hear which language the next guy is going to sing!

I mention this as food for thought to American readers. Pressure is building in the USA to recognize Spanish as an official language, at least in some of the southwestern states. If that happens, who's going to write new lyrics for "The Star-Spangled Banner"? And can we be patient during official ceremonies while, as in Canada, everything is said first in one language and then in the other?

Official bilingualism sorely tests our brotherly love. To avoid coming to blows, people do not need to learn a second language, but they do need to learn to be tolerant of others.

Fetuses learn languages before birth... So???

The pro-abortion lobby (yes, the ones who say they are "pro-choice" when they mean they're in favour of killing babies) would have us believe that the pieces of flesh which are removed from a woman's uterus during the abortion "procedure" are just that -- mere pieces of flesh, kind of like skin tags. "Let's just remove that unwanted piece of flesh so you can enjoy your life without the responsibilities of motherhoood."

A study published in Psychological Science recently confirms what the pro-lifers say. Rather than being just a type of cyst or tumour, the "thing" conceived within a woman is in reality a small but sentient human being, with faculties of hearing and even learning.

According to a report of the study in the Globe and Mail, newborns who were exposed to two languages while in the womb have already begun the process of bilingual acquisition. As if that's not enough, babies who are only days old are able to discriminate between the languages.

The study reveals that the origins of learning two languages lie so deep that they extend even to the prenatal period. In other words, a fetus has not just life but intellect, while still in the womb. Yet, even though we pay lip service to the right to life, he or she does not have the right to be born. Still we claim to be a logical and civilized society.