| OCR Text |
Show The Salt Lake Tribune, Sunday, May 5, 1985 S3 Licensed Bonded & Insured PATIOS Dill Hall You may speak English , but that doesnt mean youll be understood FOREIGN STUDENTS trying to learn English in this country are baffled by the expression, How do you do?" "How do you do what? they ask, and rightly so. In a similar vein, I have been studying English in this country all of my life and I am baffled by a Bill Hall new how-do- sort of expression that has you-dentered the language in recent years. I heard it again yesterday. Have a good one! a clerk said o to me. Have a good what? It means, Have a good day, of course. How do you do at one time must have been, "How are your doing. But it is made even more difficult for people just learning English because it is often run toHowd-jado.- " gether into one word Howdja like to be a foreign student trying to find that word in a dictionary? Believe it or not, there are politicians who want to declare English the official language of this a country in which country clerks say Have a good one is a country that doesnt yet speak English. Of course, the politicians offering this legislation are concerned about another matter. They are concerned about treating English d like a American language, defending it against the invasion of Spanish and other foreign tongues. But they are too late. Spanish may never take over. But dozens of dialects with little relation to English have already taken root in this unhappy land. Stoekbroker-ese- , for instance. A FRIEND OF mine called a stockbroker for the first time in her life the other day to buy some stock. She told the broker what she wanted to buy and the broker replied, "If this doesnt fill, do you want to hold over. I dont know what that means, my friend said. "I mean, the broker said, do you want to hold over if it doesn't execute My friend didnt know what that meant either and she said so. The broker became exasperated with her, just like those politicians who fear Spanish. If you little people move to this hairy-cheste- -- country, you should learn English, the politicians say. If you little people visit that broker believes, "you better learn the lingo. Or Doctorland. Doctors haven't spoken English in years. Nor have lawyers. And of course the Pentagon surrendered to Gobbleygook years ago without firing a single English word. Moreover, teachers pardon me, educationists dont speak English anymore either. (Educationists are people who deal professionally with what we have Even English teachers have a jargon a dialect of their own. THE REGIONAL accents of this country are fading as television teaches our children that kind of standard, midwestern broadcast way of pronouncing words. The time is passing when people from Georgia and Utah have trouble understanding each other. But the time is here when people in the same factory or office, doing different jobs, have trouble understanding each other. An example is newspaper columnists and computer programmers. We have a computer programmer in this office who grew up in a small, literate Idaho town and once spoke perfectly plain English. But then he studied for a few weeks at a computer school where the monsters amputated his English. He came home utterly incoherent. Its a sad case and Id like to tell him how sorry I am, but I dont speak his language so he would never understand me. Anyone who has a home computer knows what I am talking about. Home computers come with foreign language books called instruction manuals. An instruction manual is a book written by computer specialists in a language resembling English and probably actually adapted from English, but no one speaking conventional English can puzzle it out. Indeed, there are times when I feel like sitting down at my home computer and writing a letter of complaint to the people who wrote the manuals. There are two reasons I dont. 1. 1 write only in English, so they wouldn't understand me. 2. 1 cant figure out how to turn on the computer. But if I ever figure it out, you can bet Ill tell them to have a bad READ THIS- - WE WILL DESIGN AND PRICE YOUR PROJECT THE MOST ECONOMICAL WAY THAT SUITS YOUR NEEDS WITH NO OBLIGATION ON YOUR PART. WE WILL ADVISE YOU ON WHAT WORK YOU CAN DO TO SAVE MONEY AND EVEN COUNSEL YOU HOW TO DO THE WORK. WE LL DRAW YOUR PLANS GET YOUR PERMITS. AND ARRANGE FOR YOUR FINANCING. WELL PREPARE YOUR MATERIAL LIST AND EVEN OBTAIN THE MATERIAL AT LOW COST, IN OTHER WORDS, WE LL DO ALL OR ANY PART OF THE JOB . . CUSTOMER TO SAVE YOU MONEY!!! 30 YRS. EXP. d, REFERENCES. PENDLETON BUILDERS INC. 3551 SOUTH WEST TEMPLE par-ented- .) f Before you buy theirs, check our our prices we will match or beat any retail competitors price on any system. 85 LNA on all dishes WESLO one And wouldnt that be a fine Bill Hall is a columnist and editorial page editor for the Lewiston Morning Tribune in Lewiston, Idaho. Factory Outlet (972-133- 5) 1642 SOUTH REDWOOD ROAD MON.-FR- I. 9 A.M.-- 5 P,M. SAT. 10 A.M.-- 5 P.M. |
