English Teachers: Please Help Me!!

[TommyO 5]

I am debating how we speak not what we say, When you include content as part of the issue you are changing the argument. I am not anti-feminine I am not a racist but I can be somewhat anti-authoritarian. I am comfortable in my belief that speaking variations of the language will do little if any harm. If you chose to not listen to my words then it does not matter if I use proper English.

Suggesting that by allowing the language to evolve we create 3 mile Islands, Airline disasters, anti-feminism, pro-violence or the end of civilization is just silly.

Bill Cosby may be more than a comedian but the reason you quote him is because he validates your argument. All of those great things that he has done in his life that are held up by you as reasons that his opinions are more significant don't mean a hill of Beans. I disagree, so do I need to find some benevolent celebrity to back my argument for my opinion to count? I think not.

Happy Thanksgiving

TommyO

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

We can pretend that we are not talking about race.

But when I made the mistake of using Ebonics to make a point about grammar, then all succeeding discussion about Ebonics had racial overtones. There is a thread called "What color/race do you see" in the "Lap-Band Talk Lounge" that some of this thread might be better moved into.

In the USA, we have got to a point where certain comedians can make a certain joke, but another can not. Chris Rock makes a lot of jokes putting down certain commonly accepted ideas that Blacks are supposed to have as well as those of whites, but if Jay Leno would make the same exact jokes in a concert he would be labeled a racist.

In one of Chris Rocks' movies, he comes back to life (after Heaven has made a mistake) as an old white man. While in a store with a Black woman, he sings along to the radio and when the word "nigger" comes up, he continues singing and gets punched in the face for singing that word.

In an episode of "Girlfriends" which is a Black version of "Sex in the City", one of the 4 main characters is a girl with a white mother and Black father. Her half-sister who is all white is visiting for a party and when all the girls sing along to a song and the he word "nigger" comes up, she continues singing and told off for singing that word by the biracial half sister, who in turn gets told off by the (supposedly all Black) other cast members.

At what point can you say "nigger" ?

Is 1/2 Black enough? NO. Note even if you are not trying to pass for white.

How about 3/4 Black? Does it depend on how light you are?

Well, Bill Cosby can say the word. He is one of the few people in the USA who can make the statements that he made with only a modicum of criticism. He was criticized by some Blacks for giving whites ammunition to use against them. And it was picked up by many Republicans. I heard a Republican first quote Bill Cosby and then Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I dream of the day when little children will be judged not by the color of their skin...".

I wish people could be judged by their intent. But while Bill Cosby may be just a comedian to some, he is a de facto spokesman for the Black community and as one who knows the value of education and the need to meet some of society's rules to succeed, he was one of the few who could start a needed dialog.

I was watching TV news, the other night and they showed an American soldier in Iraq. he had just captured an Iraqi and told him to get down. The Iraqi did not understand English so he yelled louder and then louder to lay down. I don't understand why the Iraqi did not understand, they both could speak and hear, so why should a little thing like language get in the way?

[Carlene 12]

Bill Cosby may be more than a comedian but the reason you quote him is because he validates your argument. All of those great things that he has done in his life that are held up by you as reasons that his opinions are more significant don't mean a hill of Beans. I disagree, so do I need to find some benevolent celebrity to back my argument for my opinion to count? I think not.

Happy Thanksgiving

TommyO

I replied to your post that Cosby was "a comedian" by pointing out that he is more than just a comic. He has put his money where his mouth, and his heart, are. He has given his time, his talent, and his treasure to the cause of young black people. How many people do you know who have donated any of those things to the furtherance of Ebonics as a language? So, yes...I do think that when you back your opinion with activism and money, it means something. Faith without good works is as dead as a body without breath, to quote the book of James. And opinion without commitment is pretty much just hot air.

[TommyO 5]

Where to begin, first point the Iraqi and the American soldier spoke different langauges, I don't know if you are sugesting that we speak one language the world over or that the American soldier should learn to speak Iraqi.

I recognize there is a race isssue in the U.S. and that complicates things but I can't imagine why that would allow anyone to police language.

Finally if you are implying that I am full of hot air, well you may be correct, time will tell. I just can't imagine what that has to do with diversity in language. Or for that matter what the number of people I know who have donated money to Ebonics has to do with linguistics.

