Gardens of Bad English
Why you should water your Brooklynese, grow your Spanglish & cultivate your country grammar
Author’s Note: I debated whether or not to delay publishing this letter given how heavy things are with the Israel-Hamas conflict. My gut keeps saying to go forward with it. If a little reprieve feels like the right thing, then come in for romp around the Gardens of Bad English.
I’ve been working on a small fictional story set in my Calabrese ancestors’ lands in the South of Italy. The characters' dialogue keeps coming out sounding like Queen’s English.
My imagination automatically thinks of them this way because ancient Greek and Roman speech (and accompanying appearance) is typically represented that way in American media.
This is an odd, reoccurring moment in modern Italian-American life. To have your history told through an Anglicized veil that dissociates you from your ancestors as it simultaneously ties others to them.
This association, I suspect, has something to do with the 18th and 19th century Euro and American ruling classes’ fascination with and heavy learnings from the Greco-Roman and Italian Renaissance eras.
Now, I’m glad the American Founders latched on to ancient Greek democracy. I’m not so glad about all the “New Rome” fantasies that Euro Nobles and American Oligarchs claimed for themselves. Adopting the idea that they were the rightful inheritors of ancient empires was part of an excuse to a great many wrongs.
Whatever form they take and wherever in Timespace they may be, the Ring-of-Power class is prone to such fantasy storytelling. The storytelling is necessary because something must explain and justify whatever great wrongdoing they’re spearheading.
For example, American racism was an American Oligarch story born to justify the legal institution of slavery. Italian immigrants stealing jobs from struggling, native-born Americans was a story born to justify the Robber Barons’ profiteering. Bringing freedom to Iraq was a story born to justify…
…you get the picture, yes?
The wrongdoing comes first, then the storytelling.
The story’s job is to create an illusion that makes the wrongdoing look legit.
If the story can go so far as to make the wrongdoing appear natural, as if “that’s just the way life is” or “that’s just how those people are,” all the better.
But I digress…
I don’t want my ancient Mediterranean characters to sound like an American imagining Victorian Imperials imagining themselves ruling over ancient Mediterranean characters.
So I put them in Italian Brooklynese.
A phrase I’m using roughly here to refer to the smattering of Italic phrases, concepts, and words threaded in everyday Northeastern American English.
Writing them this way makes me laugh at first. The research mentioned that ancient Greek writers complained about the sound of the local Italic tribe’s Oscan language.
To them, it sounded rough, brutish and hard on the ears….
…which reminds me of how some Northern Italians complained (complain) about the sound of Italian Southerners’ speech….
…and how some Italian homelanders and Americans complain about the sound of Brooklynese…
…and how some Brooklynese speakers complain about US Southerners’s speech.
All looked upon by an outsider with an attitude as degenerate, brutish ways of speaking that are hard on the ears.
The resonance amuses me. I go back to writing and add a pinch of Shakespearean English into the dialogue. Euro-Imperial fantasies aside, there’s a resonance in Shakespeare with Latin language structures:
Te doy un regalo. Ti faccio un regalo. To you, I give a gift.
Of course, Latin is not the same as the ancient Oscan, but I haven’t the time to learn any more ancient linguistics, fascinating as they are.
The point, anyways, is not to try for an impossible accuracy but to infuse the English with a feel of ancient, everyday Italic-ness.
So Italian Brooklynese with a pinch of Shakespearean salt is what I’m playing with right now. (See Al Pacino’s Looking for Richard for more of that vibe.)
I’ve come to expect that there will be times that using Brooklynese will be looked down upon.
By a random local who disapproves of (or feels nervous around) foreign words.
By the regularly-occurring restaurateurs and food critics “educating” on what “real” Italian food culture and terminology is and is not.
By the occasional Italian homelander or other Latin-language speaker who finds our lingo to be some sort of insult against Mother Culture.
Through such repeat moments over the course of my young life, I came to view Brooklynese as wrong and embarrassing. An idea that is not necessarily uncommon in Italian America, thanks to outsiders with an attitude (as well as some insiders) who find our speech brutish, degenerate and hard on the ears.
