Verbal Prejudice-Americans Can Be judgmental About Broken English

In the United States words mean everything. Especially when it comes time to getting help with computer problems. I have a well known brand name computer. When I make a phone call on their customer service line I am immediately swept away overseas to a customer service representative in India who has a hard time understanding what I am trying to tell them in English. Of course the computer manufacturer has a solution for me. If you want to talk to an American in the United States feel free to pay an additional sum of money and they will transport my next phone call to someone in California to help me. Sounds like we have created what I call verbal prejudice.

Of course the computer firm never says that the benefit of talking to someone in the US is due to an English language benefit; instead they say it is a benefit to you because they are American trained technicians. Yeah, who are they trying to kid.

But what happens to those so called foreigners who can’t speak a word of English when they land in the United States. Well I had a grandmother who landed in the USA literally off of a boat from Greece when she came to America in 1923. She came into the US speaking Greek and she died speaking Greek. There is an old saying in the United States that if someone says something that is incomprehensible, then we say the term “It’s all Greek to me”. I wonder why we never say “It’s all Italian to me or “It’s all Spanish or Russian or Chinese to me”. Go figure! Well, I could never understand a word my Grandmother said while she was yelling at me in Greek. However, I did understand her body language and yet that language is understood in all countries of the world.

My first encounter with her temper and her body language was when she wanted to bake me a batch of cookies. What she did not know was that I hid my kitty cat named Frisky in the oven so she wouldn’t see that I had a cat in the house. Right before she started to put the oven on I opened the oven door, grabbed Frisky and off we both ran. Oh, she still made me cookies, but I can still hear her yelling in Greek at me when Frisky and I ran for our lives. I’m sure those Greek words today could not be printed in this article.

I had the opportunity to practice my own version of verbal prejudice by pretending that I didn’t understand her. For example when she handed me a broom to sweep the living room I just pretended that I didn’t understand her so I would just shrug my shoulders and hand her back the broom. But she wasn’t stupid, she knew that an object in her hand meant something for me to do. You should have seen my grandmother chase me with the broom. It is incredible what people will do with inanimate objects to move you along when you pretend that you don't understand their words. I think my grandmother should have entered the Olympic Games for the broom hockey sport. She would have won the gold medal in a heartbeat.

Looking back no one ever cared to teach her English. As I write to my pen pal friends overseas often they will apologize to me about their English in their writings. What is sad is that the Americans should be the ones apologizing about the use of our poor grammar. If you type in the words “Poor Grammar” on the Google search engine you will get 235 thousand hits. Gee, I wonder why!

Well, I have great news for those who want to learn the English language. I’m sorry my dear grandmother wasn’t alive during the days of the internet. She could have gotten the help she needed from an awesome website known as www.Wordahead.com.

Wordahead.com is a promising new service offering more than 500 videos and 66 thousand words designed to help students learn better vocabulary. The website is totally free to use. The website appears to have been developed to help kids get a higher score on their SAT exams. An SAT is a test that a student must take if they want to go to college. Failure to get a high grade on the SAT can result in a student not being able to go to the college of their choice.

Each video that the website has reflects a narrator pronouncing each word. Then the voice reads the definition and uses the word in a sentence. An animated drawing accompanies each sentence to illustrate the meaning of each word and sentence. You can watch the Word Ahead videos individually or in a continuous stream. You can view all of the Word Ahead videos directly from their website and you can also embed the Word Ahead widget into your blog or website.

Before Americans critize the next person’s accent or vocabulary on the phone, I suggest that they test their own vocabulary of words on this website. People will become humbled very quickly as to how much you they don’t know about the English language. In fact they might say “It’s All Greek” to them.

All this Greek stuff is making me hungry for some Baklava. Until next time see you at the refrigerator and oh by the way don’t mind the broom next to the freezer.
Write me at AskmeanythingUSA@yahoo.com