[Carlene 12]

Where to begin, first point the Iraqi and the American soldier spoke different langauges, I don't know if you are sugesting that we speak one language the world over or that the American soldier should learn to speak Iraqi.

I recognize there is a race isssue in the U.S. and that complicates things but I can't imagine why that would allow anyone to police language.

Finally if you are implying that I am full of hot air, well you may be correct, time will tell. I just can't imagine what that has to do with diversity in language. Or for that matter what the number of people I know who have donated money to Ebonics has to do with linguistics.

I think (I could be wrong here) that TOM's point was that people who speak different languages cannot effectively communicate with one another. And people who speak different forms of the SAME language (as in his "bad" means "good" example) can't, either - especially when they don't realize they aren't speaking the same language.

It doesn't matter so much hangin' out on the corner of the 'hood, but in other places (work...maybe the OR, God forbid), it can cause HUGE problems - maybe even dangerous situations.

And I am most certainly not implying that you are full of hot air, except to the extent that all of us are who sit and opine but do nothing to effect changes in our belief system. My opinion is no more (or less) valuable than yours.

MY point was that if you feel passionately about diversity in language (or anything else), you need to DO SOMETHING to educate people, enlighten them - whatever, and Bill Cosby HAS. Join a movement to adopt Ebonics (or Gullah, or Hip Hop, or Valley Girl speak) as an honest to God dialect of the English language. Propose that your school district teach it. Teach it to your kids. Own your opinions, don't just argue for the sake of argument. (Not that I have done any of those things myself, mind you. I'm just saying that it's easy to spout rhetoric. Words are cheap...actions speak louder.)

And while we are on the subject, let me also say that I do NOT see why I should have to "press one for English". Why can't those recordings just say, "Call 1-800-SPANISH if you no habla English"? Sorry, but I think diversity has run amok.

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

From TOM to TommyO:

How Could I ever think that anyone with my name would be full of hot air.

I think that your opinion is just as valid as mine, though I think you are wrong. I have been called an anarchist. I dislike authority for authority's sake, but I would never rebel just to rebel.

Yes, Carlene hit the nail on the head when she assumed that my point was that people who speak different forms of the same language are as unable to work together as people who speak different languages.

I would never say you were full of hot air. If you called me a jerk or worse, I would still not say you are full of hot air. I would just speak around the insulting comment.

Before I went to work for the airline the I stayed at for 35 years, I was told by a friend that worked there, that they did not allow beards on new hires. I had had a beard for the previous 7 or 8 years and both me and my wife liked it, but she was a mother to be who had to stop working because of her pregnancy and the starting pay was over twice what I was making as an electrical assistant and had medical benefits. I could have stuck to my guns, went for the interview and been turned down, but I had a family to consider. After I passed my probation, I grew my beard back.

About 7 years later, I applied for a promotion to maintenance instructor (which is management) and I told me perspective Manager that I would not shave off my beard. I got the job because of my talent.

About a year later, the son of one of the mechanics that worked there applied and got a job as a mechanic. I had met the son as a young teen when I visited his father's home many years earlier and he was impressed with me because of my flashy (and very fast) motorcycle and because of my Tee-shirt with a picture of a lawn with a sign saying, "KEEP ON THE GRASS". One day, I heard some of the other instructors saying, “too bad that he (the son) was not going to pass probation since he is already a better mechanic than his father”. I asked why and one instructor rubbed his face in the beard area. I went to the son and said, “if you trust me after all these years, shave”. I could not go into too many details, but he shaved, passed his probation and had many years of earning top dollar with good benefits, raised a family and bought a home.

IMHO, one must decide which battles are worth fighting and which are not. If someone needs to speak a dialect of English to survive in his rough and tumble neighborhood, fine do it. But if he wants to escape that neighborhood and its poverty and crime, learning to speak properly is not too much to ask.

TOM

PS: My name is not TOM, but I still would never insinuate that you are full of hot air.

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

Sorry, but I think diversity has run amok.

I do not think diversity has run amok. I think things are being done which are foolish and I sometimes wonder if people who are against diversity sometimes set things up to discredit diversity.

