-----Original Message-----
From: Vivian G. Scheinsohn <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 17 September 1998 16:46
Subject: regionalism
|
|I found in Michael O'Loughlin's "After Kavanagh" (Raven Arts
|Press, 1985) a paragraph to add to the recent discussions:
|
|"The problem is that "English" is a polysemous term. English is a
|language spoken by hundreds of millions of people,
|containing with it seperate and diverging cultures...
I can only give a rough approximation of this. It was around the time of the
50th anniversary of Indian independence, not that long ago.
I dont know who she was, because I cut into the radio programme celebrating
some aspect of the topic, but a woman was saying - you English, you think
that we are speaking your language; but we aren't; it is ours. You brought
your language to us to control us and we took it away from you without you
even noticing and now we are using it and it is ours. We have changed it, of
course, but that's because it's ours now.
Unquote. I have probably made it my own and in so doing changed it for the
worst, but that was the run of it & I thought that was interesting and good
Lawrence
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