Speaking Volumes

 

What kind of English word is “Winnemucca”? How about “taco”? “Fond du Lac”? People who get bent out of shape over other people speaking languages besides English while out in public in this country probably fail to realize how many English words have their origin in other languages. As much as 30 percent of English words are borrowed from the world’s thousands of languages. It would be difficult or impossible for the average English speaker to use only Anglo-Saxon words.

 

In the United States especially, where nearly 100 percent of the population comes from elsewhere in the world, the English language is a polyglot mixture made up of additions from languages everywhere, and yet it stands apart in its diction, its spelling, and in other ways. Place names preeminently use some version borrowed from the many Native American languages that have all but disappeared otherwise. What does it mean to send somebody back where they came from, when almost everybody came from somewhere else at one time? Send them back where? To Ohio? To Florida? If we go back far enough in time, almost everyone will have to leave, and the Native Americans – what is left of them – will no doubt feel immense relief, as of an oppressive burden lifting away from them.

The Tower of Babel 2443
The Tower of Babel, a painting by Pieter Breugel the Elder (c. 1525/1530-1569).

Exclusionary talk is loco chauvinism. It is meshuga, and yahoos who go on about sending others back where they came from are clearly non compos mentis. They should examine their own origins, which in the latest generation or two or three might be in places like Tulsa, Santa Fe, Tennessee, or Baraboo, but going back further could be traced to Scotland, or Frankfurt, or Sarajevo, and ultimately to Africa. White folks weren’t always white, and anyway no deity ever descended from the heavens to declare whiteness a superior trait. It only matters to people who are terrified of losing their imagined superior place in society, and must have Others to look down upon. Ordering Others to speak English when they are conversing among themselves is not only high-handed, it ignores how immigrants have enriched and informed English itself with words and expressions from everywhere. The proper remark for an English-only speaker to make in that case, if any is necessary at all, is gracias, or merci, or danke, or mahalo, or arigatô, or . . .
— Ed.

Johnny Cash (1932-2003) sang a North American version of “I’ve Been Everywhere”, a song written in 1959 by Australian country singer Geoff Mack, and which in the original version included all Australian place names, many of them originating in the languages of the Australian Aboriginal peoples.

 

It’s the Same Mistake All Over and Over Again

 

When the hot water heater breaks and there’s no cash money readily available for fixing or replacing it, a trip to the Automated Teller Machine (ATM) machine is necessary. Not everyone is a fully funded rich millionaire, after all. Enough is enough, however, and a full complement of compliments are due for a job well done once the mended or new hot water heater is heating up good and plenty.

 

There’s no news like good news, that’s for sure, and there’s no news like Fox News. Watching it is like having a complimentary complement of all the news and news makers that are fit to be tied. Irregardless of a person’s political associations and assignations, there has to be a better way, and that way should probably be the highway. In consequence, never in a million years could there be something better than sitting down after a session of emergency home repairs and getting informative with the television.
Cognitive Hazard by Arenamontanus
Cognitive Hazard by Arenamontanus.
Die Elster auf dem Galgen
The Magpie on the Gallows by Pieter Breugel the Elder (c.1525 – 1569).

It’s like deja vu when things break over and over again repeatedly, because no sooner is the hot water heater heating up water again than the television breaks down. That must be why it’s called the idiot box. Fixing a television is no small task, but is indeed a big job of work. Looking inside a television, it may appear there is nothing there. Looking far ahead, though, things appear. The idiots then are not inside the box, but appearing from a distance, and chattering constantly they make no sense but make lots of cents. Watching idiots appear from afar in the television can be hazardous, and is best left to the experts, who will fairly complement each other with their unctuous compliments, and always to the utmost maximum.
― Ed.