no “right” english

Different English is not wrong

| Alicia

Instead of seeing the way you use English as wrong, think of it as just one of many ways to use English. (A particularly awesome way, because it’s yours.)

So when you’re learning “standard” English, you’re not learning all the ways you’re wrong: you’re learning another way to communicate. Suresh Canagarajah, a professor and expert on writing, says this kind of approach

would make us perceive ESL students as expanding their repertoires rather than adding something that is missing.

Suresh Canagarajah,
“ESL Composition as a Literate Art of the Contact Zone,”
First-Year Composition

There is a world of difference in feeling like you are expanding your capabilities, as Canagarajah recommends, and feeling like you are broken and deficient and not good enough. While it might seem minor, studies have shown that a negative, stressful environment makes it harder to learn English.

Asao Inoue, another professor and writing expert, feels the same way:

This course does not consider these other Englishes as signs of being “underprepared,” “deficient,” or “lacking.”

Asao Inoue,
“A Grade-Less Writing Course,”
First-Year Composition

Then why learn “standard” or “proper” English at all? So you can use it when you want. Don’t replace your language or your English with “standard” English. As Canagarajah said, learning “standard” English expands your repertoire–the kinds of English you can use.

And there are times where “standard” English will communicate you better than your own language or your own English. As Canagarajah says,

A use of one’s repertoires without considering the dominant norms will sound naive and fail to display rhetorical sensitivity or language awareness…. [Standard Written English] is an important part of one’s repertoire

Suresh Canagarajah,
“ESL Composition as a Literate Art of the Contact Zone,”
First-Year Composition

So learn “standard” English, as another way to communicate, NOT as a way to replace your own language or English.

We Real Cool

| Alicia

We real cool. We
Leave school.

“We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks

This begins Pulitzer prize winner Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem, “We real cool.” 

Just from these two lines, I can visualize the characters who said them. The way they stand, the defiant looks on their faces. Even their ethnicity.

Can you imagine if she listened to the “rules” of English and wrote, “We are cool. We skipped school today.”

All the character and interestingness drops out of the words and leaves us with nothing but “correct” grammar.

There is no “right” English

| Alicia

One of the problems with insisting on proper English is that English is always changing. What is proper now might not be proper in ten years and definitely won’t still be correct over a large span of time. Check out these examples of English, some of which we can’t even read any more:

Beowulf

Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

Beowulf

Beowulf, a thousand-year-old poem in English, not only is completely unreadable, but even has letters that we don’t use in English any more. Can you imagine if this were the “proper English” insisted upon? 

Chaucer

Whan that Aprill with his shoures sote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer

Here, at least, we are kind of, sort of, able to recognize some words, but 600-year-old The Canterbury Tales is hard to read, even with extensive footnotes. And this is ENGLISH. 

Shakespeare

Aroint thee, witch, aroint thee.

King Lear by William Shakespeare

Beats me what “aroint” means, but at least we can begin to recognize this kind of English, from Shakespeare’s King Lear. Even more recognizable is this line from Hamlet:

I’ll make a ghost of him that lets me.

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

But if you think Hamlet is saying “I’ll kill you if you let me do this,” you’d be wrong. “Let,” in this line, means the opposite of “let” in current English. Hamlet here is saying he’ll kill anyone that stops him.

Shakespeare also made up words.

All of us

You know who else makes up words? All of us.

Here are some words the Oxford English Dictionary recently added to its dictionary, most of which you already know:

Okay, but what about when you’re writing a paper for school? Is all this making-up-words and changing language okay then? Stay tuned; I have a post on that coming up soon.