Amglish in like ten easy lessons

We all make er-rors when using our native language, regard-less of our education.. English is a living language.. But theonly thing that has improved is the failurerate of national langu

Amglish in, Like, Ten

Easy Lessons

Amglish in, Like, Ten

Easy Lessons

A Celebration of the New World Lingo

Arthur E Rowse

with illustrations by John

Doherty

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in-British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rowse, Arthur E (Arthur Edward)

Amglish in, like, ten easy lessons : a celebration of the new world lingo / Arthur E Rowse ; with illustrations by John Doherty.

p cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-4422-1167-4 (pbk : alk paper) —

ISBN 978-1-4422-1168-1 (electronic)

1 English language—United States—Slang 2.

Printed in the United States of America

When I was growing up in Lexington, sachusetts, in the 1920s, we had no “lan-guage arts” in my public grade school Wehad separate classes in English grammar,spelling, and penmanship run by no-non-sense teachers Despite having much diffi-culty twisting my wrist into the prescribedposition for perfect penmanship in thePalmer style, I learned to love the languageeven with its many idiosyncrasies

Mas-I liked to read books about boys going ongreat adventures and playing tricks on

people They made me want to write for fun

or money But since there were not manysuch paying jobs for ten-year-olds, I created

my own job by starting a weekly hood newspaper I got the idea when myfather gave me a cast-off Remington type-writer after I had spent a day “helping” him

neigh-My father made me run a crayon through thedisputed sentence I made sure the words re-mained visible (The rebellious quality comesfrom living in “the birthplace of Americanliberty.”)

My first bout with a stilted language came

on graduation day after six grades at cock School when I was awarded a prize forscholastic excellence I was hoping for

Han-something useful such as a chocolate cake,

certainly not a copy of Master Skylark, a

St-ory of Shakespeare’s Time, published in

1897

When I opened the book later and read thefirst page of flowery British prose by authorJohn Bennett about “punts poling slowly

on the Avon” and “April sunlight dancing onthe brazen horns and the silver bellies of thekettledrums,” I put the book down for good

It was not my kind of English

After four years as editor and publisher of

the Naborhood News, I retired because of

is-sues—today’s in-word for such complications

as schoolwork—that led to an editorial in thetown weekly titled “Why Editors Quit.” Ieventually fell into some “higher education,”World War II duty in North Africa and Italy,the authorship of a few books, and a string ofediting and writing jobs mostly at Bostonand Washington newspapers, where some

knowledge of formal English was stillrequired.

It wasn’t until much later in life that I ized why my neighbors and relatives werewilling to pay two pennies to read the

real-Naborhood News I concluded that it was

not for the news, which was little more than

a reflection of family dinner conversations Itwas to laugh at all my malapropisms andmistakes in grammar and spelling I remem-ber one headline, BUM BITES GAS MAN, refer-ring to a neighborhood dog

By the time my own kids went to publicschool in Washington, D.C., in the 1960s,

“language arts” were beginning to supplantthe much-despised classes in grammar,spelling, and penmanship in some schools,though not yet in our neighborhood school

In fact, unknown to me at the time, the mainEnglish teachers’ association of the countryofficially condemned separate classes ingrammar in 1963, the all-time peak year for

verbal SAT scores I suspect that not manyparents knew that “grammar” had become adirty word.

In the next few decades, I became ingly shocked at the failure of many Americ-ans—at all levels of society—to absorb thebasic fundamentals of their native language

increas-My shock turned into disdain, especially forwell-educated people who apparently didn’t

know the difference between lay and lie, that and which, and other fine points of proper

English such as differentiating between jective pronouns and objective ones

sub-But I had a linguistic epiphany after George

W Bush became president in 2000 Herewas a budding world leader, a man of greatprivilege enhanced by education at prestigi-ous schools, who appeared woefully unable

to mouth a simple sentence without violating

at least four or five basic precepts of English

At first, I marveled at how blasé Americans

were about choosing a leader with such agross deficiency in his mother tongue.

I joined millions of other people around theworld snickering at the way the nation’s mostprominent bushwhacker shredded the lan-guage in such funny ways It was during one

of those laugh-ins I finally realized, guagewise, here was a politician who did notspeak much differently from other Americ-ans, including at times my friends, associ-ates, and myself

lan-It also began to strike me that nobody can

be a perfect master of English Indeed, it is

an impossibility because of the language’smany mysteries and defects We all make er-rors when using our native language, regard-less of our education

I began to realize that language errors havebecome an integral part of the current lin-guistic upheaval Even more interesting arethe many efforts to be original New wordsand phrases are bubbling up at a furious

pace, either by accident or design And thosewho are not innovators help the process bypassing along anything interesting that theyencounter The whole exercise is either a de-light or a continuing disaster, depending onyour point of view.

