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A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y. You might have learned it as a chant, a song, or a simple declaration, but this is how you learned the vowels of English. You may have wondered, why is Y so unsure of itself? Can't we just decide what it is? Why is Y a "sometimes" vowel? Because writing is not the same thing as speech. While we casually refer to letters, which are written symbols, as vowels or consonants, the concepts of vowel and consonant properly belong to the domain of speech. In general terms, a consonant is a...

As you read the following passage, identify all of the pronouns, as well as what type of pronoun each is. Remember, there are four types of pronouns we learned about: personal, demonstrative, indefinite, and relative pronouns. (1) Louis Charles Joseph Blériot (1872–1936) was a French aviator, inventor, and engineer. (2) In 1909, he became world famous for making the first flight across the English Channel in a heavier than air aircraft, winning a prize of £1,000 offered by the Daily Mail newspaper. (3) The prize was widely seen as a way to gain cheap publicity when it was first announced...

The 27-year-old accomplished the feat by decoding a rule taught by “the father of linguistics,” Pāṇini. The discovery makes it possible to “derive” any Sanskrit word – constructing millions of grammatically correct words including “mantra” and “guru” – using Pāṇini’s famous “language machine.” Pāṇini’s system — which includes 4,000 rules detailed in his greatest work, the Aṣṭādhyāyī — was written around 500 BC. Linguists say it works like a machine. Feed in the base and suffix of a word and it should turn them into grammatically correct words and sentences through a step-by-step process. Until now, however, there has been...

QuestionShould I use you and me or you and I? Answer Whether to use I or me depends on whether the phrase is the subject of the sentence or the object of the sentence. I is a subject pronoun, and the subject is the person or thing doing the action as in "I went to the store." Me is an object pronoun, and the object is the person or thing the action happens to as in "Alex liked me." Use you and I when it is the subject of the sentence; use you and me when it is the object...

ISREAL ADMITS almost all covid infections and deaths in VACCINATED. They acknewdge the 3rd shot caused "immuno erosion"

Many people snickered at the claim made in Texas v. Pennsylvania that there is only a one in a quadrillion chance that Joe Biden won all the swing states as currently claimed. The true meaning beneath the statistic is simple: the vote counts certified in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia are fake, so let's cut through all the noise and decide what to do next. "One in a quadrillion" is a rarified way of saying it just didn't happen. Texas's case was shot down because in the United States both grammar and logic have been overtaken by rhetoric. The old...

Have you heard the latest? Grammar has now been deemed racist, as has been math. And should you dare question these new insights, that makes you a racist too. Obviously!Fact checkers have challenged the claim that, last month, “Rutgers University declared grammar to be racist.” But such claims have been made before.As noted in a February 21, 2017 article, “The University of Washington produced an ‘antiracist’ poster which insists American grammar is ‘racist’ and an ‘unjust language structure,’ promising to prioritize rhetoric over ‘grammatical ‘correctness.’”As explained on the university’s Tacoma-based website, “Racism is the normal condition of things. Linguistic and...

If you’re looking for peak idiocy from academic institutions that are falling all over themselves to kowtow to the mob’s notions of “social justice,” look no further. The English Department at Rutgers University has declared that proper use of grammar is a hidden form of racism because it disadvantages students of “multilingual, non-standard ‘academic’ English backgrounds.”Grammar is rather boring, so the department is going to sex it up with all sorts of fascinating additions.Washington Free Beacon: The “critical grammar” approach challenges the standard academic form of the English language in favor of a more inclusive writing experience. The curriculum puts...

The English department at a public university declared that proper English grammar is racist. Rutgers University's English department will change its standards of English instruction in an effort to "stand with and respond" to the Black Lives Matter movement. In an email written by department chairwoman Rebecca Walkowitz, the Graduate Writing Program will emphasize "social justice" and "critical grammar." Walkowitz said the department would respond to recent events with "workshops on social justice and writing," "increasing focus on graduate student life," and "incorporating ‘critical grammar' into our pedagogy." The "critical grammar" approach challenges the standard academic form of the English...

