Why we should all learn proper grammar (and why I really need to work on my spelling)

I can remember back to a time when I was having what turned into a rather heated debate with a good friend of mine over whether or not "ebonics" constituted a legitimate language or not.  I was of the firm opinion that it was not and all should be done to eradicate it, whereas my friend was determined to convince me otherwise.  After the argument my friend's opinion really had not altered all that much--largely because he was a stark believe in Esperonto and in the end, his entire argument was simply an attempt to convert me to Esperonto--but my position had changed drastically.

I came to realize that ebonics was indeed a legitimate language, or rather not a language, but an actual developing dialect; just as legitimate as High-American (most commonly recognized as Midwestern American) is in relation to British English.  The simple fact of the matter is, is that language is a part of humanity and as a result grows and changes as we do; hence the fact that we have well over 3,000 spoken languages on the planet.  Ebonics are simply natural outgrowths of English, and in fact it could be argued that there are in fact many different dialects--or at the very least dialects in the making--in America today.  The most common example is think of the way you speak with your friends; next think of how you speak with your parents; after that how you confess to your priest; and finally after that how you would talk to your boss.  My hope is that I've just named off four very different sounding styles of English, so much that to the non-native speaker, they might very well sound like four completely different languages.  In fact, even the style in which I normally write my blogs could hardly be identified as Standard or even "correct" English.

As a guy who hangs out with linguists a lot, this is all very fascinating.  America already has a well-developed system of accents and true dialects are beginning to emerge.  In the South for instance, outsiders can be immediately identified by their accents, even if they are other Americans, as I discovered very quickly after having lived in Hinesville, GA for a year.  During my sophomore year at college, one of the girls on my floor was originally from Brooklyn, New York and sometimes, especially whenever she got real tired, she would slip back into her Brooklyn accent.  In fact, my professor, who is fascinated by phonetics in general although his specialty is more geared towards the Slavic languages, pointed out that even in the local news there were already traces of dialects to be seen in a supposedly Midwestern enviornment (in this case Indiana).  While the exact details escape me at the moment, I can remember a few differences in Indiana-English from Standard American, or at least what I had always identified as Standard-American: Kroger is always Krogers with a Genitive "s" at the end, soft drinks are always called "pop," and the 2nd person plural is always expressed with "you guys" instead of "yall." Yes, yall isn't a part of the English language officially, but I'm one of those people who really believes it should be, which I suppose makes it part of my dialect.

Why bring this up in the first place?  Simple.  While dialects will inevitably form and this is nothing to fear, this should not interfere with the standard form of the language to the point where communication either shuts down or unwanted meanings are conveyed.  Guess what folks, while your individual version of English (or whatever your native language is) may be precious to you as a form of communicating your own individuality, you still need to make yourself understood at some point, and that's why we always have a Standard dialect.  I don't think anyone reading this blog would understand what "Amphibious Canon" means except me and my best friends.  To us it makes perfect sense...okay no it doesn't because my best friend is an idiot, but that's beside the point.  The point is this: I can assosciate a meaning with this word that probably no one else would.  That means I have to be careful about where, when, and with what people I use it.  This example may not be perfect at explaining my point as it is a word which admittedly only has meaning with perhaps 4 people in the world, but try taking it a few steps further.  Imagine you grew up in a small rural town in Texas and tried to relocate to Chicago.  First of all, your accent would give you away as an outsider.  Not necessarily a bad thing, but as for someone who's been the foreigner for most of his life, I know from experience it can be kind of frustrating at times being the guy who "talks funny."  But then you begin to use words for things that nobody else says outside of your own town.The selection process is rarely fair (high German was determined to be Martin Luther's dialect only because he translated the Bible into his version of German) but that shouldn't be important.  What should be is the fact that we all need to be able to function together in harmony, and that process will be immensely eased by speaking the same language.  While at home and with friends you can speak whatever language you wish, the Standard dialect used by all people in the society is a compromise between all the various dialects.  More often than not, it is simply the dialect of the most linguistically dominant group.  Sometimes it is because they have greater military strength the others, sometimes it is because they hold the license on important works of literature like sacred texts (in the Czech Republic, Moravian Czech is commonly considered High Czech because the Bible was originally translated into a Moravian dialect; in Arabic, Egypt produces the vast majority of movies and music, so Egyptian-Arabic is considered, after High Arabic based on the Qaran, to be Standard), most of the money goes through this certain region, or simply a majority of the people in a country/region speak that dialect.  Whatever the reason, the Standard dialect should be viewed as a means to express your views to the group as a whole; in other words, as a means to an end.  Yes it may not be your own personal dialect, but the fact of the matter is, there are far too many dialects for any one person to master all of them, so we need to have one which all are familiar with and can revert back to to facilitate communication.  When people either can't or choose not to do so, that alone conveys a message even before the dictionary meaning of the words can be analyzed by the speech centers in the listeners' ears.  Why is this person talking so funny (and I don't mean accents here: I mean things like atrociously improper grammar...you know, like the kind I've sometimes written with in this blog; slurring speech together; odd and non-standard vocabulary choices; etc)?  Can't this person speek normally, or wont this person speak normally?  Does this person have a problem with authority?  Will I be able to trust this person to deliver a presentation?  Will this person be able to get along with his co-workers?

