Peg Herring's Blog - Posts Tagged "grammar"
If I Ruled the (Grammar) World
I'm not ambitious; I just want to tell people how to speak and force them to make sense. I don't always agree with Webster's, and I would like them to get a clue.
For example: our local weatherman uses the word "seasonable" to describe the temperature on a given day. I looked it up, and my big ol' honkin' dictionary agrees with him that "seasonable" means usual for a particular season. What's wrong with "seasonal"? As one long interested in etymology, I find it makes a lot more sense. The "al" ending makes it "like the season", which is a lot better than adding "able" which makes it "capable of being seasoned." (Think "reasonable")
Another rule I don't like is the "I am well" answer one is supposed to give when asked how she is. It seems to me that it is just as likely that I describe myself with a predicate adjective "I am good" as it is that I describe the verb "am" with an adverb. "I am well" sounds poncey, "I am good" sounds descriptive, at least to me.
I know. There's no sense arguing. Somebody decided these things were "correct", at least for this century. (Remember, double, triple, and quadruple negatives were permissable in Shakespeare's time, the thought being that piling them up added emphasis. Now we claim they cancel each other out, like numbers in a math equation.)
Language does not make sense, and English is as bad as, maybe worse than, any other. A mishmash of Latin, Celtic, and a dozen long-lost languages, it has been added to from other languages, twisted by centuries of use, and transformed by idioms and idiots. The rules, therefore, are arbitrary and often silly.
I can be arbitrary, and I'm often silly. So let me rule the grammar world, and I'll tell you all how to speak correctly--my way.
For example: our local weatherman uses the word "seasonable" to describe the temperature on a given day. I looked it up, and my big ol' honkin' dictionary agrees with him that "seasonable" means usual for a particular season. What's wrong with "seasonal"? As one long interested in etymology, I find it makes a lot more sense. The "al" ending makes it "like the season", which is a lot better than adding "able" which makes it "capable of being seasoned." (Think "reasonable")
Another rule I don't like is the "I am well" answer one is supposed to give when asked how she is. It seems to me that it is just as likely that I describe myself with a predicate adjective "I am good" as it is that I describe the verb "am" with an adverb. "I am well" sounds poncey, "I am good" sounds descriptive, at least to me.
I know. There's no sense arguing. Somebody decided these things were "correct", at least for this century. (Remember, double, triple, and quadruple negatives were permissable in Shakespeare's time, the thought being that piling them up added emphasis. Now we claim they cancel each other out, like numbers in a math equation.)
Language does not make sense, and English is as bad as, maybe worse than, any other. A mishmash of Latin, Celtic, and a dozen long-lost languages, it has been added to from other languages, twisted by centuries of use, and transformed by idioms and idiots. The rules, therefore, are arbitrary and often silly.
I can be arbitrary, and I'm often silly. So let me rule the grammar world, and I'll tell you all how to speak correctly--my way.
Teethpaste and Other Essentials of Language
I have more than one tooth. I brush them all at once, so why don't stores sell teethpaste? Of course, we don't have to call it toothpaste if that doesn't make sense to us. We can call that stuff in the tube a "dentifrice," like the scientific community does. Dentifrice? Really?
It's no surprise that language does not, and probably cannot, make sense to all people all the time. We all have to use it, but we come from different places, mind-sets, and education levels. Purists raise their noses when others use "may" and "might" interchangeably, but is meaning really lost if I say, "I may go to the store or I might stay home"?
I see a clear difference between the words "farther" and "further," but the dictionary doesn't. And I have a friend who refers to her "hairs" behaving or not behaving from day to day. She's right; there are a whole bunch of them, and some behave better than others, at least on my head. So who decided "hair" is a collective noun?
When things that make sense to linguists don't resonate with everyone else, rules are ignored. My students used to argue the pronoun/number rule in sentences like, "No one brought his umbrella." I had to agree that the sense of the sentence indicates a lot of people did this thing, though the pronoun and the single umbrella indicate only one and therefore require a singular pronoun. That results in confusion about whether the "one" in the sentence brought "his" umbrella or "her" umbrella. To keep the peace, I usually suggested rewording the sentence to eliminate the problem: "No one brought an umbrella." Of course, to a purist, that's cheating.
It does no good to grouse about it. Language is imperfect and probably always will be. But it seems to me that the farther one wants to go as a writer, the more important it is to further her understanding of words and how they work together. This is true whether she uses toothpaste, teethpaste, or some other choice of dentifrice.
It's no surprise that language does not, and probably cannot, make sense to all people all the time. We all have to use it, but we come from different places, mind-sets, and education levels. Purists raise their noses when others use "may" and "might" interchangeably, but is meaning really lost if I say, "I may go to the store or I might stay home"?
I see a clear difference between the words "farther" and "further," but the dictionary doesn't. And I have a friend who refers to her "hairs" behaving or not behaving from day to day. She's right; there are a whole bunch of them, and some behave better than others, at least on my head. So who decided "hair" is a collective noun?
When things that make sense to linguists don't resonate with everyone else, rules are ignored. My students used to argue the pronoun/number rule in sentences like, "No one brought his umbrella." I had to agree that the sense of the sentence indicates a lot of people did this thing, though the pronoun and the single umbrella indicate only one and therefore require a singular pronoun. That results in confusion about whether the "one" in the sentence brought "his" umbrella or "her" umbrella. To keep the peace, I usually suggested rewording the sentence to eliminate the problem: "No one brought an umbrella." Of course, to a purist, that's cheating.
It does no good to grouse about it. Language is imperfect and probably always will be. But it seems to me that the farther one wants to go as a writer, the more important it is to further her understanding of words and how they work together. This is true whether she uses toothpaste, teethpaste, or some other choice of dentifrice.