I chose the positive approach and becametaken in by the charms of informal English,especially the neologisms, the grammaticalvariations, the innovative texting, the flood

of acronyms, the smiley faces, and the pearance of capital letters and punctuation Ialso realized that there is nothing anyone can

disap-do to stop language from constantlychanging

The growing informality of American lish mirrors what is happening to society it-self Just as most people are now choosingcasual clothing, they are also becoming in-formal with language It has become the in-way to bond with friends and associateswhile keeping pace with the latest trends

Eng-I began to catch some of George W’s ity with language and to recognize the ca-maraderie and, yes, even excitement thatgoes with using language in new, more inter-esting, more enjoyable, more imaginativeways.

jovial-I also realized that it was no longer teachersand lexicographers who were shaping lan-guage It was the great masses of ordinarypeople, especially young musicians, humor-ists, writers, and general dissidents whowere leading the way The process is a con-stant, natural churning that no language po-lice or remedial teachers can alter

Suddenly, it seems, almost everybody isspeaking and writing more freely and enjoy-ing it more Many of the rules and standardsthat have served for more than four centuriesare quietly being shelved as we speak andwrite We are all constantly creating the newlanguage that is Amglish, the title that somepeople have already given to it

This is a momentous development at an citing time As if to prove the point, the top

ex-two editors of the popular online Politico

re-ported in December 2010: “More trafficcomes from an item on Sarah Palin’s ‘refudi-ate’ than from our hundreds of stories onthe complexities of health care reform orWall Street regulation.”

Such massive attention to language change

is unprecedented, and it’s worldwide Thesubject itself is so huge and so fluctuatingthat no book can do more than merelyscratch the surface of the story The field iswide open for further exploration

While this book seeks to share the thrills ofthe emerging Amglish, it also recognizes theurgent need, especially for young people, tobecome proficient in their native language,whatever it is The ultimate cool is knowinghow and when to use the prevailing language

of business and government for one’s own

benefit while fully enjoying the “current”wild world of informal language.

In order to paint a full and honest picture

of today’s language scene, I have let bits ofAmglish fall naturally into parts of this book

My secret hope is that doing so will, like, give

me immunity from any criticism about theway that, you know, the book is written

Let the celebration begin

FROM THE AUTHOR

A book like this one could not be donewithout the expert help and willing coopera-tion of many people, including some who arenot aware of the roles they played in provid-ing the evidence needed to illustrate thebook’s unassailable theses

As the author, I would first like to credit mywife, Ruth Fort, for rekindling my interest inlanguage with a book gift years ago relating

to Sam Johnson’s famous dictionary I amdeeply in debt to her for her unsurpassed

editing and advice from the very beginning

of this project I am also grateful for her eration of my single-minded devotion to aninanimate object for five years I would like

tol-to put any gross errors on her shoulders, butthat would be my first error

Next, I would like to sincerely thank theworld’s greatest caricaturist, John Doherty,for his excellent work so prominent in thesepages John and I first collaborated in pro-ducing the famous Bush House of Cards in

2003 I also would like to thank his wifeJudith for her extremely careful editing andgenerous advice

I give special thanks to Niels Aaboe, JaniceBraunstein, Sarah David, Matt Evans,Marissa Parks, and Sam Caggiula at Rowman

& Littlefield Publishers for seeing the ilities of such a book in the first place and fortheir advice and help since that momentousdecision

possib-Still others who deserve very special tion include John Adams, Tony Badran,Carole Berke, Daniel Bouskela, Maria AngelaLoquercio Bouskela, Feodor Bratenkov, Mo-nique Briendwalker, Robert Chaddock, Mar-garet Chapin, David Crystal, George Dahl,Paul Dickson, Tsomo Faith, Adam Faulkner,John Fitzgerald, Jurgen Flach, Arthur Fort,Andrew Grant, Irene Grossman, Nick Gross-man, Yi Han, Florence Lloyd, Charles Lund,Jay Matthews, Alexander Michaelson, Mat-thew Michaelson, Ahmed Moamber, AmalMudallali, William Powers, Martha Rowse,Jim Roy, Julie Schoo, Molly Silvia, DeniseTerry, Donald Terry, Tsemdo Thar, SerdarTonbul, Larry Torres, Lowell Vizenor,Lawrence White, and Dario Zuddu.

men-FROM THE ILLUSTRATOR

One day in 2003, my phone rang and it was aman named Arthur Rowse proposing a col-laboration on our project that became the

Bush House of Cards My response to himthen was, “Boy, did you get the right num-ber!” His vision on that project and on thisbook has been an inspiration to me It’s agreat privilege to craft his ideas into visualform His command of the language, his wit,and his ability to connect the dots sent meeagerly flying to the drawing board So,thanks to him for making that call and for in-viting me to share this work.

