testa-j%osu-20@OHIO-STATE.ARPA (08/05/86)
Keith Lynch writes: >At work we had a >party last week to celebrate the naturalization of an employee who >escaped from Laos on a boat three years ago. She spoke no English >then, but now speaks better than a lot of inner city types who have >lived in the US all their life. Who says that the English spoken by "inner city types" is worse than that spoken by anyone else?!?! Different, yes. To those of us fortunate enough to have received a good deal of education, it sounds "bad" because it is different from what we were taught is "good". But that definition is in the eyes (ears?) of whoever is teaching it. The purpose of language is to communicate with others. People within the inner city, speaking this "deficient" English, can communicate with others very clearly. But because you or i have a difficult time understanding it, does that make it inferior? Go to England sometime, and be amazed at all of the "deficient" speakers of English there!! Several British people i know could not understand a word that Jimmy Carter said the entire time that he was President. Does that mean his English is "inferior"? Or is it theirs? joe testa testa-j%osu-20@ohio-state.arpa "the next time that you are tempted to run into a moviehouse and yell 'fire', you should instead run into a firehouse and yell 'movie'. " ------- -------