UK Guardian: America's fabulously mongrel language is a model of immigration reform

[pampango]

Nativist efforts to force immigrants to learn 'proper English' are unintentionally hilarious: our very vernacular is a melting-pot

My own view of English is informed by years in the trenches, writing dictionaries and taking the worm's-eye view of our language – and from down here, I can safely say that, contrary to the panicked squawking of linguistic doomsayers, English is not in need of any conservation or preservation. It is, in fact, flourishing. This is due, in part, to all the foreign words and phrases that English has borrowed and stolen over the centuries – including a substantial number of words brought by immigrants.

But such movements ignore a basic fact: English has been borrowing words from other languages since its infancy. The names for the days of the week are some of our oldest English words, and they honor the sun, the moon, and a handful of northern Germanic gods the Anglo-Saxons worshipped. But "Saturday", the beginning of our weekend, honors a Roman god in Saxon clothes: the Anglo-Saxon "sætern" means "Saturn" and was stolen outright from Latin.

At present, English has borrowed words from over 350 languages, and it shows no signs of stopping that behavior. Even our best efforts at isolationism are ignored by our shifty whore, English: in the same decade that the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in the US, effectively banning Chinese immigration into the States, "chop suey" and "tung" (as in the oil) entered the English language – from Chinese.

Language, like immigration, is complex and thoroughly untidy. While we may legislate immigration, we will never successfully legislate our sprawling, inclusive language. Any attempt to do so runs contrary to truly "preserving and enhancing the role of the English language".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/21/america-language-model-immigration-reform

The conservative nativist "English only" folks surely do not want to hear the history of "American" English.

[dimbear]

1. Want proof that the internet is melting languages together? Go to any French 'tchat' board, or a

German site where they offer books "zum downloaden."

It's only a matter of time.

[Laelth]

2. Like it or not, English is the world's dominant language.

We didn't conquer the world with guns, or aircraft carriers, or nuclear weapons.

We (the child nation of our mother country, the U.K.) conquered the world through trade (New York) and the arts (Los Angeles). And English is the language we used to do it.

The author of the OP is correct. English is in no danger. It is now the world's lingua franca, as ironic as that is.

-Laelth

[Spider Jerusalem]

7. I would think that being more or less the successor to the British Empire...

has something to do with that. English is an official language of South Africa and India and Malaysia and Pakistan and Kenya and Singapore and Hong Kong and Ghana and Namibia and dozens of other places besides, for reasons that have nothing to do with the United States and everything to do with the history of the British Empire.

[Laelth]

11. Very true. n/t

-Laelth

[ms liberty]

3. Great article, I'm reminded of The Story of English, the PBS series. - K&R n/t

[annabanana]

4. English has been described as

being quite willing to drag other languages down dark alleys, knock them over the head and rummage through their pockets for loose grammar and vocabulary.

[pampango]

8. "...rummage through their pockets for loose grammar and vocabulary" - Love it! Thanks. n/t

[trof]

5. Pajamas, avant-garde, cul-de-sac, paradise, names of the months,

The list is endless.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Persian_origin

[jonthebru]

6. karaoke, walkabout...

naive, gesundheit, aloha, an affectionate salutation, mahalo is thank you, wikiwiki is "quickly", akamai is smart, aa, pahoehoe... the two types of volcanic lava. Lets see... da kine is anything you want it to be, pau is finished.

"No make li' dat." is Don't act weird, I get that a lot.

[mwooldri]

9. Engrish only pls lol...

This is the thing about the English language. It has come a long way since Geoffrey Chaucer's time. Even beyond Shakespeare and Dickens and others. The other thing is when new things are invented new words have to be made up. If made up for one language, another will steal it.

And yet there are different Englishes coming around as we go. Spellings change, some come and some go. American English vs British English is the biggest split... but things will change over time too with more global influences.

[Skittles]

10. my English mum, when told by Americans how much they loved her accent

"I'm speaking English; YOU have an accent."