Why put someone who speaks broken English in a job that requires fluent English and good language skills? I doubt that the company wants to go out of business, but maybe the department head doesn't like Mexicans, so he puts a Mexican on the customer service line that one reaches when you select "One" for English. Not just any Mexican, but the one with the heaviest accent and worst conversational skills.

I was speaking to an Hispanic on a customer service call about trying to straighten out a bill. She was having a hard time understanding my name, so I spelled it out phonetically.

Let's pretend my name is Thomas Manual. I said Michael, Alpha, Nancy, Utah, Alpha, Larry and she replied what is your next name after Nancy?

She thought my name was "Michael Alpha Nancy Utah Alpha Larry".

That has nothing to do with diversity. It is about choosing the wrong people for the wrong job.

[green 6]

We are, it seems to me, forgetting something in this discussion about language and that is the intent behind what is said. Most people talk to others because they have something that they want to communicate. This is a pretty simple desire and using language to make a political statement or to obfuscate doesn't enter into these communications. It is obvious that when an individual elects to speak in an in-talk or to employ highly politicized words such as nigger he (or she) has something more than elementary communication on his mind. He is not asking you where the men's toilet is, or what the torque value is on a bolt which he is in the process of replacing on an aircraft. He has different fish to fry.

But most of us use language for mundane tasks; we want to convey or receive information. If that information seems hazy, well, language has supplied us with a whole bunch of help. We need merely to ask who, what, when, where, and why. Anyone who can't ask is an idiot. Language is a powerful tool but a tool in the hands of an idiot is pretty damn useless, ain't it?

[green 6]

As for TOM's recent experience with a customer service rep who couldn't speak English, well, any company who hires people who don't have the requisite communication skills for a job of this nature is not a company that I would want to invest in. Here's what I would have done: I would have asked to speak to her supervisor ASAP and then I would have complained. It is not the poor bitch's fault of course; it is that of (in)Human Resources. She is completely ill-equipped for the job of dealing with folks like you and me. Placing that woman in that job was unjust to her and to the folks who had to deal with her. It was also lousy PR for the company. (Green is currently at war with a utility company which employs undertrained idiots whose first language is English!)

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

But most of us use language for mundane tasks; we want to convey or receive information. If that information seems hazy, well, language has supplied us with a whole bunch of help. We need merely to ask who, what, when, where, and why. Anyone who can't ask is an idiot. Language is a powerful tool but a tool in the hands of an idiot is pretty damn useless, ain't it?

I agree with most of what you wrote except why would someone ask any of those 5 "W" questions if they thought they understood the instruction or statement?

A few years ago, our old friends flew in from Colorado to NY to visit us at our home in Brooklyn.

My friend Dominic, his wife Idalina, their son George and daughter-in-law Maria joined my wife, Mrs. TOM, my son TOM Jr., my daughter-in-law Daria and me in our living-room for a lively chat session. During the visit my wife said something and I asked, "Do you mean...?"

My wife said, "No, I meant...!"

I have forgotten what was said, but the pertinent part to this narrative was that I asked each of the 6 other people (besides my wife and myself) what the sentence meant.

Idalina and Maria agreed with my wife.

Dominic, TOM Jr. and George agreed with me.

It seemed like this was a “Men from Mars, Women from Venus” type thing, until we asked my daughter-in-law Daria.

Daria did not want to answer. WHY? Because she was a school teacher who taught English. And she did not want to be a traitor to her gender.

After much prodding, she finally admitted that the men were correct in the meaning of the sentence. Idalina and Maria both said that she knew what Mrs. TOM meant, but if she had said that and I hadn't questioned her, some of us would have thought she had said one thing and some would have thought that she said something else.

If only Idalina and Maria had been in the room with Mrs. Tom, they would not asked any of the 5 "W" questions and yes, they would have known what she meant.

But if only Dominic, TOM Jr. and George had been in the room with Mrs. Tom, they would not have asked any of the 5 "W" questions, because they would have thought they knew what she meant, but they would have totally misunderstood what was meant.

I do not remember what the issue was. But if it had to do with where we were going to meet later that day to go sight-seeing and half the people wound up there and half the people wound up somewhere else, that could have ruined a nice trip.

