I've often wondered whether I'm just an annoying person or what. Do I just naturally piss people off? Do I just have a face that unknowlingly exudes scorn and brings out the worst in people? Is it just that I'm outspoken? Or perhaps that I'm a combination of outspoken and impulsive, which means I'm frequently saying stupid or poorly thought-out things out loud? Am I unwittingly one of those annoying, sophomoric nerds that nobody can stand?
As an example, we had our class field-trip today for Arabic class. Two of the students for the class are a German professor and the chair of the language department at the Juco who is a French professor.
I was looking forward to the ride up so I could get to know folks a little more. Mostly, I wanted to get to know the kids in the class, but I ended up sitting by the old people, including the two ladies who were also teachers at the school.
We were chatting and everything went fine, but then it was the strangest thing. I'll just explain it as it unfolded because there's not a lot of other ways to go about telling this tale.
The German teacher was talking about living in Germany. She taught English and got her degree there. (In English... all I can think about is that song "mexican Americans... take spanish and get Cs.")
She then said something about having to demonstrate proficiency in British English. That proficiency in American English wasn't good enough for her employer.
This is where things completely jumped the track.
I said something to the effect of, "That's funny, because in a lot of ways, American English is more English than British English."
You would have thought I called her a fat old cat-lady.
She said, flaty, "No, it isn't."
Having clearly touched a nerve, here, I could have gone one of two ways. Just said, "oh, okay" left it at that, or try to explain my position.
I think you know which way I took this.
So, I said, "Well, if you think about it, our English is more Anglo-Saxon. British-English has more French influences."
This, of course, got the French teacher involved. And because they probably both thought I was a French basher, they went off.
The German teacher said, "Of course there are French influences. You can't have English without French".
Me: "Of course. I'm not saying that there aren't French influences. I am saying, though, that as the two languages diverged, American English stayed truer to Anglo-Saxon English, and British English kept absorbing French influence."
Her: "All English has French influence because English is a romance language."
Me: "No, English is a Germanic language." (Odd that I would have to explain this to a teacher of German.)
Her: "yes, but English is half French."
Me: "Half?"
Her: "Okay, not half, but it's got a lot of French."
Me: "I think you misunderstand my point. In the 1600s, our English and the British English were essentially identical, right?"
Her: "I have a degree in English and it's what I teach (she also teaches ESL). What's your background?"
Me: "Now, wait here. I agree you have an education in English, but that doesn't mean that nobody else is allowed to have an opinion or an idea on the subject."
(I wanted to point out that this type of argument from authority is considered the mark of a person who is being out-debated, but figured things were already bad enough. Mostly, I just wanted her to calm her fat ass down for 20 seconds so I could try to explain what I meant by my statement.)
Her: Well, English and French go back a long way, long before the 1600s. In the Magna Carta and other documents, both English and French words were used in legal contexts and they're still used that way in our laws today.
(Wondering, now, how it is possible that I can so badly be communicating my idea that she's clearly not even understanding what I'm saying. This, of course, has nothing to do with the divergence between English-English and American-English as there was simply "english" at the time. Also, the use of french words in legal code is a topic with which I am also not totally unfamiliar, but it didn't have anything to do with the topic at hand.)
Me: Well... let's roll the clock forward just a little bit. In the 1800s, you had Webster's dictionary and Samual Johnson's dictionary, and the two of them clearly show some pretty big differences between the two languages.
Her: I still don't see how that makes British English more French.
Me: How do you spell color and theater?
Her: That doesn't make their language French. They speak English just like we do.
Me: Obviously. Hence the word "english". It's their language. It originated there. I'm just saying that since the two dialects diverged, ours has remained more anglo-saxon and theirs continued to be influenced by French to a greater degree.
(And starting to really wonder, here... weren't the Saxons German? I mean, why is this a foreign concept to a German teacher?)
Anyway, at this point, she was clearly angry. There wasn't much to do here, but interject, "You're getting really angry about this whole discussion."
Her: And you're not?
Me: No, not really. I'm just trying to throw out an idea because I thought you might find the topic interesting to discuss.
Later, in the Arab-American museum, she apologized, twice. I have no idea why she lost her mind like she did. I told her no problem, I was getting a little excited about the topic, too. (Which isn't true. I was getting agitated at her incredible rudeness and the fact that she was either being obtuse or she just didn't know much about the topic at hand.)
I told her, "I really wasn't trying to offend you. I was just trying to bring up an idea that I found interesting."
Maybe it was that I wasn't falling for her appeal to authority. Though, frankly, I do think it's a little chicken-shit to go to a foreign country and get a degree in English. Seriously. That'd be like a Spaniard going to the trouble to attend a US university, then getting a degree in Spanish.
Or, maybe she thought I was being rude and didn't know much about the topic at hand.
Could also be that her boss is a French teacher and she thought somehow she was defending French. Who knows.
Honestly, though, it's pretty clear that she hasn't given this a lot of thought. I mean, yeah, I can see how I might be a little annoying while discussing this subject. I have a smatterring of trival anectdotes, and never really studied the subject seriously.
But at the same time, I have a bachelor's and master's degree and know the level of expertise that those degrees demonstrate. For the most part, sorry, but holding a bachelor's in a subject doesn't make a person an expert by any stretch. I'd expect pretty much any reasonably well-read person to be able to discuss a topic at about the same level as your garden variety baccalaureate holder and unless a master's degree holder has research in a specific are, I wouldn't necessarily presume that a master's degree indicates that a person is thinking on a higher, inaccessible plane.
With no offense intended, I don't think a person needs, for instance, a law degree to intelligently discuss the law, or to have an opinion about it, or to have areas within the law where they're particularly well-informed.
Anyway, I didn't even get to bring up the fact that some folks believe that the closest we can get to hearing shakespeare's english is in some remote areas of applachia, etc.
In fact, pretty much every point I brought up was ignored as though it was a personal attack.
She simply pretended that questions like, "why do the british spell colour and theatre the way they do?" weren't asked and would go off on some tangent.
In fact, she basically refused to acknowledge that the languages diverged in the 1600s.
Or, more precisely, it was pretty obvious that she never gave it any thought.
I guess it's been a long, long time since I've been around a person who just completely came unglued when discussing a topic of trivial importance. I mean, she REALLY got pissed off.
I used to have these sorts of exchanges a lot when I was a LOT younger. In fact, more often than not, I was probably the one getting bent all out of shape and emotional while discussing a topic of minor importance. Then... well... my 20s ended.
Maybe it's just that she thinks I'm a student and she's a teacher and she's not used to being challenged. (The mark of a very, very inadequate teacher, by the way.)
So, when I got home, I was thinking, "Well... maybe this is just a fringe idea that I've heard and adopted because I like it." I mean, thinking back, the book that first introduced me to the idea, "origin of the specious" is just one book.
So, did a quick google search and one of the first sites I pulled up had:
"Also significant beginning around 1600 AD was the English colonization of North America and the subsequent creation of a distinct American dialect. Some pronunciations and usages “froze” when they reached the American shore. In certain respects, American English is closer to the English of Shakespeare than modern British English is."
http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/comments/a_very_brief_history_of_the_english_language3/
Which is not, of course, to say that I am right on the subject. Just that I'm not totally out of my tree and that others hold the same idea.
As for whether or not English-English is more French because Samuel Johnson's dictionary favored Norman spelling as opposed to Webster's which tended towards Anglo-Saxon is probably debatable.
Personally, I was just trying to introduce a topic of discussion based on where the conversation was going. I didn't expect it to piss anybody off.
Sometimes, though... I think I just have that effect on people.
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