The Quantitative English

Browsing the Net, I found that, in 2002, Robert Birnbaum interviewed John Dufresne . In this piece, the writer talks about his years in school and his origins. “My grandparents and most of my friends' grandparents came from somewhere else. Canada, Italy, somewhere else. They came here. They learned a language. The English language, for them, was information [...],” Dufresne says. Then he specifies what type of “information.” It is that his relatives – and most of other immigrants – used the foreign language to speak with a cashier at the Publix supermarket, or at Wal-Mart. Most immigrants speak a “quantitative” English. They know only so much to survive in the American jungle.

A few weeks ago, I spoke with a couple, friends of my husband. They lived in Chicago for thirty of forty years, they made (literally) a ton of money (but they worked very hard especially the husband). They were born in the little town where I was born. They came in the US when were very young, but after all these American years, not only their “accent” is still very strong, but when I spoke to them, I could read in their eyes, they were surprised to hear how I talk. Generally, immigrants, or at least the immigrants I know, those who came to the US to live and realize the American dream, those who, when arrived, believed could find money on the street: all they had to do was just scoop the money up, and instead ended up working 18 hours a day, don’t talk about literature. They talk even less about writing. To become a fiction writer (say it again…“Fiction writer”? What is it? A new dish? But is it served with mashed potato or with asparagus?) may be something awkward for them.

Defresne pinned down what English language may have been for most immigrants: a practical aid in their everyday life. Immigrants usually were people who filled their stomachs with hope, people who more than acting needed to react to their misery; people who traveled for weeks on a ship, who were packed like cotton balls in a two-ounce container, infested with fleas, forgotten in their countries; people who carried all they owned in a suitcase made of a cheap cardboard.

For these people, “English” may remain a mystery they will never discover.