Language books tend to gather dust in Mississippi
OXFORD — When you boil it down to the nub, every citizen of Mississippi except bona fide members of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, is an immigrant or descended from an immigrant. Even the Choctaws weren’t here when what the Weather Channel once called “the land mass between Alabama and Louisiana” was formed. That’s why staking out this turf as “ours” is a shaky proposition.
In any event, this state is not among those in a panic about being overtaken by outsiders. Legislators do try to whip up people on the topic of aliens, largely because fearmongering works so well. Actual census numbers, though, prove there has been no onslaught. The Hispanic population (not the same as immigrant, but comparable) rose from 2.9 percent to 3.1 percent in Mississippi from 2012 to 2015. Compare 3.1 percent to 25 percent in Florida, 31 percent in Arizona and 39 percent in California.
There are probably plenty of reasons why people from other countries don’t choose to relocate here, but one of them may be language. Mississippians tend to know grammar and proper usage, but we set our English books on the shelves long ago. Our communications are far more colorful, far more accurate, far more descriptive.
Take, well, “boil it down to the nub.” It won’t be in any textbook a person from Asia, Central America or Europe is using to learn English. It contains wonderfully interwoven images. Boiling reduces the volume of a liquid. A nub is the part of something that’s left when everything else is gone. So, boiling to the nub is the same as cutting to the chase, which is our movie-centered aphorism for “summary of essential information.”
Read more: http://www.clarionledger.com/story/opinion/columnists/2017/07/04/language-books-tend-gather-dust-mississippi/441191001/
