Don’t freak out! Please, don’t hunt me down Jack Bauer-style or start throwing objects at your computer screen.
Hear me out:
As mentioned in the previous edition, this column represents the payment of my life-debt to The Ubyssey in exchange for unlimited tap water/couch space in their office. However, before we settled on this, a contract was almost signed ensuring that my rent to The Ubyssey would be home-baked white chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies for the whole staff. This was to be delivered on the third Thursday of each month and laid out so they write, “Stop spelling ‘humour’ wrong, you scoundrel American,” as a reminder of the inferiority of my countrymen’s linguistic quirks.
This of course wouldn’t work, if for no other reason than the fact that I would have eaten all the white chocolate chips.
But also don’t ever tell an American they spell words funny. This is for the same reason Han Solo advises never beating a Wookiee at that weird stop-motion chess on the Millennium Falcon. Like Wookiees, Americans are known to rip off the arms of our adversaries. That’s actually how we beat the English. For decades after 1776, it wasn’t uncommon to find hordes of British platoons stampeding across the countryside, armless, with Chariots of Fire cooing from the heavens. But I digress…
As an American student preparing for university three years ago, I assumed living in Canada would result in me learning how to spell English words the way the rest of the English world spells them.
Alas, that is not how it worked out.
I’m sure that all Canadian students at American universities understand me when I say that, now, nothing in English looks right and it’s not just because I possess the reading comprehension level of a manatee. Is it “color”? Is it “colour”? I don’t know. And as such, I’ve decided all these spellings are malarkey. Hence why everybody in this country spells “color” wrong. And everybody in America spells “colour” wrong.
As far as I’m concerned, the Western Hemisphere should create our own language. Just to stick it to the Old World. Who needs Portuguese, Spanish, French and two different Englishes (and some ye-olde timey German, should you dare venture into Pennsylvania Dutch country)? With this new superlanguage, nobody will be confused ever again! It’ll be like Esperanto meets whale-talk, which — let’s be honest — we’re all basically speaking anyway.
Here are some potential grammar rules:
- No conjugation of the verb “to be.” That’s stupid. Instead, everything will be “I is,” “We is”… Basically how we talk back home.
- In fact, no verbs. Screw those guys.
- The intonation many the words unless ever.
- Wait, shit. Verbs. We need them. Bring them back.
- I didn’t mean it, verbs. I never meant any of it.
- Take me back. I miss you.
- No. I love you.
- Three hundred words to describe the 300 nuances distinguishing Australian bartenders in Whistler.
- The creation of a word to describe what we in English refer to as “steamed manila clams.”
In light of the common disagreement over whether language requirements should be in place, I propose UBC scrap all of that and instead require students entering the 2016/17 school year to take at least 12 credits of my language course.
Also, can someone bring me some more white chocolate chips?
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