Commonality

I think Oscar Pistorius might affect us all more than we realize. His trial is introducing the English-speaking world to the South African accent in a major way.

The educated South African pronunciation we're hearing from the judges and lawyers and witnesses in the trial is definitely a precise version of our common tongue, but it occasionally employs emphasis, idiom and cultural custom that don't always fall easy on our American ears.

It's not British English, nor Australian English. Neither is it our own American English.

It's distinctly the English of South Africa.

This broadening of the American experience started with radio. With a flip of a switch (and as soon as the tubes warmed up) we could listen to people from New York and Los Angeles and Chicago, and even Milwaukee (whence comes H.V. Kaltenborn, an early CBS news analyst with a precise and imposing voice).

And so we all slowly and steadily began to talk more or less alike.

Television and film furthered the changes in the American accent. Satellites made us aware that English was spoken quite differently depending on where in the world one is.

Now the "trial of the century" in South Africa is adding a healthy dose of that nation's English to the mix -- adding to what we heard in the recent celebrations of the life of Nelson Mandela.

And it's not only the accents that enrich us. There is also the matter of the words we hear and then adopt.

(We'll pause here while you throw another shrimp on the barbie [Australia] or just do your own thing [Mandingo via Ralph Waldo Emerson].)

I am reminded of what James Nicoll said back when the global Internet was just becoming really useful in connecting us. Nicoll is well-known in the Usenet community and writes and blogs. He wrote:

The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.

I'm not endorsing language-based violence verbal or physical, but I welcome the enrichment of our common speech. Our language is alive and well.