Agnes by Tony Cochran for October 23, 2011

You should, but you don’t. You speak American. Two cultures divided by a common language.

I’m sure Trout is playing literalist just to push Agnes’ buttons — like Tommy Smothers doing the same to his brother Dick. Funny.

And please — it’s just repartee. They’re loyal friends.

Womble, yes, our language is called American English.

Not better, not worse, than British English, but admittedly different from it.

Neither of us still uses the language of Dr. Johnson, which would have been spoken on both sides of the Atlantic during the American colonial period.

In both countries, it has grown and changed, but not in parallel directions.

That doesn’t make one superior to the other.

Don’t get me started on language. Sioux sounds good. How about Apache, Cherokee, Black Foot, etc?? Spaniards were here the first Europeans…………… Stupid natives should have killed them.

Besides, if and when any plan, plot, or design by Agnes does prove fruitful, she will have dragged Trout along to enjoy. Whether or not Trout wants to or not. .@YUKONERIC – that was tried. The first North American settlements were wiped out by the natives, any survivors went home. More recent studies on the Viking setttlements in Canada indicate they were attacked.

“American English has been the world standard since the end of WW2, when Britain ceased being an empire and began her decline back into mediocrity. “British English” has long been little more than a quaint local dialect trotted out to beguile the tourists, along with double-decker buses and the Queen.”

Not entirely. Any Germans, French, Turks, Swedes, Greeks, whatever, who speak English have probably learned it from British instructors. Whatever American idioms they’ve picked up from our movies and TV shows, they spell according to U.K standards. That’s not even taking into account all those countries which, while no longer being part of the Commonwealth, use U.K. English as an official language (there are a billion people in India who, if they speak English, speak U.K. English).

And as our OWN Empire sinks into mediocrity, who’s to say Mandarin Chinese isn’t going to be the next lingua Franca? At the very least, whichever brand of English is being taught in China (and let us not forget the long-standing British presence there) may have an edge in decades to come.

I think we should adopt Elizabethan English as the global standard. Nobody should be limited to reading Shakespeare in translation.

That would also free us from the tyrannies of standardized spelling…

I’d rather talk about the odd color choice for panel 2. It’s one thing to bathe the entire scene in a new light, but just the people?

Yukoneric — I wasn’t attempting to evaluate the claims to primacy of any ethnos or language in the Americas.

I was merely comparing the respective superiority of two forms of English, whether spoken by whole countries or small enclaves, and not whether either had the right to supersede any other language.

Just to be clear.

And Fritzoid —right. Though may I suggest the English of Samuel Johnson?

Historically reasonable for early America, and in between Shakespeare, or as he would often have it, Shaksper, and the unambiguity that we expect of language in these days of scientific accuracy.

OK, folks, pedantry break over. Stand, stretch, and at ease.

As for Agnes – right, Night-gaunt and Hunter.

If every “insult” were grounds for terminating social relationships, we’d not have Hepburn and Tracy movies, or Hepburn and Grant, in one of my all-time favorites, “Bringing up Baby”.

No Possum Lodge, no Don Rickles…….and most of the birthday cards I send and receive would have left me completely friendless,

SAMUEL EXPLETIVE JOHNSON? What did I just say about the tyrannies of standardized spelling? And you expect me to endorse The Great Lexicographer himself?!?

No, Fritzoid - LOL - not his lexicography, which he sometimes ignored, himself, but the language usage, speech patterns, etc, of his writings and his times, which roughly correspond to colonial days, and to the point when English began to diverge.

While he was, indeed, didactic and blustering, he also set a good example for lucid prose, understandable to both Elizabethan and modern speakers.

His spelling rules and opinionated definitions were more of an entertaining read than a respected prescription.

However, science, math and the like do need some sort if mutually agreed upon spelling and definitions for clarity — I don’t want any missiles set off due to a misread word.

His is as good as any for a starting point, or you can pick Addison and Steele, or any good prose of the period that is more representative of the vernacular than the purposely formal style oid, say, Thomas Jefferson.

Then you can ignore formal spelling for the hoi polloi, as was widely accepted in the 18th century.

Mutter mutter grumble grumble Dr. BLEEDIN’ Johnson bitch bitch bitch moan moan moan.

Actually I’m in favor of maintaining the status quo, letting the English language(s) grow organically. changing from generation to generation. That doesn’t mean I don’t think everybody should know how to read Romeo and Juliet without a “translation” into current idiom, but the English Language belongs to the masses, not to the academicians. If we start proscribing what words are to be considered “English” and which are not, we might as well be French.

We ain’t proud; we’ll take new words from anybody if they serve a purpose. Let the English language of the future not be Newspeak from Nineteen Eighty-Four, rather let it be Cityspeak from Blade Runner, bits of Chinese and Spanish and Arabic etc. overlaid on a basic English grammatical structure. It’s as American as Bridget Tsai or Jim-Bob Hussein.

“In a thousand years, When English is as dead as Latin, Will it all be Greek to me?``.I can`t remember the author, nor the issue of Asimov when I first read that short poem. But it does say a lot about all languages.

I think a lot of people are missing the other message, that the “language of economics” is rarely spoken in our country… and in most of the world for that matter.