My greatest support and inspiration in myart and life is my wife, Judith Doherty Herexperience as a writer and editor added an-other set of eyes to this project, all the whilejuggling her own work and freelance sched-ule And we stayed married! Thanks to NielsAaboe, Sarah David, and all the staff at Row-man & Littlefield for their support

Made in the U.S.A.

Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate.

—Sarah Palin on Twitter, July 18, 2010

With her words above, the former

Republic-an vice presidential nominee was trying tourge people to reject a proposed Muslim cen-ter two blocks from Ground Zero in NewYork City She immediately drew some flakfor partially misidentifying the issue and ma-ligning Muslims So she toned down thewording in a subsequent tweet

But her worst crime, judging from press

re-action, was to make up the term refudiate.

Grammarians were shocked Journalists ploded “There’s no such word,” they shouted

ex-in prex-int and on Twitter as they relished onemore chance to show that the feisty formerAlaska governor was out of touch withreality

The flames temporarily singed Palin into

hastily substituting the word refute When

that didn’t work, she fired back, adding anold gem from former president George W.Bush and some slang for getting too excited:

“Refudiate, misunderestimate, wee-weed

up English is a living language Shakespeareliked to coin words too Got to celebrate it!”Write on, Sarah! It’s time to celebrate thenew lingo that’s sweeping around the world.All nitpickers should put their picks away.Let’s face it, formal English is dying A new,much less formal language is taking over thiscountry and the world And it’s time to wel-come it with open arms In fact, there’s noway to stop it

IN PRAISE OF PALIN

Asher Smith, a reporter for the Huffington

Post, was notable in his objection to the

fir-ing squad lined up against the former Alaskagovernor “Hand it to Palin,” he wrote “Re-fudiate is catchy and sounds right to the ear.”Smith had a point Palin’s word could beconsidered more logical than many wordsalready accepted in the famously illogicalEnglish language

What was so wrong about combining refute and repudiate? Palin had used the word a few days earlier on The Sean Hannity Show

without arousing any reaction Palin ously assumed that was enough approval tomake it an OK word in today’s environment.She knew that the ultraconservative hostwould not allow a verbal abortion on hisprogram

obvi-And what about Palin’s abbreviation for

please? This slimmed-down version of the

word was propelled by the advent of texting

and has become so universally understoodand accepted, especially on Facebook andTwitter, that none of her detractors evenmentioned it Language establishment lead-

ers may not have been plsd, but they are no

longer able to control the spelling of many

wds, especially now that so many people are

alluva twitter about language

THE QUIRKS OF ENGLISH

For centuries, Americans have been trying todeal with the mysteries of the language theirforebears heedlessly brought with them fromEngland in the seventeenth century No oth-

er language has ever been stitched together

by so many sight-impaired, impaired, tongue-impaired babblers intosuch a crazy quilt of rules and traditions.Numerous books, including many recentones, have been written to show people how

hearing-to comply with the increasingly outmodedrequirements Some sell well perhaps

because of the large amount of grammarguilt still harbored by many people But theonly thing that has improved is the failurerate of national language tests.

What makes English so fascinating is notthe impossible challenge of finding perfec-tion so much as its large number of irregu-larities, defects, peculiarities, and just plainillogical requirements, not to mention thedifficulties of pronouncing and spelling it.People from all parts of society have tried

to use their native language without error.But nobody has yet been able to do so, nomatter how hard he or she or they have tried.There will always be some defect or quirkthat prevents perfection Take Mark Twain’swords for it When he considered the idea ofEnglish without error, he grunted, “Thething just can’t be done.”1

It should not be surprising that a new, lessformal, easier-to-use version of English israpidly taking shape with a character of its

own Among the names suggested for it, the

best appears to be Amglish, since it is clearly

an American version of English

When Sarah popped up with refudiate,

she—like countless lesser-knowns—wassimply doing her bit to help the natural lan-guage process work its way It was her ex-plosive genius for mixing and matchingwords that captivated the public Perhapsher most masterful coinage came on March

29, 2011, in the early phase of U.S ment in the Libyan uprising, when she wasasked to assess the nation’s role by GretaVan Susteren on Fox TV: “I too am notknowing Do we use the term intervention,

involve-do we use war, involve-do we use squirmish?”