No one wants to ask their friends, relatives or co-workers to repeat things, nor do they want to seem like they are being overly aggressive.

Maybe that is why most men do not like asking directions when they get lost while driving. The directions get you more lost as often as they help.

[green 6]

Of course there are these little misunderstandings but by and large people do manage to communicate with each other and this is because we enter into this business of communication with good will and a genuine desire to discover what the other individual has to say...that is when we are not passing out from boredom, thinking to ourselves such things as oh God, if he talks about his bloody children again I swear I will shit and, come to think about it, did I turn the coffee pot off, no, I'm sure I did, but it really doesn't matter, Mary will get it, and doesn't it turn itself off automatically after 2, no, it's 3 hours, and he's still on about his creepy kids, ugh! they're like a Children of the Corn family...ooh, it gives me the creeps, but I need him to fix the copier, uh, yeh, that's why I'm talking to him in the first place! Most interpersonal communication is conducted on a mundane level and it is fragmented by our own impatient thoughts. We are rarely fully engaged. We are busy remarking other things about our environment, and are caught up in our own selves. One might posit that when it comes to communicating with someone whose communication skills do not mesh easily with our own we actually find ourselves paying more attention than usual. We are more fully engaged.

[GeezerSue 7]

Let's pretend my name is Thomas Manual. I said Michael, Alpha, Nancy, Utah, Alpha, Larry and she replied what is your next name after Nancy?

She thought my name was "Michael Alpha Nancy Utah Alpha Larry".

That has nothing to do with diversity. It is about choosing the wrong people for the wrong job.

That spelling would have confused many native Englisn/English-only speakers. I "speak" two major phonetic alphabets--one from a little outfit called "the U.S. Army," and the other from a major law enforcement agency--and your alphabet was neither of those. So even with my familiarity with using phonetic alphabets, I'd have stalled-out in the translation. My sister, who speaks English only and worked in telphone customer service her entire career, would not have understood any more than the woman on the phone...unless you had said, "M as in Michael" and so on.

Some people with heavy accents are more fluent in English than many native English speakers. I know words in Spanish that my native-Spanish speaking mother--who has lost almost all Spanish proficiency over the last 75+ years--has never learned.

I have lived in other countries and other cultures and I have hoped that those to whom I was speaking in THEIR language might cut me a little slack. Since I travel the planet without total proficiency in the language of every country I visit, I hope for patience, understanding and wisdom from those I encounter...and I try to reciprocate. It has worked fairly well so far.

I'm sorry that you are having such difficulty maneuvering in the world as it is. No matter how much you protest, chances are, it will continue to be more like it is and less like it was. That's the nature of change.

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

I also am fluent with the Military's phonetic alphabet, since as an aircraft mechanic who had to contact the tower and ask for taxi directions through taxiways with alpha-numeric designations, I was required to use the military's phonetic alphabet.

However when dealing with "civilians", I found that Alpha, bravo, delta, kilo, Quebec and Zulu sometimes caused a "what" and X-ray sometimes caused an "X" and "R" instead of just an "X" to be understood.

And while "Michael" is not the standard for "M", "Mike" is.

If someone does not understand "Michael" one of my middle names and I while spelling in phonetically, I say "M like in Mary" because if they don't understand Michael, why would they understand "Mike"(?) and then I find that they used "Mary" for my middle-name, do not blame me for being intransigent.

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

Oh, I guess I could have used "Apple" for "A", but that would not have been standard either.

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

Deer Sir,

I waunt to apply for the secritary job what I saw in the paper. I can Type real quik wit one finggar and do sum a counting.

I think I am good on the phone and no I am a pepole person, Pepole really seam to respond to me well.

Im lookin for a Jobb as a secritary but it musent be to complicaited.

I no my spelling is not to good but find that I Offen can get a job thru my persinalety. My salerery is open so we can discus wat you want to pay me and wat you think that I am werth,

I can start imeditely. Thank you in advanse fore yore anser. .

hopifuly Yore best aplicant so farr.

Sinseerly,

Peggy May Starlings

PS : Because my resimay is a bit short - below is a pickture of me taken at my last jobb.