BS: WV Dems...

Subject: BS: WV Dems...
From: beardedbruce
Date: 12 Apr 05 - 06:47 PM

WV Dems want WVirginians to learn English...


http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/04/12/official.english.ap/index.html

Subject: RE: BS: WV Dems...
From: GUEST,MarkS
Date: 12 Apr 05 - 06:54 PM

Great! I'm tired of wearing out my Bobert to English dictionary to read his posts.

Subject: RE: BS: WV Dems...
From: CarolC
Date: 12 Apr 05 - 07:02 PM

Anti-immigrant legislation. And it's pretty ironic, too, considering the fact that most people who were born and raised in West Virginia are barely able to speak the language themselves. I say this from having lived in West Virginia for several years, where the principal of one of the high schools near where I was living at the time once left a message on my phone with such mangled English, I never did figure out what she was trying to say.

Subject: RE: BS: WV Dems...
From: Padre
Date: 12 Apr 05 - 10:28 PM

As a native West Virginian, educated in the public schools and West Virginia University, it sounds like CarolC. is one of the carpetbaggers who think that because we don't talk like Fran Drescher, that we're 'barely able to speak the language.' Her disrespect is really offensive, but not unexpected. It's like the city person who moves to the country, and then becomes incensed (pardon the pun) when she learns that farms have animal smells associated with them.

Padre

Subject: RE: BS: WV Dems...
From: Bobert
Date: 12 Apr 05 - 10:51 PM

Hey, it ain't me but the the rest of you all's that got the problem... Get over it...

Ain't no use fixin' somethin' that ain't broked...

Subject: RE: BS: WV Dems...
From: CarolC
Date: 12 Apr 05 - 10:54 PM

I apologize if you have been offended by what I said, Padre. But even the student in my household whom the principal left the message for was appalled by the grammar (or lack of it) that this principal displayed. The teachers, at the very least (and administrators), ought to be able to set a good example for the students. And this principal was hardly unusual among her colleagues in the way she used the language.

By the time I moved to West Virginia (where I lived for almost ten years), I had already spent 12 years in a very isolated, rural, and mountainous part of Western Maryland, where English is spoken only somewhat better than where I lived in West Virginia. I was hardly a city slicker who had only recently discovered the joys of rural living. And before that, I lived for a few years in various parts of Oklahoma, both rural and urban, where English is also tragically misused.

I'm sorry if you don't like the fact I noticed that people in some parts of the US don't have a very good grasp of the English language, but it's still the truth. Maybe if the educators were held to a higher standard, this wouldn't be the case.

But the fact that these politicians in West Virginia are making laws that hold newcomers to the area to standard that many native West Virginians couldn't even comply with is more than a little bit hypocritical. And I am very familiar with the kind of people in West Virginia who would make such an anti-immigrant law. Racism and other forms of intolerance are alive and well in those places. This law just puts it out there where everyone can see it very, very clearly.

Subject: RE: BS: WV Dems...
From: CarolC
Date: 13 Apr 05 - 02:05 AM

Bobert, what you do isn't the kind of thing I'm talking about. You use a dialect (although I suspect that it may be a blend of more than one dialect, with maybe a little pure Bobert mixed in), to articulate your thoughts. And you do it quite well using that "dialect". What I'm talking about really is more like the way W. Bush is unable to clearly articulate a thought using the English language. I encountered quite a lot of that in some of the places where I've lived, and I regard that as separate problem, unrelated to dialect or accent, but certainly related to poorly qualified teachers, and a substandard education system.

Subject: RE: BS: WV Dems...
From: Bobert
Date: 13 Apr 05 - 07:38 AM

Ahhhhh, doncha actually have to have a"thought" if you are to "atriculate" it, Carol? Somehow Mr. Bush doesn't impress me as a heady feller... More like a parrot... Remember the time he went on Tim Russert without *being preped* by his handlers? He was so thoughtless that I was lookin' around the sleeves of his jacket fir a feedin' tube...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: WV Dems...
From: Janie
Date: 13 Apr 05 - 09:18 AM

I'm with you, Padre. I went through 16 years of school in West Virginia. I didn't hear any more problems with grammer there than anywhere else I have been, in the school system or out of it.

Janie

Subject: RE: BS: WV Dems...
From: CarolC
Date: 13 Apr 05 - 09:23 AM

Janie, in what part of West Virginia did you go to school? I think Padre went to school in the area around Charleston, but please correct me if I'm wrong, Padre.

Subject: RE: BS: WV Dems...
From: Claymore
Date: 13 Apr 05 - 05:54 PM

This is really about apples and oranges.

Folks from different regions often confuse syntax with accents. As one who has lived all over the US, I can say that the most ignorant use of the language comes from New York, followed by New Jersey and Rhode Island. Yet this bill deals only with the official publications of the the State. That way we don't have to worry about bills submitted or published in French, German or Swahili. Look at Canada if you want a real horrorshow.

God bless you to speak any language you want at home, but if you come to the WV DMV, you better be able to read the words STOP, YIELD, and NO LEFT TURN. And if you have trouble with those words, you will need to understand, HANDS UP, SPREAD 'EM, or HOLD THIS TIGHT 'TILL THE BLEEDING STOPS...

Subject: RE: BS: WV Dems...
From: jimmyt
Date: 13 Apr 05 - 06:10 PM

I was also educated in West Virginia. I found it to be a lot like Ohio, and California, and Wisconsin. and Kentucky, and Maryland and Georgia. Lots of folks use bad grammer, and lots of folks use good grammer.

Subject: RE: BS: WV Dems...
From: CarolC
Date: 13 Apr 05 - 06:28 PM

The kind of problematic grammar I have in mind is things like "had went"...

ex: "I had went to the store yesterday..."

There were quite a few of these kinds of problems with grammar that I was hearing from the people around me in the areas where I lived and shopped (Fort Ashby, Keyser, and Romney in West Virginia, and Cumberland and LaVale in MD... Garrett County in Maryland is a whole other matter). I started keeping track of these kinds of things to see if they were very common, and I found that they were not only common, but they were generally considered the norm. And that's why I started paying attention to how the educators were speaking. And what I found was that they were making all of the same grammatical errors that the other people were making, and by doing so, they were passing them on to the next generations of people.

And that principal, whose job is to ensure the students' ability to make their way in the world outside of West Virginia as well as within it, had so many of those kinds of errors strung together, her phone message was completely incomprehensible to anyone who was not born and raised in that part of West Virginia.

But still, and the reason West Virginia is the state in the spotlight in this thread in relation to its use of English, is because of it's new law declaring English to be the official language of the state. If it's going to be doing something like that, it should expect criticism if large numbers of it's native citizens don't have an adequate grasp of the language themselves. Maybe the government's time and money would be better spent working on providing better education for all of its citizens, rather than working to exclude many of its most recent newcomers.

P.S. I got an idear, Claymore, you wanna pahk ya cah down't the haba, go't the stowa, get a coke? Or get a drinka watah at the bubblah? (Says the woman from Rhode Island).