Banning English
Dennis Baron’s satirical essay on banning the English language raises some interesting points, even if they don’t quite make sense with what he’s trying to prove. How well is English used today?
The English language is named as the hardest language to learn, with all of the rules you have to know, ones that often don’t make sense. Words are spelled differently than they sound and it just gets plain confusing. Recently, there was an idea floating around that they would make English so that anyway you spelled something (as long as it sounded like the word you were trying to say) would be correct. Is that really the way we want our language to go? Where we have been taught all of our lives that “cat” is spelled with a “c”…and now they tell us it can be spelled with a “k” because of the way it sounds?
English language rules seem to have been pulled out of a hat when the language was created. And as a spoken language, it seems to work. People understand rules as they speak them, but as they write the language, all the rules and facts of the English language seem to fly out of our heads.
We’re taught foreign languages in school and none of them have as many rules as English does. I was a French student in high school myself, and I never had problems with remember how certain verbs changed and accents and how things were written, because the general sentence structure was always the same.
In English, however, there’s rules for everything, and sometimes the rules don’t even need a reason…they just happen!
So why not ban the English language and have everyone learn and speak one of the other business languages of the world? French and Spanish are already taught in most Elementary, Middle and High schools. Schools in other countries learn up to three different languages and their own native language as well.
Let’s try it!
(Of course, this was entirely a joke as well. I’m all for the English language! Yay English!)
13 comments:
Well, I somewhat agree with you Kyle. I feel that the English language should not be banned, but I do feel that everyone should have to learn another language. Learning other languages helps us to understand other cultures and the people who live in them. That might be completely off the subject of what you are trying to say, but I feel that would help with the issues we have with people from other countries and vise versa.
Another thing I found interesting about your post was when you said that there was an "idea floating around that they would make English so that anyway you spelled something (as long as it sounded like the word you were trying to say) would be correct". That just sounds like people are being very lazy! I mean, why in the world would they make it "correct" to spell cat with a K? That just struck me as very weird!!
Kristen, I agree with what you are saying about learning English and other languages. It does give us the opportunity to explore other cultures. Other cultures can be very exciting. I do understand what Kyle was saying about just spelling words with any letters just as long as they sound like what you are trying to say. We have changed the sounds of our letters. For example, "Leah" is spelled with "ah," but it sounds like a "ya." I do know that African Americans have a big problem with doing this. Our children's names are great examples.
I speak English along with my native Nigerian language. It’s easier to speak English than to write it. If English should ever be ban, it should be for the written part, long essays, five-pages papers for assignments.
Anyways, no matter how hard English might be, I still appreciate it. Not everybody in Nigeria speaks my native language, so our formal language with other tribes is English. English is now spoken almost everywhere in Nigeria, which has made communication easier among Nigerians, without learning thousands of other languages in our country.
I agree with Kristen and Kyle that the banning of a whole language is crazy and doubtful. Knowing other languages is a good way to learn other cultures and that is not bad.
I agree with you. The English language is so important and is most common language in the world. More and more immigrants from other countries are coming over and learning about how to speak and write our language. Banding it would never go through and if it did I would still use it and so would everyone else. I also believe that you should learn another language.
I have heard of the saying lets spell words like they are sound. No No that is such a ridiculous idea! I'm by any means not a good speller, but they have spell checks and dictionaries.
I agree with Kristen. English should not be banned, altough there should be a more open door of opprotunity to learn different languages. Learning different languages could widen our job opprotunities. It also could help us understand other cultures.
I really think everybody should speak at least two different languages. In Finland for example we have to study our two official languages Finnish and Swedish. Beginning of third grade we also start studying English. Most of the people also take some French or German courses during the high school years.
I also think that English is the easiest language I know.
I too agree with Kristen that English should not be banned. I also agree with Caylenne about lerning different languages. Maybe we should be a country that speakes more than one language. This would be an advantage to us being able to speak more than one language. More job opportunities would be thrown our way. So learning another language would not hurt anyone.
I agree with you somewhat Kyle. English is known as the hardest language to learn. But i don't think that we should ban it. If it is still taking people this long to learn it, how long do you think it will take to learn another language? Its okay to learn other languages as you go to middle and high school, but i can honestly say that i took spanish in high school and i still and probably will never understand! (just a little joke to get my point across)
I really like Baron's essay because of his use of satire.
Like most here, I agree with the original post that English is one of the hardest languages to learn. I definitely don't think it should be banned and I most certainly think that the US made a mistake when it did not make English the official language. I know that English is hard and a lot of it really doesn't make sense, but that certainly doesn't make it a worthy language.
I think the we (as a country) have made too many concessions in an effort to not step on any toes. (I know this is a little off-topic, but I felt it dealt more with my perceived point of Baron's essay.)
Kyle I disagree with your statement that English has too many rules and forgein languages do not. I am taking Spanish and it has many rules and the structures are not the same. Words change depending on who you're talking too and there are too many words that mean the same thing, but are different in their spellings and usages. English is not a hard language, but then again I've spoken it all my life.
Kyle, what you said about spelling a word by the way it sounds and not by its actually spelling was interesting. That would make spelling much easier, but some words sound the same and have different spellings and meanings, there will be no way to differentiate between words if we use the word’s sounds to spell. That goes into what you were saying how English is complex. Although it is complex it shouldn’t be banned. People who are not a native speaker of English may find trouble learning the language, but banning English would result in people either rebelling and speaking the language anyway because it’s what they know, or people having trouble learning to speak a new language. What’s needed, in my opinion, is a more universal language.
I definitely agree with you Kristen that the English language should no be banned and that we should have to learn another language. English is a language that should not be banned because people all over the world are learning it. It is probably the easiest language to speak because I know that learning another language is hard. We need to learn other languages because sometimes they can even help us learn things about or for our own English language.
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