Canthook

This picture was taken in Houston, at a rally protesting amnesty for illegal immigrants. If this woman believes that anyone who can't master English doesn't deserve to live in America, we have only one question: "When are YOU leaving?".

I've wondered at various times, what the consequences would be of a constitutional amendment requiring the government documents be in English only. Could you argue a search warrant is invalid because it's grammatically incorrect? Could you void a speeding ticket or parking ticket if it's not in proper English? Could you argue that no income tax is due on your income it the official form is not properly punctuated? Could you avoid a charge of murder if the word "homocide" is spelt incorrectly?

Oh, and before you make fun of me for using the word "spelt" instead of "spelled", I checked. The past, and the past-participle forms of the very "to spell" is properly "spelt".

If it refers to the orthography of a word, that is. If you regularly give a co-worker a break by assuming his duties, you spell him today, will be spelling him tomorrow, and you spelled him yesterday.

Spelt is also a form of grain, a rustic form of wheat, but that would be a noun instead of a verb. If you throw that grain at someone with great force, you might be pelting him, but you aren't spelting him.

The funny thing about the official language is that people argue that "every other immigrant group has learned the language, why can't they?" If that were true, of course, most of us would be speaking Iriquoian, or Oglalla, or some other American language, instead of a European language like English.

Furthermore, if one examines the issue, adult immigrants rarely learn the language very well of the country they move to. It's hard for an adult to learn a new language, no matter how hard they try. They learn enough to get by, but it's their kids that grow up speaking the common language of their new land.

This happens with dialects, too. Many of us know of folk from Alabama who still say y'all thirty years after they have moved, and of folk from Massachusetts who still say "waddah" after decades somewhere else. My wife claims I refer to laundry baskets as being full of the "warsh".

The Farmland News of Archbold, Ohio, used to give subscribers a bumper sticker. I can't remember the exact wording, but it said something like, "Don't complain about farmers with your mouth full." The thing is, though, most farmers in the Archbold area don't produce food. They produce field corn, which can be milled into cornmeal, and they produce winter wheat, which can be milled into cake flour, and they produce soybeans, which can be crushed, with the oil extracted and refined into vegetable oil, and the meal toasted, and turned into vegetable protein, but they don't produce food.

Before the 1960s, many of them had cows producing milk, and chickens producing eggs. We picked wild grapes that grew along the fence rows, and we had a few fruit trees in our orchard, but that was mostly for our own consumption. We raised an acre or so of tomatoes every year, most of which were sold as the primary ingredient in Stokley Van-Camp's catsup, but the tomatoes were genuine food as they came from the fields. When I think of plucking a dead-ripe tomato, rubbing it against my shirt to brush off the dirt, and then eating it like an apple, my mouth waters. Picking tomatoes is hard work. Migrant laborers don't get much respect from others, but if every American worked even half as hard as they do, our factories would be putting Asians out of work.

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