English

Milltown Quilters of Ellicott City is celebrating the group's 10th anniversary and sponsoring a quilt show, to be held April 19-21 at First Presbyterian Church of Howard County, 9325 Presbyterian Circle, at U.S. 29 and Route 108. Demonstrations, a display of vintage quilts, a silent auction of donated handmade items, vendors, a peddler's table at which members sell quilting books, patterns and other items are planned. An award-winning quilt will be raffled. Admission is $5. Information: 410-964-2876, or www.milltownquilters.

What is it that sets the Irish apart? It must be their Basque heritage. That, and the awful truth that there's barely any difference between them and the English. All those centuries of fighting and religion and malarkey and stiff upper lips, and now it turns out that there's little that's Anglo-Saxon about the English and even less that's Celtic about the land of St. Patrick. Research on male and female chromosomes by an Oxford geneticist named Stephen Oppenheimer shows, he says, that the dominant ancestral strain on both sides of the Irish Sea has its roots in a migration from northern Spain about 16,000 years ago. None of the waves that have swept the British Isles since then - Celtic, Germanic, Roman, Viking, Norman - has had much more than a minor impact, genetically speaking.

September 18, 2007 MR. SAMUEL FRANKLIN ENGLISH, JR. Loving husband of Mrs. Florence M. English. Mr. English is survived by one son Joseph A. English; five daughters Carolyn T. English, Sandra E. English, Charlene K. English, Caroline Wood and Annette Pulliam; his father Samuel F. English, Sr.; two sisters; one brother and a host of other loving relatives and friends. On Tuesday friends may call at Vaughn C. Greene Funeral Services (East) 4905 York road where the family will receive friends from 3:00-8:00 P.M. On Wednesday services will be held at Kingsway Baptist Church, where the family will receive friends from 10:30-11:00 A.M. with services to follow.

"What have we been working on over the past few days?" teacher John Arnold asked the students in his Centennial High School ESOL class. "What kinds of words have we been learning?" There was a long pause as the three students - Gwan Young Moon, 15, Caylie Zhang, 14, and Steve Seo, 15 - groped for the answers. Finally, Seo, a native of Korea, spoke. "Nouns, verbs and adjectives," he said, speaking slowly. For the first time, Seo and about 25 other students who are not native English speakers can learn the language at Centennial, their neighborhood high school.

Leah Waller was named Baltimore's Teacher of the Year yesterday, and she quickly turned the experience into an arithmetic lesson for the first-graders in her class at Maree Garnett Farring Elementary School. Moments after receiving a bouquet of roses from city school officials, Waller asked her students whether it weighed at least a pound. Their response was a unanimous "yes." Waller, 31, learned about the award when city schools interim CEO Charlene Cooper Boston made a surprise visit to her classroom.

Russians want Russian to make a comeback. They're tired of Americans who speak only English, and they're offended by Poles and Estonians who choose not to speak Russian. They want their language to get some respect, and the government has gone so far as to make 2007 the official Year of the Russian Language (the news of which has only just now reached our offices). Boy oh boy. Russian is a beautiful and nuanced and devilish language. It sometimes bears a passing resemblance to headlinese, because it dispenses with articles (the and a)

CHICAGO -- The fight over what to do about illegal immigration is not entirely a matter of people coming to the United States in violation of the law. It's also about what they allegedly bring with them: social pathologies. Many American think illegal immigrants are prone to all sorts of destructive behavior: committing crime, having children out of wedlock, dropping out of school and refusing to learn English. This is not a full and fair portrayal. Still, there is some truth to the charge that when we import foreigners, we also import social problems.

A Howard County grand jury indicted yesterday a 22-year-old North Laurel man accused in the death of an 8-month-old baby.William P. English of the 9100 block of Blues Alley is charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter, child abuse, first-degree assault and second-degree assault.The baby, Victoria Dobbin, was in English's care June 2, when she either fell "on or off a counter top," charging documents state. An autopsy ruled the death a homicide, stating "blunt force" to the victim's head caused the death.

ISTANBUL, Turkey -- As foreign languages infiltrate Turkey's schools and culture, Turkish is starting to sound like Turkey talk.Just as Americans will toss an occasional "je ne sais quoi" into conversation, Turkish intellectuals pepper their speech with foreign words and phrases.But not always for show. After so much reading and research in foreign languages, the elite are forgetting their native tongue.Sometimes the use of English is snobbish, admits Gursel Ugurlu, head of the English department at Sultan Fatih private high school in Istanbul.

Charlotte Stoudt arrived at Center Stage in 1994 as the "world's oldest, most qualified intern."Now, Stoudt, who lives in Halethorpe, is the theater's head dramaturge. Among her qualifications was a Ph.D. in English from Oxford, where Stoudt also acquired a fine education in shoes.She often slipped off to London, a city with the "best shopping," says Stoudt. "I miss the shoes." Not only are they well made, but they are also designed in "English urban style, which prizes eccentricity and individualism.

