by Ron Enderland

In December of 1996, the Oakland, California school board voted to recognize Black English as a second language in Oakland schools. The first effects of this have already been felt, namely, the capitalization of "Black English." The term that the Oakland school board itself prefers to use is "Ebonics," from "ebony" and "phonics."

The debate ignited by this motion burst into flame instantly, with the usual ones hailing it as "a great step in the right direction," and the usual others expressing outrage over the sheer "stupidity" of the decision.

Well, friends, to (badly) paraphrase Marc Antony, I'm not here to praise the debate, I'm here to make fun of it.

Personally, I feel like this could open up numerous other "cans of worms" (a colloquial term meaning complex situations).

Take, for instance, Nerdonics.

Nerdonics is a language consisting of terms like "Pentium Pro 200 with 64 megs of EDO, a 2 gig, an ISDN, a PCI card with 4 megs of VRAM, and a 21 inch .28 pitch" (English translation: a nice computer).

Nerdonics had its birth in the 1940's, with the development of the Mark 1. This was the computer that was designed by IBM and the US Navy for the purpose of solving complex ballistics calculations. The first Nerdonics term was believed to be spoken by a young apprentice technician by the name of Conkling. The term was #@^**!!!, which, of course, is translated as "minor programming bug which causes apprentice technicians to have to work an extra seven hours."

Today, Nerdonics has blossomed into a language that is spoken by millions. Each time an English speaker buys his or her first computer, the transformation into a Nerdonics speaker begins to take place. Let's look in on a typical scenario:

Father: "Johnny, did I hear you say that this computer came with a mouse in the box?"

Johnny: "Yes, Dad, but it's not a live mouse, it's a pointing device."

Father: "Oh, so a mouse is a computer part."

Johnny: (sighing) "Yes, Dad."

Do you see what has happened? Johnny's father has just learned his first Nerdonics term. It won't be long before he's alienating his coworkers with words like "bandwidth," "system resources," "ASCII," "32-bit platform," and "mouse."

Johnny's teacher will have to learn Nerdonics so that she can communicate with Johnny in a language that he is familiar with. Johnny's father's boss will be required to either be fluent in Nerdonics, or have Nerdonic speaking staff available to translate.

As one who is fairly fluent in Nerdonics and standard English, I have observed scenes like this: A Nerd sees a nice looking lady in a bar. He walks over and says "What's a nice girl like you doing interfacing with real-life avatars in a place like this?" The lady pours her Manhattan over the Nerd's head, and he stands there with a cherry caught in his horn-rimmed glasses. Could his being fluent in English have saved him from this humiliation? Possibly, although contact lenses probably would have helped more.

What do Nerds themselves have to say about this? Nerd-American activist Steve Binary expressed this opinion: "I'm incensed. The very idea that Nerd-American language is a language separate and apart is very threatening, because it can encourage young men and women not to learn standard English."

What do you think? Should Nerdonics be recognized as a separate language? Or should it be simply ignored, with Nerdonics speakers being forced to learn (or relearn) standard English? Please, write your congressman today and let him know how you feel!