Don Amend

If this item were written in say, any September between 1966 and 1998, I would know exactly what to say to a room full of young people,

Well, maybe I would have had just the right thing to say to four or five new groups of students who were still recovering from summer vacation, or maybe I wouldn’t. It’s a bit hard to remember exactly what you said six decades ago in any case, since my mind is thoroughly shredded by the fact that I remember anything at all after all those years have passed.

It is entirely possible that something I said had the students growling at me, since, as I remember,  I handed them a big assignment after they had found their seats. It’s also possible that something I said had them laughing. One of the first things I learned that year was that, among young people, which I certainly was on that day, they spoke a slightly different dialect than I did. After all, I had arrived in this small corner of Wyoming after dwelling for nearly all my life in the good old Big Horn Basin. The language I learned there was heavily influenced by the Baptist church and my conservative parents’ instruction about how I was a role model for my three younger siblings — and the two who arrived later.

After that, I was exposed to the language used at the University of Wyoming, and over those four years I found that the way we talked was subtly different from what I learned up north. This was even more complicated because my neighbors in the dorms I lived in had learned their English in places ranging from Hong Kong, Pasadena, Buffalo — both the Wyoming and New York versions — Denver, and in one case, the tiny village of Veteran, Wyoming.

Now, lest you think I’m talking about obscenity, profanity, vulgarity or even slightly naughty language, such as that which I was supposed to model for my brothers and sisters, I am not. The fact is, I used very little bad language back then. In fact, several high school classmates asked me why I never swore, and I guess I didn’t, or at least hardly ever did. I especially avoided using words such as the infamous word beginning with “F” which, it seems, many people these days can’t seem to talk without dropping that word in places where it absolutely makes no sense. 

Instead I’m talking about simple differences in what people say. For example, how do you describe a pretty girl. I don’t actually remember the many ways such a girl was referred to, I just remember that when a boy at my new school said he had a “tough” girlfriend he didn’t mean she beat him up every night. He simply meant that “she was pretty and a nice figure.” That was something I had never heard before.

Eventually, after spending time in three corners of Wyoming, I  came to the conclusion that the differences in language were the product of where you lived, whether it was closer to Billings, Salt Lake City, Denver, the Middle East,  or one of the exotic locations in the world who found themselves in Laramie.

 One such world traveler was the Japanese student. He was an interesting case in that he was at Laramie for the expressed purpose of  improving his English so he could find a better job. He chose Laramie because his father was a fan of the 1950s era television. It seems “Laramie” reruns were a big thing among the Japanese back then, and it was sponsored by a large beer company. Wyoming stood out to him and his father because, when they looked up state universities in the U.S., Wyoming was at the bottom of the list. 

The student, Endo, had taken steps to get ready for American English. To that end he had purchased and read a “Dictionary of American Slang” and read Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. He never told me if those two books had been of benefit, but I do know that he never swore, unless it was in Japanese, and he passed all of his courses.

Well back in 1962, my ears were much better than now, at least that’s what my wife says, and being among fellow students and listening to them talk made me more sensitive not only to what they said but when and how they said it. I once could guess where a person came from in Wyoming with accuracy of maybe 50%-60%. I can’t do that any more, although I wish I could.

Worse, my language is not as clean as it used to be, and it’s been ages since anybody has asked me why I never swear. I try to be careful, but talking with and listening to my fellow human beings make that difficult. 

Even so, I have always been fascinated by our language and how it was used. I think I’ll keep that fascination until I quit listening to how we use and misuse it.