I’ve changed my mind about Brooklynese.
I would have, even if I hadn’t started hearing community chatter about fascinated Italian-homeland academics coming to learn from us in hopes of finding clues here about things disappearing over there.
Ultimately, I changed my mind because, like all its cousins disparaged as Bad English, Brooklynese is a delightful, fun, rich, vibrant, slightly magical, life-affirming thing to keep on doing.
To name a few, Louisiana Creole, Gullah, Appalachia, Texas Czech, and dozens of variations of country grammar, Black English, and Spanglish tell stories.
Of our predecessors who started them. Of our neighbors who picked up on them. Of our beautiful, albeit sometimes painful, pluralistic culture in which they grow.
Such ways of speaking are natural, slightly magical objects. If you hold them the right way, they’ll tell you histories and folklores, myths and wisdoms, warnings and jokes, tactics and imaginings, hopes and dreams.
All connected to people and places from close by and far away.
All packed into a handfuls of syllables and grammatical structures.
Such is the richness in our Gardens of Bad English.
If you weren’t passed on such things (because surely you come from them), I would encourage you to pick them up as you go.
The Gardens of Bad English are built for everyday life. They are portable, potent bits that are easy to remember, pick up on, and share…even when folks are busy working too hard for too little.
Let me give you one simple example of what an easy, heartfelt incorporation can look like.
I have next-to-no bearing on the Czech side of my ancestry. Along the way, I crossed paths with one of their sayings which resonated so deeply for me that I kept it around in English. Maybe one day if I have the mental space, I’ll memorize it in Czech. The saying goes:
Learn a new language, gain a new soul. Nový jazyk, nový člověk. (Literal translation: New language, new person.)
Perhaps in that logic lies a very good reason to nurture our Gardens of Bad English.
If learning a new language gives one a new soul, then certainly nourishing the culturally-rooted variations of our primary language enhances our original soul.
This may be particularly true of English…. which, after all, is a language that is built on layers of foreign words.
To me, nurturing the Bad Englishes involves not only preserving the existing variations, but also being unafraid to expand, inject and create as we go.
Whether that’s integrating an idea in English, keeping a small saying the old tongue, relishing your looked-down upon country grammar, sliding around with your local slang, or playing together with the words your neighbor introduced.
In such ways, we delight in our Gardens of Bad English.
Long before I was taught to look down on the precious living bits of my Italic mother tongue, Brooklynese words were magical objects we got to speak.
These unbroken usages of old country language, conveniently living inside of our local English, help us more fully convey our point-of-view and more accurately express emotional charge. They keep us from feeling too bottled up.
Why should we give that up?
To be clear, we should always encourage folks to learn other languages, ancestral or not. It’s good for people, souls, and communities at large. Similarly, I am not suggesting that Americans, particularly students and young people, ditch learning and using standard English well.
What I am suggesting is, alongside such foreign language learning and standard English usage, the Bad Englishes should be appreciated, engaging, enjoyed, created, cultivated, and applied in everyday life, in art, in social settings, and so on.
Foreign language learning is a years-long process requiring access, money, time, energy, and skill. With perhaps the exception of Spanish, I’m not so sure it is a sustainable, intergenerational approach to cultural continuation at community levels.
The Bad Englishes are.
They are sustainable, achievable, accessible, flexible, packed with richness, easy to pass down generationally, and effortless to share with your neighbors. They have already proven their ability to survive tough times. Even for, sometimes especially for, the folks who have it the toughest.
Such is their resiliency.
If you have been taught to look down on the Bad Englishes or to feel ashamed of them, perhaps consider them in this light. Perhaps, speak them. Perhaps, invite a few others and grow a little Bad English garden together.
Of course, there will be some who can't see the beauty, the fun, the magic, the richness, or the miracle of such living legacies. Let them pass by.
Sooner or later, I promise you, they’ll be back. Fascinated as ever.
To learn from you once again.
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