While our teenagers have been minting acronyms for the English language (ask your closest-to-kin teen to define "rofl" and "ttyl"), California English educator Kelly Gallagher has taken the world of adult neologisms one step forward with his killer noun: "readicide." Here's the definition: the systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools. Too often, Mr. Gallagher explains, teachers' efforts to meet test standards churn out students who, overdosed in high school on a narrow diet of required classics and literary analysis, leave English classrooms without an ounce of lasting interest in engaged reading.

Maryland's high school seniors are having more difficulty passing their biology and English exams than tests in the other two subjects, according to data released recently by the Maryland State Department of Education. Statewide statistics released at the state board meeting last week showed that, overall, 83 percent of students in the Class of 2009 had passed all the High School Assessments required to receive a high school diploma. Special education students and those who are learning English as a second language were struggling the most.

In Diane English's bogus new version of The Women, starring Meg Ryan as the virtuous housewife and Eva Mendes as the vamp who steals her husband away, there's no longer a brilliant set piece on a dude ranch, and no one comes out smelling like a cactus rose. In a way, The First Wives Club had a better idea of how to remake The Women: Play up the slapstick and let three inspired clowns, Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton and Bette Midler, pratfall their way to glory. You can gauge the misplaced priorities of The Women by how it cuts Midler down to a couple of uninspired scenes.

The Annapolis city council has passed an ordinance that requires work crews installing or working on underground utilities to have at least one member on site who is fluent in English. Alderman Samuel E. Shropshire, a Ward 7 Democrat, introduced the legislation in February, after residents in his district complained that maintenance workers severed phone and cable lines, leaving them without electricity and phone and cable service for days. The workers apparently didn't speak English and couldn't communicate safety information.

Marietta English will remain president of the Baltimore Teachers Union after soundly defeating longtime rival Sharon Y. Blake in an election yesterday. English captured about 60 percent of the vote to about 34 percent for Blake, union officials announced. About 1,000 educators cast votes. The union has about 8,000 members, 6,000 of them teachers. "I'm very thankful to the membership for putting their trust in me again for the next two years. We're going to continue to work on their behalf," English said.

The Baltimore Teachers Union election Wednesday features two longtime rivals who have taken each other to court before - and aren't afraid to do so again. Sharon Y. Blake, who is running for president of the union's teacher unit, defeated incumbent Marietta English by two votes when the women first squared off in 2000. Blake served as president until 2002, when English won the position back, and Blake's supporters sued to contest the validity of the election process. Now Blake is trying to unseat English again.

Language is a difficult subject to discuss dispassionately because it's our essence. So when two languages come cheek to jowl, as English and Spanish have in the United States, it becomes a hot issue. As Chicano poet Gloria Anzaldua wrote in Borderlands: La Frontera: "So, if you really want to hurt me, talk badly about my language. I am my language." Linguistic terrorism has plagued children of immigrants and Native Americans for generations. Alberto Alvaro R?os wrote in his book Capirotada: A Nogales Memoir: "If speaking Spanish is bad, and our parents speak Spanish, then they must be bad," he concluded, "and we became ashamed of them."

Mount Hebron High School drama department will perform the musical Godspell at 7 p.m. Nov. 14, 15, 16 and 17 in the school auditorium. The cast and crew have dedicated the performances to the memory of Doug Dellinger, a 2005 graduate who was killed Aug. 15 in an car accident. "He was a wonderful young man who was admired by so many," wrote drama teacher Thomas L. Sankey in an e-mail. "He was in many of my school shows and was enthusiastic, positive and a joy to be around." The show, which includes a cast of 15, is directed by Sankey.

Centennial High School will celebrate its 30th anniversary and "Thirty Years of Excellence: 1977-2007" at homecoming festivities Oct. 27, beginning with the traditional PTSA pancake breakfast from 8 a.m. to noon and a parade through the surrounding communities. A slide show in the school's auditorium and a display in the cafeteria will show snapshots from the school's past 30 years. Commemorative coffee mugs will be available. Pregame ceremonies begin at 1:10 p.m. and will be emceed by original staff member and social studies teacher Bruce Smith, former school principals, and the school's first athletic director and football coach, Jim Welch.

Raymond Clarence Phillips, a colorful and witty English professor who kept several generations of Western Maryland College students riveted with his classroom dramatizations of literary characters, died Monday of a stroke at Chesapeake Regional Medical Center in Chesapeake, Va. He was 75. Dr. Phillips, who maintained homes in Uniontown and Williamsport, Pa., had been vacationing in Corolla, N.C., when stricken. He was born and raised in Williamsport and graduated from Williamsport High School in 1949.