Case in point: my dad used to cuss like a sailor; which was shocking considering we were an Army family.  My dad never cussed around his children, but when he got to work it was "Fuck blah blah fuck blah shit blah mother fucker..." and so on and so forth whenever he opened his mouth.  He was in the Army, so it didn't bother some people even though my dad was an officer.  So one day after giving a presentation and again cussing up a storm even in front of superior officers, an other officer of equal rank basically warned my dad to cut down on the swearing or else he was liable to get chewed out.  My dad said he would try to cut down, but didn't take the warning too seriously and it was not until a follow-up conference that my dad learned he had really offended one of his superiors.  After my dad's speech, he was taken aside and chewed out something fierce for his bad choice of words.  Since then, my dad only cusses when he's fixing things.

Why bring all this up in the first place?  Well the reason goes back a long ways, but it's something that has stuck with me for years and continues to bother me to this day.  I remember reading an article one day about Michigan University in my English class, which stated that professors had ceased correcting grammar mistakes stating that "the English language was a tool of oppression."  At first I thought, "Then why did you waste all that time teaching us how to spell in elementary school?"  While I'll agree, English has been used to oppress people, the fact of the matter is that the majority of people in the US and in fact in most international organizations speak English and if someone wants to make themselves understood, they'd better learn how to speak in a manner the rest of us can understand.  In America that will probably mean Midwestern-American.  Is it right?  No.  Why isn't it Southern-American?  Why isn't it Boston-American?  Or Chicago-American?  Or heck, why does it have to be English at all?  After all, even old New York was once New Amsterdam.  Why they changed it I can't say.  Perhaps people were simply pleased morely by this new set of circumstances (oh yeah, copyright infringement overted yet again!  No seriously, that's not my song guys.  No musical talent here whatsoever).  Yes, many people had English shoved down their throats.  I'd wager that most of our ancestors fall into this category at some point or another.  My father's side is part German, Native-American, and African-American, and my mom's side is Moravian, so I know there was a fair amount of struggling with English in my own family.  But is it really any different anywhere else though?  Suprise, no.  3,000 languages.  That's not even counting dialects  Think about it.  There are, according to Wikipedia, 243 sovereign countries on the planet.  Purely mathematically, that would mean each country would have at least 10 national languages, which would mean the citizens would have to learn 10 languages in order to speak with each other assuming all languages were given equal treatment.  Folks, it just don't add up.  There are people who can do that, but they are few and far between.  We need Standard dialects and languages in order to unify ourselves; in order to make civilization function.  Yes it may infringe on individual freedoms, but guess what?  That's one of the consequences of living in a group.  You can't live as a pure individualist. 

Granted the situation I'm sure has changed since that time, but I have always thought that those professors should have been fired because they are giving exactly the wrong message to these kids.  Yes we may still be able to understand them, but what we will understand is that they are stupid, uneducated, lazy, unwilling to work hard enough to even use proper grammar, and basically not the type of people we want to do business with.  Odds are, that's not true, but if these kids can't convey that it's not, then society wont care.  You can convince an individual it's not true and that in fact you are a good, trustworthy, and hard working person, but there's not enough time in the world to convince 6 billion peopel one at a time.  Even with just your style of English you are already conveying a great deal of meaning.  Let's keep our dialects at home and amongst friends, and use the Standard dialect at work...at least until you find out whether or not your boss/coworkers are cool.  Believe me, if you heard me talk, you'd be wondering how in God's holy name I could possibly put all of this fucking shit in a goddamned fucking blog and still be able to get my fucking lazy ass out of bed the next fucking morning feelin good bout myself.  See?  Not exactly Shakespeare is it?  In fact, not exactly the kind of person most people would hire is it?  None of us speak the Standard dialect "natively" in the sense that we are most comfortable with that form of the language.  But it is the language of dealing with strangers, of mass media, of newspapers, of magazines (except highly specialized magazines which assume its readers already possess a certain degree of experience with the subject and its specialized set of vocabulary).  It's the closest thing we have to a common language, and that is why we all have to know how to use it.  Including me.  Some of you have already pointed out I'm not perfect either, which is true.  We're all theoretically in the same boat on this one.  We all have to be able to speak in this style that is somewhat awkward for us, but it's just something we have to deal with sometimes no matter how frustrating it can be.