After much study (Well, a 6 pack of Old Milwaukee and an afternoon of The Smurfs), I have come to the conclusion that the English language is simply unacceptable. English has clearly become far too comfortable with its place in this country (feel free to substitute any English speaking country you wish, it really doesn‘t matter). Just look at it, strutting around like it owns the place. Taunting us all with its “To, too, and two’s.” Its “Whose” and “who’s.“ Its “there, their, and They’re’s.” Or is it “they’re’s’s?” That’s another thing, how much punctuation does one language need anyway? English, with all of its periods and semicolons. Its ampersands and commas. What in the name of Jesse Ventura is an ampersand, anyway? Who knows? Nobody, that’s who.
Japanese, for example, doesn’t have this unexplainable fetish for punctuation. You know how much punctuation Japanese used to have? None! Not one comma or question mark. Not even a period. Of course, this too was confusing and they have now adopted our commas, exclamation points and periods, as well.
Japanese is far from perfect, however. Once you get past the absurd politeness levels and chicken scratch written languages, of which they have THREE (that’s right, I said three), you have to deal with their shocking lack of plurality and odd grammatical structure. For example, the sentence “Ringo desu” can be translated as “It‘s an apple,” I‘m an apple,” You‘re an apple,” and perhaps most confusing of all, “Happy to you, super action man!!!”
See, Japanese makes perfect sense. Further study of other foreign languages reveals that they too display their own brand of insanity. Chinese and its crazy voice modulation and pitch levels, not to mention the 2,368 different dialects (2,368 different languages, and one writing system). Spanish and its embarrassing and unnecessary practice of rolling R’s (On a personal note, I can’t roll an R to save my life. I did manage to roll a Q once, and I’ve never been the same). Then you’ve got the Eskimos and they’re 362 words for snow. What’s up with that? Don’t even get me started on French…“Wee wee” most certainly does not mean “yes.”
What are we to do about all of this linguistic madness, you ask? Well, this may not be a very popular idea, but I propose that we all stop conversing entirely. I’m serious. No writing, no talking, no verbal or written communication whatsoever. Sure, it will take some time to adjust to this new way of life, and I know that it will be very hard for you to live without my writings and reviews, but think of the upside. No more Michael Moore and his socialist propaganda “documentaries.” No more pretentious Madonna albums. No more Stuart Scott and his hip-hop remixes of the Reds-Cardinals games. All of this can be ours if we just stop this nasty habit of communication that we humans have.
Of course, there will be a downside as well. As I mentioned earlier, you will all lose the pleasure of reading my site and well, I can’t really think of anything else. I think that there were probably some books or something that might’ve been good. Basically you’ll just lose this site...and Weird Al Yankovich, of course.
Still, I suppose if this is too much of a sacrifice for you, there's always Esperanto...
Or maybe Klingon...
“Hab SoSlI' Quch!”
And I mean that from the bottom of my heart.
-Derek Miller
8/3/06
