muddy morphology.

Hangin at Schiro's small smoky bar one 8 o'clock evening, makin kissy.eyes at the haggardly dragged.up barkeep, waitin for bright veg curry to accompany my black.bottle voodoo, eavesdropping on the trio next down, who were stuff.fussy peacocked in poly.blend banality: obvious Modern 'Merican Professionals. A ridiculous frilly blouse of anemic salmon, of transparent dacron sashimi, with truly titanic mouth attached somehow above, booming pontificated that,

"As a Degreed Linguist and professor from New York, I declare New Orleans 'Hopeless.' This people's speech is atrocious! Is not even English! Is rife with mismatched modifiers and made-up words; is a rotting melange of slipshod conjunctions and subject.verb deathmatches and wretched, illiterate mispronounciations; it is completely unintelligible, to the point of utter gibberish."

And a number of things raced ears, eyes, nearly mouth in me:

(this:) Hey, I wonder if she can feel the twenty.odd bleary eyes' glaring her stiff spine;

(and:) She sounds kinda uncomfortable, sorta strident.

...Or maybe just pompous, terrified, and out of her depth.

(and, and:) And, really, I'd love to know

how the hell this froofy bitch got a degree in linguistics without

grasping the most basic assumptions and principles of,

y'know,

linguistics?

(and:) That's so funny: she thinks New Orleans is part of the U.S.

Where's she been the last few hundred years?

New Orleans (and southern Louisiana, in general) does have its own languages. Yeah, plural. Languages. In this teeniny little wetland. Its got its own code. Its own Cajun, Napoleonic, Plantation Society French; its Yat; its Louisiana Creole (tongues sticky with rooted Spanish, Native American, West African, and French); its Isleño and Brule Spanish; its urban rich white, poor black and poor white. And more. Oh, more. I cannot think of another place in this country that can boast such a rich tureen of language in which to dip one's linguistic ladle.

A Creole gentleman explained to me, "People come down here and can't understand what we sayin when we talk. Say we don't know English and stuff, you know? We know howta read. We understand how things are sposed to be pronounced. But we got our own waya sayin things, and we don't care what anybody thinks about that. It's our own thing. Nobody in the world talks like folks from New Orleans."

What a beautiful, enviable thing.

Silly bitch got no idea what she's missin.