Geekonics
 By John Woestendiek
 Philadelphia Inquirer
 Wed., January 8, 1997
 NEWS BULLETIN: Saying it will improve the education of children who
 have grown up immersed in computer lingo, the school board in San
 Jose, Calif., has officially designated computer English, or
 "Geekonics", as a second language.
 The historic vote on Geekonics -- a combination of the word "geek"
 and the word "phonics" -- came just weeks after the Oakland school
 board recognized black English, or Ebonics, as a distinct language.
 "This entirely reconfigures our parameters," Milton "Floppy"
 Macintosh, chairman of Geekonics Unlimited, said after the school
 board became the first in the nation to recognize Geekonics.
 "No longer are we preformatted for failure," Macintosh said during a
 celebration that saw many Geekonics backers come dangerously close
 to smiling. "Today, we are rebooting, implementing a program to
 process the data we need to interface with all units of humanity."
 Controversial and widely misunderstood, the Geekonics movement was
 spawned in California's Silicon Valley, where many children have
 grown up in households headed by computer technicians, programmers,
 engineers and scientists who have lost ability to speak plain
 English and have inadvertently passed on their high-tech vernacular
 to their children.
 HELPING THE TRANSITION
 While schools will not teach the language, increased teacher
 awareness of Geekonics, proponents say, will help children make the
 transition to standard English. Those students, in turn, could
 possibly help their parents learn to speak in a manner that would
 lead listeners to believe that they have actual blood coursing
 through their veins.
 "Bit by bit, byte by byte, with the proper system development, with
 nonpreemptive multitasking, I see no reason why we can't download
 the data we need to modulate our oral output," Macintosh said.
 The designation of Ebonics and Geekonics as languages reflects a
 growing awareness of our nation's lingual diversity, experts say.
 Other groups pushing for their own languages and/or vernaculars to
 be declared official viewed the Geekonics vote as a step in the
 right direction.
 "This is just, like, OK, you know, the most totally kewl thing,
 like, ever," said Jennifer Notat-Albright, chairwoman of the
 Committee for the Advancement of Valleyonics, headquartered in
 Southern California. "I mean, like, you know?" she added.
 THEY'RE HAPPY IN DIXIE
 "Yeee-hah," said Buford "Kudzu" Davis, president of the Dixionics
 Coalition. "Y'all gotta know I'm as happy as a tick on a sleeping
 bloodhound about this. We could be fartin' thru silk perty soon."
 Spokesmen for several subchapters of Dixionics -- including
 Alabonics, Tennesonics and Louisionics -- also said they approved of
 the decision.
 Bill Flack, public information officer for the Blue Ribbon Task
 Force on Bureaucratonics said that his organization would not
 comment on the San Jose vote until it convened a summit meeting,
 studied the impact, assessed the feasibility, finalized a report and
 drafted a comprehensive action plan, which, once it clears the
 appropriate subcommittees and is voted on, will be made public to
 those who submit the proper information-request forms.
 Proponents of Ebonics heartily endorsed the designation of Geekonics
 as an official language.
 "I ain't got no problem wif it," said Earl E. Byrd, president of the
 Ebonics Institute. "You ever try talkin' wif wunna dem computer
 dudes? Don't matter if it be a white computer dude or a black
 computer dude; it's like you be talkin' to a robot -- RAM, DOS,
 undelete, MegaHertZ. Ain't nobody understands. But dey keep talkin'
 anyway. 'Sup wif dat?"
 Those involved in the lingual diversity movement believe that only
 by enacting many different English languages, in addition to all the
 foreign ones practiced here, can we all end up happily speaking the
 same boring one, becoming a nation that is both unified in its
 diversity, and diversified in its unity.
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_/ Bob Mugele                     work: (972)401-5875 _/
_/ Senior Computational Linguist  home: (972)780-8844 _/
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