Blurry Lines

It doesn't take much for us to feel alienated through a different language being used, especially in groups. Language is one of the many tools we like to use to categorize and stereotype people we meet. Language is always a reflection of a person's background, so language differences can sometimes mean a great many other differences in beliefs.

I work as a designer for a sign company, where we have many customers that are immigrants from a number of different parts of the world. I have to constantly deal with language effecting the way I handle my job. It can be frustrating trying to produce a logo or graphic for someone that can only express themselves with a limited vocabulary of what I can understand. Once a guy brought in his 10 year old son, who had been learning English in public school for only a few months, to translate what he needed to say to me. It can also be fun to teach a little bit of English, and also learn something about another language. It is hard sometimes when a co-worker expresses his belief that everyone should speak English, because I don't agree.

I think it is interesting that Canada has a portion of people that speak French, and that it once almost divided the country into two. I wonder why the French language did not remain as popular in the French settlements along the Mississippi river in the United States? The northern/mid-western accent must have some amount of French influence, though I can't hear it at all.

I do enjoy listening to accents from all over the world, especially the different variations of U.S. English. I also think it can be fun to visit a place where you are the one with the weird accent. It makes it more obvious that people do treat you differently based on the way you talk. It is not only in the pronunciation that I notice geographic differences, but also in the words and wordings that are used. What "sounds right" to one person doesn't always to another, so I think that correctness is (and should be) relative to the people that use it.

I don't really like the idea that there are organizations prescribing the way that a language should be used by a certain group, especially if the group doing the prescribing doesn't really relate to the group that it is being prescribed to. Any of these organizations serve us better when the focus is more on defining the different ways that language is naturally used, rather than how it should or shouldn't be used. But, maybe without all the assigned rules handed out through history, we would have mutilated English (and maybe even French) into even more divisions than it currently has, and someone from California would not be able to understand someone from New York?

I don't think that language is something that can be controlled very drastically by the rules that a government or official language association tells us to follow. It seems more likely that a common usage would easily override any rule.