spoken English
"Pliss," says one of my heroines, "I not so well spik Ingliss." yeah. me too. when I was dumped into this country, I had spoken Ingliss all my life. hah! no. I had read textbooks and histories for boys and story books all my life, but I spoke Portuguese like a Brasilian child, or thought I did. the Ingliss I spoke was to think of what I wanted to say but in Brasilian, then translate that word for word into written English, but pronounce it with a Recife-an accent. whew. kids who spoke Spanish could make out what I meant. if I remember correctly, it took intense effort, listening and speaking, correcting my pronunciation again and again, for three years to learn to speak English more or less like an American. how intense? it cost me my Portuguese. when I could relax about English, I discovered I had no Portuguese to speak! I could listen and catch some words. I could "read" and sound out the words and sorta get the gist of what I "read", but basically Portuguese was gone. it's embarrassing. (real people just learn a second language.) but I had discovered something that most people seemed not to know. we who speak and write English have two languages. written English is a beautiful language full of rules, rules, rules, each of which is meant to be broken, but only in certain permitted ways. it's an ideal language for a little boy who taught himself how to take apart and reassemble mechanical devices. spoken English is an anarchist's friend. it ain't got no rules hardly, and ain't nobody can tell you the rules it's got. no, I don't mean no dialeck. I mean what Murkins speak when they talk. you know, when they're all tied up in a conversation, and they leave no stone unturned getting to the bottom of what's at hand. a good friend who likes my stories quietly told me that no one speaks like my characters, who speak written English. he's right, but I don't know how to fix that. I can't think in spoken English. but I can sure admire it when someone does it well. and I do.
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