English

The Carroll County commissioners who want to make English the official language of the county forget that German was spoken in the county as much as English during its first hundred years or so ("Carroll commissioners might make English official language," Sept. 26). Also, after the Native American languages, Spanish was the first language in the continental U.S. I don't like the racist posturing. MaryAnn H. Gregory, Westminster

The Carroll County commissioners introduced a proposal Thursday to make English the county's official language and will schedule an evening public hearing to give all residents the opportunity to speak. "We need good public input on this issue," Commissioner Doug Howard said at the board's weekly session. "Everyone should be heard. " Howard said he wants interpreters available at the hearing for those who need them. The bill, as written, would authorize the five-member, all-Republican board to "take all steps necessary to ensure that the role of English as the common language of Carroll is preserved and enhanced.

The commissioners of Carroll County, Maryland, are solemnly considering a measure to make English the official language of their county , following the examples of Frederick County and Queen Anne's County.  Perhaps the best that can be said of the measure is that it will do little or no harm, having little practical effect. Federal and state regulations will remain unaffected, and likely most business practices too. The shelves of Carroll County shops will continue to carry products with bilingual English/Spanish labeling, English/French when they come from Canada.  It is a measure that addresses an evil that does not exist.

A Carroll County commissioner has drafted legislation that would make English the county's official language — and if it passes, Carroll would become the third Maryland locality to enact such legislation this year, following Frederick and Queen Anne's counties. Commissioner Haven Shoemaker, who represents the Hampstead area, said he will ask his colleagues to introduce the proposal at the board's session Thursday. If they are amenable, a public hearing would be scheduled before a vote.

At first, the wife wasn't sure. With so many houses on the market, an English manor-style estate at 10 Estes Road, nestled in the coveted Woodbrook neighborhood just north of the Baltimore City line, didn't grab her attention. Her husband, though, knew immediately that they'd found their next home. "That's not unusual with a Benhoff home," said Kevin Benhoff, the agent who completed the $2.4 million sale in June. "The styling tends to trend masculine. Especially until the final touches are there.

Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a moderately obscure but evocative word with which you may not be acquainted, another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word: FESTSCHRIFT English is a promiscuous language that bears traces of every other language that ever spent the night. Or, if you prefer a gentler metaphor, some foreign words are naturalized without getting their names changed at Ellis Island.  One such word is festschrift (pronounced FEST-schrift)

Mark Falcone enjoys telling people that the cutters and sewers in his factory in Westminster made 300 suits for Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin and the numerous extras of "Men In Black III. " But, while the MIB movies might have popularized the black suit for men, mass-produced sameness is hardly English American Tailoring's thing. This company, rooted in Maryland for a century, quietly produces thousands of made-to-measure suits - in solids, pinstripes and plaids - for customers around the world.

Al Jazeera English will premiere a thought-provoking and hard-hitting documentary about Baltimore tonight, but viewers here won't be able to see it on cable TV. That's outrageous, ignorant and maddening. That's the conclusion I came to last week while reporting a Sunday story on the documentary and the bleak picture of Baltimore it would be presenting to a potential audience of 260 million homes elsewhere in the world. Read that story here . But that lack of access to Al Jazeera English on cable TV also makes me wonder what kind of sheep we are as media consumers -- and what kind of mice we have as media critics that cable companies can get away with not offering this option even as they they offer a sea of channels devoted to shopping and reruns of lame network shows from previous decades.

Despite all that rubbish from linguists and lexicographers and other lax thinkers, we know perfectly well that there is an English, a Platonically perfect form of the language which so many in our shadowy cave-bound world mutilate. We also know, or at least sense, that there was once a time before our current degenerate era when that perfect English held sway, before the Young People defaced the language. It was a time when everyone wrote in impeccably grammatical English and spoke in Received Pronunciation.

Cynthia Earl Kerman, a retired Villa Julie College faculty member who wrote biographies of a Quaker economist and a Harlem Renaissance writer, died of pneumonia July 22 at the Glen Meadows retirement community. She was 89 and had lived in Lauraville. Born Cynthia Earl in Srinagar, Kashmir in India, where her father was teaching physical education for the YMCA, she attended the Kodaikanal School. Family members said living in India made a lasting impression on her, and she revisited the country and occasionally prepared Indian meals for her guests when entertaining.