John McWhorter

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Two Languages Walk Into a Bar

MundoAmérica, ,

I have been asked often these days about a recent study on a form of Spanish-influenced English that has emerged in Miami. It is by the linguist Phillip Carter at Florida International University, assisted by Kristen D’Alessandro Merii.

Miami is highly bilingual; in some neighborhoods, 90 percent of households use Spanish daily. But more interesting, perhaps, are the ways in which many Spanish-English bilinguals use expressions in English that are modeled on Spanish. It’s as if they are sometimes speaking English “in Spanish”. This is true not only of those whose first language was Spanish, but of second- and third-generation bilinguals, too.…  Seguir leyendo »

When ‘Racism’ Is Not Really Racism

ReflexionesSocial

“Systemic bigotry”.

“Institutional prejudice”.

Notice how those terms don’t really work? They challenge our mental processing, in part because systems can’t be bigots and institutions can’t be prejudiced.

And so I offer a modest proposal, but an earnest one. How about revising our terms for “systemic racism”, “structural racism” and “institutional racism”?

The problem with these phrases is that systems, structures and institutions cannot be racist any more than they can be happy or sad. They can be made up of individuals who share these traits, or even have procedures that may engender them. But systems, structures and institutions do not themselves have feelings or prejudices.…  Seguir leyendo »

English Is Messy. Do I Have to Spell It Out?

Europa,

One of the best things going on around 200 B.C.E. (from this linguist’s point of view, at least) was that a librarian in Alexandria, Aristophanes of Byzantium, invented the first punctuation system that deserved the name — one better than the one we’re used to. A mark up high (“˙”) meant a full stop, like our period; in the middle (“·”) meant a brief pause, a firm but gentle separation, like our comma; and one on the bottom (“”.) meant something in between, a breather of sorts, like our semicolon.

Compare this simple, neat approach to the confusions of our current system: perpetual controversy over the use of the Oxford comma after the penultimate element in a series, despite that an “and” comes afterward, which many take to eliminate the need, in most cases, for a comma.…  Seguir leyendo »

America Has More Than One Spanglish

MundoAmérica, ,

It’s easy to think that where language is concerned, in the United States we have a sort of vanilla, mainstream English and then some minor variations upon it — Southern, Upper Midwest, Southern California “Valley” maybe. Our dialects overall aren’t as different from one another as the various ones in Britain — Cockney, Scottish, West Country — because English hasn’t been here long enough for the dialects to drift their different ways to such an extent. Modern media makes our dialects even more uniform than they would be anyway. And, it seems, immigrants bring their languages here, only to see them blow away in the wind after a generation or two.…  Seguir leyendo »

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia

“Tell me, why should we care?” he asks.

It’s a question I can expect whenever I do a lecture about the looming extinction of most of the world’s 6,000 languages, a great many of which are spoken by small groups of indigenous people. For some reason the question is almost always posed by a man seated in a row somewhere near the back.

Asked to elaborate, he says that if indigenous people want to give up their ancestral language to join the modern world, why should we consider it a tragedy? Languages have always died as time has passed. What’s so special about a language?…  Seguir leyendo »