No word, accidental or not, could better scribe the American role after strongmanMuammar Qaddafi refused to quit and theUnited States began efforts to unseat himwithout widening the conflict into a full-fledged war Weren’t many Americans

de-squirming to find the right word to describethe situation?

COMMON SPEECH PATTERNS

It’s not only Palin’s uncanny ability to burstforth with the perfect new word but her con-comitant ability to level with the average per-son by speaking in a natural, informal man-ner She was in clover with Van Susteren,who has some similar language patterns.For example, on the same show six daysearlier, Van Susteren had asked her, “Whatdo—what, in your opinion, is, in general, notnecessarily just here, but the role of the mil-itary? Is—I mean, what—what is the role ofthe military?”

To which Palin replied: “Well, the UN ously wants this—the role to be of our milit-ary just a humanitarian effort per the UNresolution that America has been a part of,and that’s why we are engaged in enactingthe no-fly zone However, again, with

obvi-Qaddafi having the blood of innocent icans on his hands—and we have an oppor-tunity to say, OK, finally we have—you’re go-ing to be held accountable You’re going to

Amer-be gone.”

Disjointed syntax like this, of course, is notunusual for ordinary conversations But weused to expect leading figures and mediatypes to use less fractured language on thepublic record No longer John McWhorter, a

language specialist at the New Republic, saw

a major change occurring when he wrote that

“having trouble rubbing a noun and a verbtogether is not considered a mark againstone as a figure of political authority.”2

WHAT IS AMGLISH?

It’s informal American English, the first truly

international tongue, the lingua franca for

communicating between countries with native languages other than English.

It’s also a tossed salad of new words, slang terms, tech talk, song lyrics, black talk, Valley girlisms, hippie speak, and hip-hop terms.

It’s what some call nonstandard English, cidental words, “new” clichés, spoonerisms, malapropisms, misspellings, mispronunci- ations, and selective grammar.

ac-It’s acronyms, bureaucratese, Internet slang, tech talk, e-mailese, texting, instant messages, emoticons, and words mixed with numbers.

It’s Bawlmorese, Bostonian, Brooklynese, Cajun, Chinook, Joysey, Looziana, Midwest- ern, Ozark, Philly talk, Texsun, WestVA, and other regional dialects.

And it’s Arablish, Chinglish, Konglish, lish, and dozens of other international mix- tures called “lishes.”

Spang-It should be clear to everyone by now:American English is rapidly changing intosomething much less formal when national

leaders are catching the wave It is pureAmglish And it’s bipartisan All prominentpoliticians have misused their native lan-guage in one way or another Vice PresidentBiden has become famous for his “bloopers,”one of which was his claim during the 2008campaign that “the number one job facingthe middle class [is] a three-letter word:J-O-B-S.” President Obama is also not im-mune to language slipups, as this chapterwill make clear.

WHO SPEAKS AMGLISH?

All Americans speak Amglish whenever theydepart—knowingly or unknowingly—fromthe rules of formal English or use words thatare not in a standard dictionary One depar-ture doesn’t make a new language, but a pat-tern of them is a good start Even the best-educated people use Amglish to an increas-ing degree, often without realizing it

There is no doubt that Standard English mains the prevailing language of business,government, and the media in the UnitedStates But it is also clear from the manyvariations of it that the language is beingtransformed into something quite differentfrom what it was only half a century or soago.

re-Also changing in a big way is the ancientconcept of language discipline What mattersnow is no longer whether people speak orwrite correctly; it’s whether they make senseand are understood, regardless of the rules

or standards that are followed or not lowed As George Orwell observed, “Correctgrammar and syntax [are] of no importance

fol-as long fol-as one makes one’s meaning clear.”You can almost hear the amen chorus

The groundswell toward less formal guage is also being driven by the growingmix of the world’s tongues in the UnitedStates and elsewhere The crescendo of

lan-competing dialects and accents serves to ther break down old barriers and install new,less confining ones The numbers alone areimpressive.

fur-According to reliable British sources,3about 2 billion people speak some form ofEnglish, including about 500 million whogrew up in an English-speaking household.The other 1.5 billion speak it as a second,third, or fourth language Almost all thesepeople speak an Amglish version of English

If you take British author Robert McCrum’sdefinition of “English speaking,” the totalnumber shoots up to 4 billion, more thanhalf the earth’s population of 7 billion, give

or take a few hundred million McCrum cludes anyone having “knowledge of or ac-quaintance with some kind of English.”4With that definition, even a sheepherder inNepal might know what to do if he and hisflock came to a fork in the road with a sign-ing saying STOP But just as a few swallows

in-don’t make a summer, a few words in-don’tmake a person conversant in a language.The British Council, a government-suppor-ted nonprofit with a mission to promote thelanguage, estimates that by 2020, “nearly a

third of the world’s population will all [sic]

be trying to learn English at the same time.”That total might include the wordy writer ofthe prediction

PALINISMS TURN GENERATIONAL

In response to some Facebook critics of the

TLC reality show Sarah Palin’s Alaska in

November 2010, sixteen-year-old daughter Willow showed that she had learned Amglish well at her mother’s knee.

