There's more to it than just grammar

So last time in English Language and Literature class we did a debate which was based on a text by an Asian-American author called Amy Tan. The whole thing spoke about her mother's "broken" English and all of the repercussions that that brought along. There was one thing though, that really rang in my mind, because it actually happened to me when I took the PSAT in the last two years. She spoke about how she would get worse results in the grammar section of the SAT because of questions like Sunset is to nightfall as ______ is to _______ and then the options were things like red is to stoplight or yawn is to boring. What would happen was that the example would throw out incredible images of a burst of colors in the darkening sky with a rising moon and stars and everything, while the answers threw around disconcerting and boring images that seemed to have nothing to do. I know I get the same feeling, because even after she said later in the paragraph that the answer was as chills is to fever I still did not understand it you know. So, nightfall comes after sunset, yes it's true, but why on Earth would having chills mean you got a fever??? I mean it! I probably would have not been able to answer this one if it had come up to me, and if I did it would probably take me like a minute or so to get out of the picture of the beautiful sunset from my old apartment in Caracas and the stars beginning to pop-up in the other side of the sky. 

We often look at language as a logic process that has to follow specific rules in order to communicate; especially in English, which is used in many technical and academic situations where you must make it well organized. It's not that I'm criticizing the way English is very logical just because it's annoying for me, because when the language follows a logical pattern it's easier to just pass on ideas without the person reading it misunderstanding and that shows in the academic achievements of the English-speaking world, I mean, when you you look at the top 10 universities in the world they are all going to be English-speaking. Trust me, I did the research in Spanish and French and got the same result. 

However, the issue here is that language is actually much more than that. Through language we can evoke ideas that stimulate the human mind and create powerful images in our heads. These images don't even have to be of colors, but they can be images of smell or sound created in our heads. Through words we have the power to evoke very strong feelings, and we often do so unconsciously, and I believe that all this makes language become more human and also makes emotions go around more (which adds to the humanness).

Now, the point I'm trying to make with all this, is that often we tend to discriminate people because their language does not follow the same grammatical structure as ours and in our minds, even if subconsciously, we tend to judge them as people who are less intelligent. However, the truth is that language is all about making connections to real life things. Language is a logical, imperfect medium, with which we try to express some extremely abstract concepts that are around us. Language will never be able to clearly express things such as how warm the sun is, or what tone of brown my desk is, or how does love really feel or anything at all, for that matter. It is the job of the receiver, the listener to interpret those words and make connections to real life. So in this sense, using a proper grammatical structure isn't at all a requisite for language to work. I could say "chicken sandwich cold" and you could probably still see the image of a sandwich in your head, and maybe even taste the unappetizing cold chicken with lettuce and tomato in your mouth. It wouldn't really make a difference if I said that "the chicken sandwich is cold" instead, because either way you got the images I wanted you to get in your head, which means that my communication was good enough. In day to day life,we don't really need grammar unless it is to elaborate on a certain thing that's too complex, such as a story or when you're trying to explain a Math problem to someone. English words pastiche and work still English! Because even if that sentence could mean something else, when you place it into context you won't confuse the meaning (unless you want to be annoying and use the other meaning)

Person speak like Tarzan not stupid. Person grammar bad no intelligence level define. It's a good thing to keep in mind :)