SOMETHING DOMINIC STRAUSS KAHN WOULD LOVE ...
Posted on 03/17/2015 7:37:26 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
It’s a perpetual lament: The purity of the English language is under assault. These days we are told that our ever-texting teenagers can’t express themselves in grammatical sentences. The media delight in publicizing ostensibly incorrect usage. A few weeks ago, pundits and columnists lauded a Wikipedia editor in San Jose, Calif., who had rooted out and changed no fewer than 47,000 instances where contributors to the online encyclopedia had written “comprised of” rather than “composed of.” Does anyone doubt that our mother tongue is in deep decline?
Well, for one, I do. It is well past time to consign grammar pedantry to the history books.
As children, we all have the instinct to acquire a set of rules and to apply them. Any toddler is already a grammatical genius. Without conscious effort, we combine words into sentences according to a particular structure, with subjects, objects, verbs, adjectives and so on. We know that a certain practice is a rule of grammar because it’s how we see and hear people use the language.
That’s how scholarly linguists work. Instead of having some rule book of what is “correct” usage, they examine the evidence of how native and fluent nonnative speakers do in fact use the language. Whatever is in general use in a language (not any use, but general use) is for that reason grammatically correct.
The grammatical rules invoked by pedants aren’t real rules of grammar at all. They are, at best, just stylistic conventions: An example would be the use of a double negative (I can’t get no satisfaction). It makes complete grammatical sense, as an intensifier. It’s just a convention that we don’t use double negatives of that form in Standard English.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Logic should be mathematical.
Common Core’s take on legitimizing ignorance and unsuccessful teaching.
But the rule applies to language and to math. Maybe the only one where it does.
There Is No ‘Proper Temperature’: Ignore global warming scolds. If it is the current temperature, it’s the right one.
Linguistic descriptivism is fine for academic scholars studying languages in their ivory towers. But the vast majority of those dealing with grammar are teachers who must either be prescriptivists or they are wasting everyone's time. It's like the difference between an oncologist who studies the progress of cancer and one who prescribes chemotherapy to slow or stop it. I certainly wouldn't want to have the first as my doctor as he watches how the disease progresses in me without offering a cure.
I wasn’t slamming your post, it was an example...
English is NOT a rational language. Accepting that is the first step to learning to communicate.
/johnny
A little music to go with the thread.:)
RE: It is in the dictionary. :)
Well, just goes to show that if enough people use bad grammar, it eventually becomes accepted.
I wonder if Queen Elizabeth or any of the Royals use the word “Ain’t” at all...
Being able to speak and write Engish is still required to get a decent job. The only exceptions to this rule are rappers, who are entertaining the lowest common demographic.
And who sets the rules? There was no committee that set the rules one day and there it was. English has changed for hundreds of years.
The trick is to change slowly enough that the rigid rationalists don't disturb everyone else too badly.
/johnny
RE: I wasn’t slamming your post, it was an example...
OK, I could care more. :)
Ermagerd.
Oh, why can’t the English learn to speak?
Damn, if only my Son had known this years ago, the money he could have saved in getting his Masters in English! Now I know that many Hispanics and Blacks believe this, but I never knew the WSJ did. Next they will be telling people that math is irrelevant as we've already been told that writing is.
And illegal aliens no habla Ingles ...
Either that, or the listener hasn't been exposed to the common language.
/johnny
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.