Inferiority Complex: A sense of inadequacy or tendency to self-diminishment, resulting in excessive aggressiveness through overcompensation.

Consider this more of a rant than a blog entry. I'm edgy like that.

In my relatively short time on this planet, I have been subject to the company of some pretty moronic individuals. People who were anti-Semitic, misogynistic, homophobic, and god-knows-what-else have bestowed their stupid, uninformed opinions on me unsolicited, but I have shrugged them off with ease. Why? For the same reasons I just stated: These people, like their opinions, are fucking idiots. It's not their fault. A poor upbringing, bad education, and more than likely a shallow, shallow gene pool have led them to their conclusions, so they know no better. This is not the problem.

No. What is really, truly terrifying are some of the opinions held by people with educations: People I go to university with; individuals who were at the top of their class in high school and are destined to be the architects, engineers, physicians, and politicians of the next generation.

Strangely, there is one gratuitously idiotic idea I keep hearing over and over again. Be warned, I'm about to reproduce it here. Vacate the room of any animals, children and pregnant women. It's about to get stupid all up in here:

"The English language should be standardized."

You read that correctly, I shit you not. There are people in an institution of higher learning that truly believe this. For anyone who needed it, this should be sufficient evidence that it is possible to earn a university degree, all the while being dumb as rocks.

I can say, as someone who never uses hyperbole at all under any circumstances, the following:

This is the stupidest thing anyone has ever said about anything, EVER. (In case you were interested, the number 2 spot goes to whichever member of the Khmer Rouge said, 'Hey, you know what Cambodia absolutely does NOT need? People with educations.')

On the off-chance you really don’t see why this is stupid and/or have recently sustained blunt-force trauma to the head, let me lay it down for you:

1) The English language is not static.

Contrary to the ethnocentric beliefs of most middle-class white people, Early Man did not climb down from the canopy of some pre-historical rain forest, immediately assume an erect posture and then say, “Good evening, fellows. Excellent weather we’re having. Pity about Ugg and the Mastodon. He only dragged his wife by the hair into his cave last week.”

Language took nearly a million years to evolve. And it’s stupid, egocentric and ignorant to believe it has stopped evolving now that we have English. Obviously, Western Civilization is not the apex of evolution. English evolves even with generations. Listen to old news reels from the 1940’s and pay close attention to that funny-sounding, nasal way of speaking the newscasters have. Do you know anyone who speaks like that now? Nope. The language has changed, albeit subtly, in sixty years.

2) The English language hasn’t always been English.

Are you ready for this? Are you sure? Are you sitting? Ok, here it goes:

They didn’t always speak English in England.

All right, for those of you whose heads did not implode at this revelation, let’s continue.

In reality, “English,” or the groups of successive dialects that have arbitrarily been marked as “English”, have only existed for about 900 years. Before that, we had Middle English (slight similarities but with very different vowel sounds), before that, Old English (which sounded more like German or Swedish than anything else) and before that, Old Norse, which sounds like something of which you could not possibly conceive. There is no one day when Old English became Middle English or when Middle English became what we speak today, just like there’s no one instant at which humans evolved from monkeys. It’s a constant, gradual process, and standardizing it is akin to sauntering up to the continent of Australia and saying, “Fuck continental drift. You’re staying right here.”

3) If, for some reason, everyone who matters on Earth went retarded at the same time and decided to ‘standardize English,’ they wouldn’t pick your dialect, you pseudo-intellectual prat.

The series of dialects North Americans speak are relatively new ones (with some exceptions—see below), yet when these people talk about standardizing English, their tiny, egocentric brains assume without question that their dialect is the ‘right’ one. Sorry, morons. You’d be relearning your dialect with the rest of us. Most likely, the honour would go to what has long (erroneously) been considered the archetype of proper language: The Queen’s English, an upper-class dialect whose native speakers comprise about 2% of the population of Britain. Hope you bitches like scones.

4) Really? Fucking really?

Look, if you’re going to standardize English, why don’t we just go and standardize religion or race or something? As I recall, some dude a few decades back tried to standardize eye and hair colour. I can’t remember how it all played out, but I’m sure there was no downside. Remember, folks: If someone isn’t exactly like you, they are inferior.



