Have you ever said “If those darn foreigners are going to live and work in our country, then by gosh, they should learn to speak English.” I say it all the time, but usually, my words are not suitable for print. And they are spoken with a lot of anger.
If a person moves to another country, why would they not want to learn the local language? Start with simple words like Food, Hotel, Taxi, and Bathroom. Work up into sentences. And, learn to live by their culture. Afterall, isn’t culture the main reason you moved there. What the heck are you thinking? IT’S NOT YOUR COUNTRY!
Calm down, Fred. Count to Ten. That isn’t the topic today. Whew!
I studied Spanish in the Fifties, and French in the Sixties. Don’t remember much of either. Never had a reason to use them, so they just sort of faded from my memory. Both seemed to be fairly easy to learn. Of course, I was quite a bit younger then. Actually, over fifty years younger. Holy Crap. That’s a half Century. Jeeeezzzz!
As native Americans, we started speaking American English about the age of two. Our parents started teaching diction, and pronunciation. We started to read. We learned how to write (print) our name, address, and phone number. A little squiggly perhaps, with a letter or number backwards.
Then, we enter school. And for the next 12 years we learn vowels, consonants, verbs, adjectives, nouns, pronouns, uppercase, lowercase, first person, past tense, spelling, diagrams, grammar, proper names, and cursive writing. The list goes on and on. American English is a difficult language to master.
Wow…..No wonder Immigrants continue to speak their native language. American English is tough. Reading and writing it is one thing, but speaking it is entirely different. If you don’t think so…….read on.
R-E-A-D. : I have read the book. I need to read the book. The cover of the book is red. 1st two look the same, but have different meanings. 2nd two sound the same, but have different meanings. Huh?
C-O-M-B vs T-O-M-B: Should sound the same. Right? Wrong!
B-A-T-T-E-R-Y: A device to power your cars and portable devices. Also, the same word, same spelling, and same sound means a unit of artillery used by the military.
T-H-R-O-U-G-H: In at one end and out the other is a preposition. But T-H-R-U, means the same thing, but is a preposition, verb, or adjective.
What about Who, and Whom. English scholars have argued this one for centuries. Still no definitive answer.
Are you confused yet? Of course not. You have been reading, writing, and speaking American English your entire life. But your new next door neighbor that recently moved here from Finland hasn’t a clue.
Hold onto your hat………it gets worse.
Conjugation of verbs: The past tense of “buy” is “bought”, and the past tense of “sell” is “sold”, but neither “buyed” nor “selled” are real words?
Even worse: take an adjective and form its “-ness” quality. As in, deriving “swiftness” from “swift”. This process is as irregular as you can get. “Strong” doesn’t become “strongness”, it becomes “strength”, even though its opposite, “weak”, does become “weakness”. “High” becomes “height”, and if you mess up and say “highness” instead, it sounds like you are addressing the Queen of England.
The irregularities, and similarities, in American English continue on and on in a very confusing manner. So, to all the non-English speaking people that may be reading this Blog, I want to sincerely ………………
“WAIT, WAIT, WAIT” “What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m just trying to apologize for…………”
“Apologize! For what? If they don’t already know English, why would they be reading your Blog?”
“Oh yeah. I didn’t think about that.”
“Dumbass. I can’t believe you are the other half of this personality.”
“Hey, you don’t have to call me names. I was just trying to apologize for America, the same way that Barack Obama did.”
“You really are a Dumbass.”
Til we meet again.
FB 04/15/12
UnderThisOldMansHat 