#8: Languages 1

Languages are necessary for civilization. Toaster cannot prove this positively, but if you consider that him grunting at someone when he burnt the cookies could easily be misinterpreted as constipation you will see that it is true. We cannot pretend to be civilized if we do not communicate with one another clearly.

In this same vein, languages both unite and divide us. Primarily for defining groups. BubbaBill (when you type "BubbaBill" into GoogleImages, you get a lot of Bill Clinton!) speaks English (kinda) and don't speak no Spanish and he don't no want the public schools to try to teach his children no Spanish because this here's America and Americans speak American and if them Mexicans wanna come here they better learn American fast because he ain't gonna learn no Spanish and he ain't oughta. By pinning a piece of the American identity on the use of and fluency in English, BubbaBill and the rest of us (perhaps less consciously and more grammatically) are using English to define our in-group nationality. We divide our American English from British English or Austrailian English based on our pronunciations. Within the country we define smaller groups based on local dialects and vernanculars.

Toaster had a point somewhere in all of this, but it is 4am. Toaster is pretty certain that he began this post with the intention of proving that Welsh is really a foreign language. An alien language, even. Toaster is convinced that some sadistic alien managed to convince some impressionable Celts that the only true and beautiful way to communicate was to gargle with asphalt and saltpetre.