I am an electrical engineer. I have a degree from Hanoi University of Science and Technology. I read technical manuals in English every day. I immigrated to America six years ago, and I passed my professional licensing exam—in English—on the first try.
I am telling you this so you understand: I am not someone who struggles with English.
And yet. My daughter came home crying tonight over a word I had never seen in my life.
Recumbentibus.
Go look it up. I’ll wait. It means “a knockout blow.” My daughter Lan is twelve. She has a vocabulary test on Friday. Twenty words. Here is the list: crapulous, jargogle, vulpine, snollygoster, fudgel. I have worked in engineering for seventeen years. I have written technical reports, project proposals, safety assessments. I have never once used any of these words. I will never use any of these words. Neither will Lan.
She asked me, “Dad, when will I need this?”
I am an engineer. I deal in reality. I looked at that list and could not give her a single honest answer.
I came to America because I believed in opportunity. I worked for it. I studied for it. I sat in a room for eight hours taking an exam in my second language so I could build a life here. And now my daughter—who already works twice as hard as her classmates just to keep up—is being asked to memorize vocabulary that would confuse a university professor.
She brought bánh mì for lunch last week. A kid asked her what it was. She said “a sandwich.” She knew it wasn’t just a sandwich. She wanted to explain the pâté, the pickled daikon, the cilantro. She had the words in Vietnamese. She could not find them in English fast enough, and the moment passed. That is the vocabulary gap she needs to close. Not “snollygoster.”
I found this website while searching “what is crapulous.” Someone out there wants these words back. I do not know who you are. I do not know what you think the world gains from reviving English that died before my grandfather was born. But I know that right now, in my kitchen in Orange County, there is a twelve-year-old girl crying over words that have no business being on a child’s desk.
I am not against education. I am against wasting my daughter’s time. There is a difference.
— Michael Nguyen, Electrical Engineer, California