A Mississippi church that is suing to stay open during the coronavirus shutdowns was destroyed by arson Wednesday, according to local officials. Fox News reports someone also spray-painted graffiti on the First Pentecostal Church of Holly Springs, including a message that read, “I Bet you stay home now you hypokrits [sic].” Local authorities said there was an explosion in the front of the church, and the building caught fire sometime between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. Wednesday. Marshall County Sheriff’s Department Major Kelly McMillian told the local news that the fire is being investigated as a criminal act of arson....

The American Dialect Society has named “they” as the word of the decade, recognizing the plural pronoun’s growing use as a singular form to refer to people with a non-binary gender identity.The winner was decided in a vote by the body’s 350 members at an annual gathering on Friday. “People want to choose something that stands the test of time and sums up the decade as a whole,” said linguist and lexicographer Ben Zimmer. […] Other words on the list for word of the decade included “meme,” which came in second place, followed by “climate,” “#BlackLivesMatter,” “woke” and “MeToo.” …

It's totally fine to use 'decimate' as a synonym for 'devastate'. This is why. The issue that many people have with the decline and fall of the word decimate is that is once upon a time it had a very singular meaning, a meaning that is in danger of being lost forever to the vandals and barbarian hordes who are manhandling the English language through using this word to mean “to destroy a large number of.” The specific complaint is that decimate had the specific meaning, in ancient Rome, of killing one of every ten soldiers, as a form of...

Here is a hopefully short synopsis of something that happened this week that I still don’t understand (?) [Be sure to read all 25 or so tweets, you will not be disappointed and you will be amazed.]

Full Title: Millennial Writer Cries for Mother at Work, Puts Mother on Speakerphone after Editor Corrects Her Spelling How does a boss manage a worker who believes their feelings trump reality, right down to the way she "feels" about her misspelled words?Gently. And probably badly, even though that's no fault of the boss in question.Carol Blymire -- a "communications and public policy executive, branding consultant, professor, writer" -- took to Twitter on Friday to tell the story she overheard of a young writer, probably "in her late 20s," going over edits with her boss. They had been speaking in low...

A substitute teacher working at an Iowa high school was taken off the sub list a few weeks after telling students that they had horrendous grammar during class. S. Keyron McDermott opened up her piece in a local newspaper saying the high school terminated her last fall for telling students that their grammar skills were subpar – by around 10 years. “Last Halloween, I dressed up like a teacher – not exactly an alter ego; I have a certificate – went to the local high school, and substituted in Family & Consumer Science,” McDermott wrote in an op-ed for the...

If you watch House of Cards, you might remember this scene from season one. (Warning: it contains the C-bomb, so don’t watch it if you’ll be offended by that!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=28&v=vaDoaCsgj_s The joke is based on an entirely false grammar rule: “Thou shalt not end a sentence with a preposition.” Prepositions, remember, are words that describe the position of one thing in relation to another: at, to, in, of, about, from, above, etc. So you’ll hear people trying to obey this “rule” by saying things like this: To what are you referring? (instead of What are you referring to?) There is...

"Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?" asked Professor Henry Higgins in the musical "My Fair Lady." It's a good question for Americans, especially millennials. On a recent flight two young women sat behind me, chattering away rather loudly. In just one minute I counted 16 "likes" and "you knows" from just one of them. It went this way: "And then she was like and then he was like and I was like, you know." As an adverb, "like" means nearly, closely or approximately, as in "the experience was like jumping off a high diving board." There...

If you can give up a small perceived ballistic advantage and in exchange, get the ability shoot the gun better, that's a worthwhile trade-off. But even so, I don’t usually recommend a 20 gauge shotgun over a 12 gauge for home defense. And not because it isn't powerful enough. It has a lot more to do with the lack of industry support for the 20 gauge. The shotguns you can buy today that are set up for self-defense are almost all based on shotguns used by law enforcement and the military. For the last century or more, almost 100% of...

It could be a little too early for all this reading! LOL!!! Plays on Words The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational again invited readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are the winners: 1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time. 2. Ignoranus : A person who's both stupid and an asshole. 3. Intaxicaton : Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start...

Today’s dilemma, dear Readers, is whether to die laughing, or from the abject horror of these grammatic fauxs-pas: A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly. A bar was walked into by the passive voice. An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening. A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite. Hyperbole totally crashes into this insane bar and completely demolishes everything. A...