After acronyming a few obscenities, she cused critics of being “jealous of my families

ac-[sic] success and you guys aren’t goin ac-[sic]

anywhere with your lives.” Her older sister

Bristol added, “you’re running your mouth just

to talk sh-t.”

After a brief session with Mama Grizzly, they apologized.

THE NEED FOR LEADERSHIP

As the third millennium neared, confusionover language standards was reaching a peak

in the United States English teachers peared unable to explain why verbal SATscores were dropping so steadily And manystudents must have wondered why they werepenalized for saying and writing things thatwere making equally young musicians andcomedians filthy rich

ap-Older people who were not swept up by thenew lingo probably wondered whether to ig-nore what they had learned in school or keeptrying to conform while so many around

them were not And many young adults musthave pondered when to follow the rules andwhen to run with the crowd Everyonewanted to know how to act cool in the chan-ging language environment.

Among those raising questions publicly wasPresident George W Bush when he asked,

“Is our children learning?”5

Educators were shifting millions of dents into remedial English courses withoutknowing how best to solve the plague of earlydropouts from school Many parents werealso getting worried about whether theirchildren’s language was good enough for thejob market

stu-The time seemed ripe for some kind of tional language leadership The basic ques-tion was whether formal American Englishwas being—or should be—replaced andwhether influential Americans should em-brace the winds of change A related

na-question was who was going to step forward

to help find the answers?

By the late 1980s, President George H W.Bush had shown some awareness of theoverall challenge when he offered up an oc-casional malapropism or grammatical lapse

At a formal dinner for the Pakistani primeminister on June 6, 1989, he admitted, “Flu-ency in English is something that I’m oftennot accused of.”

But the next president, Bill Clinton, had toomuch love for formal English to lead a popu-lar rebellion against it His only public lapsecame during a brief moment when he wasquestioned about the Monica Lewinsky mat-ter, and he found it necessary to question the

meaning of the word is For this, he was

sometimes called a cunning linguist

JOY IN MUDDLEVILLE

The five-to-four Supreme Court decision inthe contested election of George W Bush as

president in 2000—while ballots were stillbeing counted in Florida—brought unboun-ded joy to the ranks of language rebels Bushhad clearly shown an intriguing originalitywith words during the campaign He wasted

no time connecting with the public moodwhen he blurted out, “They misunderestim-ated me,” after his election.6

With those three words, George W clearlysignaled that he was primed for a leadershiprole in the language wars Although he musthave been exposed to some formal English atAndover and Yale, he obviously was more in-terested in things he didn’t need lessons in,such as baseball and bar hopping Fromwatching his father, he also had become fullyaware that a generous amount of brokenEnglish could bring handsome political re-wards to men of privilege by leveling themlinguistically with the hoi polloi

However, his feisty mom presented a slightproblem Eleven years earlier, she had

noticed a failure of many American ies—possibly including her own—to be able

famil-to read and write English So she formed theBarbara Bush Foundation for Family Liter-acy, no doubt to share the lessons that some

in her own family had failed to learn at homewith people who might better appreciatethem

In the end, she did not stand in George’sway, and he was off and running It was notuntil three years into his presidential termthat he finally realized what his mom was soconcerned about He said, “The literary level

of our children are appalling.”7He were notjoking

AUSPICIOUS BEGINNINGS

Bush’s knack for going with the flow of guage was fortuitous for all Americans aswell as for Amglish Only three months afterhis inauguration, he saw the need to finally

lan-straighten out the long-standing public

con-fusion over when to use the words lay and

lie, just one of the language’s many

conun-drums Language authorities had tried forcenturies to clear it up, but none hadsucceeded

“We understand,” he said, “where thepower of this country lay It lays in the heartsand souls of Americans It must lay in ourpocketbooks It lays in the willingness forpeople to work hard But as importantly, itlay in the fact that we’ve got citizens from allwalks of life .”8

The answer was finally clear: Lay is the

choice, hands down, in all circumstances.End of problem But a broader message wasimplied: that it was okay to wing it whenfaced with such quandaries in English, in-

cluding when to use who or whom, will or

shall, that or which, further or farther, et

cetera There has always been a leadership

vacuum for such quandaries Language