by Eva van Loon

Once upon a time there was a muddled language that tagged along with its empire-building speakers across an entire planet and took vigorous root everywhere. The speakers and writers of this language boasted that “The sun never sets!” on their far flung empire. Little did they realize that the language they championed as “the richest language in the world” and “the language of Shakespeare” could not maintain its “purity” any more than its proponents could prevent miscegenation in the English Empire.

Despite its multi-ethnic and scandalous parentage, vestigial grammar and outrageous spelling, English proved popular and hardy, sprouting colourful varieties of itself from the tropics to the arctics for four centuries. Alarmed by the robust rebellions of all these upstart Englishes, the original owners dubbed their own, supposedly original version of the language “Standard English”—SE for short—and wrote thick books of classic rules which even today must be mastered, from Africa to America, as part of becoming a reasonably educated person.

Over time, miscreant Englishes won the right to dub themselves with such acronyms as SAE (Standard American English, the creature nobody knows), HCE (Hawaiian Creole English, or Pidgin to the tourists), Ebonics ((black American English), and last among many others but hardly least, SCE (Standard Canadian English, universally admitted to be a closer cousin of SE, quite possibly the rightful heir to its throne should England be drowned by rising seas).

Yet aren’t we missing the boat, so to speak? In the age of easily erased borders, “free” trade, “deep integration” between Canada and its neighbour, and the spectacle of an entire planet plundered and pillaged by a people who take their own version of English to every resource-rich corner of the world, shouldn’t we be paying most attention to the English of these conquerors, the most powerful nation in human history? Not only has America’s English already permeated Canada by means of pop culture’s juggernaut vehicle, television, but history shows that the language of the conqueror inevitably becomes the new classic. Why not get with the program?

Standard English is dead! Long live Englese!

The young pick up Englese from their electronic teachers and their peers with no trouble at all, but newcomers and SOFs (stubborn old farts) need a little help. Let the teaching begin! Voila Englese 100!