African American

The English Language and Social Class

Niall O'Donnell 10 Comments

I’ve still been thinking about common mispronunciations since Saturday. While doing a little casual googling to confirm what I suspected about which mispronunciations annoyed people, I came across a post which featured some of the more common language errors that bedevil Americans in particular. They were all there: supposably, libary, literally, irregardless, aks et al. And I can understand why they might be annoying. If you say one thing, and someone else says another, that’s annoying. Even more so if the dictionary agrees with you. Getting annoyed is ok, but are such errors really a sign of the death of the English language?

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They’re all racist, aren’t they?

Niall O'Donnell 10 Comments

But the Irish are racist, aren’t they? (internet commenter, 2016)

I don’t mean to be racist, but the Poles are the racist f**kers on the planet. (idiot who won’t be named, 2000)

Recently, I came across the first sentence above, somewhere deep in the comments section of an article I’ve long since forgotten about. I was surprised, as I didn’t consider myself to be racist, nor did the majority of my compatriots seem to be. Reading on, things were cleared up a little.

I came to realise that the person was referring to a belief that Irish-Americans are racist. Which let me off the hook, but then I remembered that the article was about an Irish actor, as in, from Ireland, so the person was not only indulging in wild generalisations, but also conflating being Irish-American with being Irish. There was a whole heap of confusion going on. Continue reading →

Daily Prompt: Border

Niall O'Donnell 2 Comments

via Daily Prompt: Border

Borders are inherently interesting, as places where two different cultures meet and, usually, blend together. Of course this is often especially true of languages, as can be seen in areas where nations with two different languages share a border. Take Catalan, for example. It’s much more similar to French than Castilian Spanish is, due to Catalonia’s proximity to France, and history of cultural exchange.

English, being so widely-spoken, has picked up many words from other languages, both from indigenous languages of English-speaking countries, and the languages of immigrants. I could spend hours writing about that, but what the prompt made me realise is that the United States is the only English-speaking country to share a border with a country with another first language (and there is also of course the Vermont-Quebec border in the north). Continue reading →