Substituting Anglo-Saxon for Latin

Substituting Anglo-Saxon for Latin

       by Dirigible Doug

wopity wopity wopity wopity wopity wopity woo

billy informed miss smith that she'd just stepped in his doggie's doo

I was telling my company last Sunday over faspa about an issue at my school. When it came to my attention, I said, that certain boys in my school were being caught swearing I made it my business to preclude the use of expletives as efficiently as I possibly could. I called their parents, repeated the words the youngsters had said, made them swear to control their children's behavior, and then rewarded them with praise in the next month's Explicator, as in the following excerpt.

Parents often delay attending to child behavior problems because these are so difficult to identify and address. But we have among us some who, when confronted with the possibility of even small requirements for disciplinary action, leap to the task and before long solve the problem at hand. I wish to commend Henry and Marietta Franzen, Bill and Annie Cornelson, and Betty and Sven Klassen for their fine, skillful and helpful responses to my concerns this past week.

Clifford Pankratz, especially, caused troubles at recess with his references to private parts and intimate behaviors. His parents may well have been at fault since they live on Third Street.

       Third Street is a hotbed of swearing. Of course, people swear in other parts of town, too, but not publicly, nor volubly, nor with such indifference to taste. For instance, Paul Friesen might say to Dennis Leatherdale that he wishes the "h" business would pick up, but he would never in mixed company refer to a pig's privates in Low German. He would not make reference to the pointy part of a chicken's rear end during a dinner engagement, whereas Ben Hoeppner of Third Street would grin and speak of a chicken's "pleutz" while pretending to take a bite of and thoroughly enjoy chewing it, to the general approbation of the Mexican Mennonite men around the table and the apparent discomfort of the Mexican Mennonite women.

       Here and there in this town, this Winkler that is called a city now with its influx of so many Russian and German immigrants in the last fifteen years, people surprise me with their lapses. The other day I got invited to supper at Mrs. Sveta Clandervaaggen's house and when we had finished the meal she announced, suddenly, stretching and rubbing her tummy, that she had eaten enough to pull the short ones off a sow's ass. For someone of her age and respectability that is unforgivable, except that we were only the three of us and we laughed and she blushed and apologized but smiled to show that she now and then did allow herself an expression not acceptable in the ordinary way of things. Usually, you will hear statements such as, "Man, I've eaten enough to kill a cow," or "If I take one more bite my gut will bust!" but not such crudities as hers. We here from Seventh Street and up don't refer to body parts in their coarsest possibility.

       Oh, I've been to the Mexican Mennonite villages and I know where the tendency originates. I visited the Idzes in the Chako in 1983 on a trip organized by Delbert Plett and I discovered there this truth. I myself became quickly habituated to rough language and had to debrief for weeks after my return in order to reunite with my proper self. They live in the old Mennonite style houses attached to barns by a "gank," or walkthrough. Chickens wander underfoot on the yard, cows bellow to be fed and gotten into the barn, horses defecate along the road and driveway, and boys and girls go behind the barn to do their business instead of inside or in the outhouse. You may come around the corner of the chicken shed and see squatting there a woman whom just two minutes ago you saw hurrying from the house on some errand. Her long skirts protect her from observation, true, but you can hear the stream coming from under them just as if a calf were urinating in the stall. No toilet paper round, I wonder with what they wipe themselves. I never noticed them applying paper to their persons during that whole time I visited. Nor do they seem intent on washing after defecation or the emission of bodily fluids. That astonished me and preoccupied my thoughts for some time. I had to wrestle with myself to overcome a sense of disgust and be able once again to enjoy their fine meals, tasty and nutritious. But. to my dismay, also, I discovered that the language used by Mexican Mennonites surpasses anything I have accidentally stumbled across in street, home or even on the schoolyard at recess.

       Phrases of inappropriateness emanate with regularity from their lips in mixed company. Pete will say, "Shuve deen morsz eva, du fula futz," and Hank will smirk and stay where he is. Eva might be ironing something and turn to Betty and say, "Fruh, treijk dee doch betta oewn. Deeni taetjeus deij steikje meijst goewns ruewt and Peijta vowt seijk bepesshe soew schvind aus heij siene naes hiej nan staechjt." References to "ass" and "tit" are common as pig manure in these villages. I heard a preacher speak, in confident tones, mind you, of how his "pisser" was itching him. He got off his horse, scratched at his privates, and said, smiling at myself and his hired hand with him, "Mee jeikt di pisshat," and then he added, "Meeni fruh deij jeikjt sike dowe ook meinchjmol." I couldn't believe my ears. Plainly, our children receive their education at home, and Third Street has its taproot still nestled firmly in the bosom of home in Mexico. I really have no hope of altering their proclivities, I added to my company, helping myself to another of what had been more than my fair share of my fine wife's white buns and a heaping pat of butter and spoon of wild plum jam. But I do not despair so much, I said, as struggle to maintain a sort of dignity on the schoolyard at least.