"My, Robyn," you may be saying, "you are awfully passionate about this subject. Why on Earth do you care so much?" There is a very good reason for this, and I shall explain fully in the event that I am really huge in Korea or something and no one understands the cultural implications this has in the part of the world I am from (What? It's not impossible...):

I live in a place called Newfoundland. It's a rocky little island in the North Atlantic and a province of Canada, though when I say 'province,' I really mean, 'source of non-renewable resources for Mainland Canada' (Also part of the problem; I'm getting there.)

The island was discovered by explorer/ Italian bad-ass Giovanni Caboto (Anglophonized: John Cabot) in 1497 and claimed it for England, though Nova Scotians claim he landed there. Don't listen to them. By 1510, Newfoundland had permanent fishing settlements and has been continually inhabited ever since.

The people who came to Newfoundland to fish were people who couldn't own land in Great Britain. People from the South of England and all over Ireland came to settle here, where they were promised land of their own.

What resulted is the wet dream of any student of linguistics.

Because Newfoundland is an island, and was therefore relatively isolated, and experienced very little cultural diversity, the English spoken here has changed very, very little over the last 500 years. Fun fact: Henry VII, the King at the time of Newfoundland's discovery, was Queen Elizabeth I's grandfather, who was BFF with William Shakespeare. Many linguists have noted that the dialect of English spoken here is nearly identical to the English that Shakespeare himself would have used. That is how fucking old this dialect is. Cool, right? Wait for it.

Newfoundland was a Dominian of Great Britain until we confederated with Canada in 1949, but India had to go and steal our goddamn thunder and gain independance the same year, so no one knows, nor do they care. Many Newfoundlanders decided that instead of living the way they and their ancestors had for centuries: no money, little education, back-breaking labour-- they would go to mainland Canada and try to make a better life for their families.

When these men got off the airplane in Toronto, Ontario with an accent that wasn't quite English and wasn't quite Irish and probably little more than a grade 3 education, many mainland Canadians promptly decided that Newfoundlanders were the stupidest people they had ever come across. Ironically, the accent became associated with ignorance, and even today we're the butts of all sorts of jokes and other equally idiotic things.

If you’re still awake, there’s a point to all this: The people who have said to me that English should be standardized are Newfoundlanders. Their grandparents talked like this. Their parents still talk like this. Would you like to know their reasons for hating our native dialect?

They also think the Newfoundland accent sounds unintelligent.

Does anyone else detect the extensively ironic nature of this, or is it just me?

The stereotypes that exist about Newfoundland English are so bad that presently, unless you were born in some obscure little harbour, you are trained to not use your accent as soon as you enter school. For some people, this is impossible and will speak with a Newfoundland accent until the day they die. Others (myself included, I am a little shamed to admit) do not use their accent in formal settings, simply out of habit. This is not to say I do not have an accent. Sociologists have noticed that, when a person who is not speaking in their native tongue or dialect becomes passionate in some way: angry, excited, scared, etc., they will revert back to their native dialect. I do this, as do most people I know.

The people I know who dislike my accent will often stop me in mid-sentence when I am speaking animatedly about something to say, “do you realize you just said [insert local colloquialism/ thickly accented phrase here]????”

NO.

NO I DID NOT.

GO BLOW SOMEONE.

I cannot help it. I shouldn’t have to help it. A far more pertinent question would be, “Why the FUCK do you care??”

Are you so insecure about how you are viewed by close-minded, uncultured, moronic, egocentric pseudo-intellects from mainland Canada and abroad that you would persecute and chastise an ancient dialect native to your home so they’ll pat you on your stupid, ass-kissing heads?

I am an intelligent person. I hope you can tell this by knowing me. If you don’t know me, I hope you can tell this by reading what I write. I hope to make academia my career. For someone to tell me my ideas are not valid because a bunch of snobs arbitrarily decided they do not like the way I sometimes speak is preposterous. But I’m not worried. Intelligent people—truly intelligent people—will evaluate me on what I say, not the way in which I say it.

I may sound like a moron, but that beats the hell out of actually being one.

One final note: I have yet to find a prominent Newfoundland Rhodes scholar who did not speak with a Newfoundland accent. I hope the guys who think Newfoundland English makes you sound stupid let me know when they get their letter from Oxford.