LEVY: Woke English: a new American language

What most Americans want is to live in a nation where everyone civilly communicates with one another.

It has often been said that a common language is a necessity for a successful nation.

While the rule has its exceptions in places such as Canada and Switzerland, even those countries have established dominant languages the mastery of which is a condition precedent to success.

This argument became important in most of the United States until almost the close of the last century. Students were made to study and pass English courses from kindergarten through high school. Even children for whom English was a “second language” were guided toward success with special tutoring in the nouns, verbs, adverbs and participles that made up America’s lingua franca. For conservatives, along with secure borders and the maintenance of a “thin blue line” against criminal chaos, retaining English as the nation’s language was a matter of national security.

As the election of 2020 rolled into the reality of 2021, it became obvious that there was no danger that English would be supplanted as the nation’s primary method of communication. The woke were beyond demanding that classes be held in Spanish. Any language so gender-conscious that it tolerated separating the “Latino” from the “Latina” was not sufficiently cisgender. That the “woke” despised Standard English was a disposition to be expected. However, the elite wanted to replace it with “Woke English.” And, in 2021 they were hard at work just doing that.

This new “Woke English” is about as far from “Standard English” as is Standard English from the “Middle English” of Chaucer. When he wrote his prologue to Canterbury Tales, Chaucer declared, “Wan that Aprill with his shoures soute, the droghte of March hath perced to the roote,” During his time, every literate Englishman knew exactly what Chaucer meant. Today, most of the English-speaking world cannot even pronounce the words. And, that is the goal as “Woke English” now supplants our contemporary lingo.

For instance, if I read that “John and Judy fell into a state of passionate physical romance,” I might become confused upon learning, “They embraced as Ne and Xe would have done before Judy became a man and John became confused.”

According to the Division of Student Affairs, Department of Intercultural Engagement at UNC-Greensboro, the next sentence might conclude that their love was useless. Because John was just a Narcissist.  As such, “Zir just likes zirself.”

Actually, all this is quite Victorian.  Rules are being written for an upper ruling class which are designed to separate the “educated” from the “deplorable.” Those who learn the new ways can be accepted in polite society. Those who don’t are expected to make their presence scarce. In Victorian Times it was known as “breeding.” During Fascist Times it was called “eugenics.” Today, it is simply the use of language and custom to marginalize those who, like some in Victorian Times and some in Fascist Times, just do not conform.

A person who desires to change genders has, in fact, changed genders. Therefore, a “transgendered woman” includes a person with male parts who needs to be housed and bathed with other women. If a rape occurs, it is simply a problem between two women. Each should have counseling. Neither should go to jail. After all, it is not like a man raped a woman.

In Canada, to speak otherwise and advocate for the Biblical interpretation of two-gender heterosexuality is now punishable by five years in prison. And, to fail to report such must be a crime, too. In the “new” English, “Silence is violence.”

What most Americans want is to live in a nation where everyone civilly communicates with one another. Yet, “Woke English” is making that impossible. How can liberals talk to conservatives or Republicans talk to Democrats if neither side can agree on the biological definition of a woman or a man? Did America struggle to declare “all persons equal” just to be thrown back to a time when Liza Doolittle and Professor Higgins defined two worlds walled off by one language?

The real danger to our national security is that Americans are beginning to speak two different languages, both of which are laughingly called “English.” In effect, we are witnessing the ultimate thought control as the woke redefine reality through speech. If we are ever to recapture our nation, we must recapture its language and support the unifying force of a single, mutually understood Standard English language.

 

By Robert Levy