Posted on 02/24/2007 10:03:44 AM PST by rhema
"If I was President, this wouldn't have happened," John Kerry said during Hezbollah's war on Israel last summer. As 2004's Democratic presidential nominee should know, he should have said, "If I were President…"
It's sad, but hardly surprising, that the subjunctive evades someone of Kerry's stature. The English language is under fire, as if it strolled into an ambush. It would be bad enough if this assault involved the slovenly grammar, syntax, and spelling of drooling boors. But America's elites -- politicians, journalists, and marketers who should know better -- constantly batter our tongue.
The subjunctive, for instance, lies gravely wounded. Fewer and fewer Americans bother to discuss hypothetical or counterfactual circumstances using this verb mood. "This would not be a close election if George Bush was popular," Rep. Chris Shays (R.-Conn.) told reporters last summer, using "was," not "were." He erred further: "This would not be a close election if there wasn't a war in Iraq."
Similarly, a HepCFight.com newspaper ad declared: "If Hep C was attacking your face instead of your liver, you'd do something about it."
In an Ameritrade ad last year, a teenage girl begs her father for $80. "80 bucks?" he asks.
"Well, there's these jeans,” she replies, adding later: "There's these really cool shoes."
Forget the shopping spree. Dad should have sent his daughter upstairs without dinner until she mastered noun-verb agreement. Since they are plural, "there are" jeans and shoes, not "there's," the contraction for "there is."
This is a burgeoning linguistic blunder.
United Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten told a Manhattan labor rally: "The muscle and the zeal that built our union is still with us." As a teachers' unionist, for crying out loud, Weingarten should know that muscle and zeal are still with us.
Likewise, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.- Nev.) said, "There was no terrorists in Iraq." Actually, there were, and Reid should have used that plural verb with those plural Islamofascists, even if he considered Baathist Iraq a terrorist-free zone.
In a taped, on-air promo, one cable news network's announcer said, "Inside the UN, there’s more than a thousand doors." No, there ARE more than 1,000 doors.
In another odd grammatical glitch, plural subjects of sentences interact with singular objects. Confusion follows. As one cable TV correspondent reported: "Every day, 1.5 million Americans ride a 747." Visualize the line for the bathroom on that jet. Make that "747s," and the turbulence vanishes.
Just before January's Golden Globe awards, a major newspaper's headline read: "Stars put their best face forward for the Globes." Wow! Eddie Murphy and Helen Mirren share a face?
A cable channel's news crawl correspondingly revealed: "Iraqi authorities find at least 21 bodies, many with nooses around their neck." Who knew so many Iraqis shared one neck?
Consider run-on sentences. A sign in a San Francisco M.U.N.I. streetcar recommends: "Please hold on sudden stops necessary." At the local airport, a men's room sign asks: "Please conserve natural resources only take what you really need."
Would it kill people to spell properly? A New York outdoor display company solicited new business by announcing in huge, black letters: "YUOR AD HERE."
A cable-TV news ticker referred to the "World Tade Center." Another explained that President Bush said he needs wiretaps "to defend Amercia."
Such sloth generates nonsense. Ponder these three items, all from cable-TV news crawls written by practicing journalists: Arab diplomats last August tried to change “a U.S.-French peace plan aimed at ending nearly a month of welfare.” Imagine if Hezbollah lobbed food stamps, rather than rockets, into Israel.
Another channel described a deadly, anti-Semitic attack at a Seattle “Jewfish” center.
And then there’s this beauty: “Disraeli troops kill two Hamas fighters” including one implicated “in the June capture of an Disraeli soldier.”
Today's explosion of rotten English should motivate Americans to speak, write, and broadcast with greater care, clarity, and respect for grammar and spelling. Also, when even college graduates in Congress, newsrooms, and advertising agencies express themselves so sloppily, America's education crisis becomes undeniable.
Is it pedantic to expect linguistic excellence? No. Unless Americans want English to devolve into an impenetrable amalgam of goofs and gaffes, protecting our language, like liberty itself, demands eternal vigilance.
Like all rules, grammar exists as a means toward an end, not an end in itself. A strict prohibition on ending sentences in prepositions begets the absurdity the previous poster pointed out.
It's the same with the Rule of the Split Infinitive. "To boldly go where no man has gone before" is more dramatic than "To go boldly ..." or "Boldy to go ..." There are always cases where the exception is to be preferred.
By the way, another grammatical subtlety that is rapidly being obscured is the proper use of "like" and "as" in comparisons. Or "further" and "farther." "Different from" and "different than."
In favor of what? Feel-good mediocrity w/grade inflation? Know nothingness? One-worldism absent Western culture?
When the end product of such "teaching" results in mass failure in student learning, then the education establishment, w/out a backward glance or any acknowledgment of its own failure to actually teach subject matter and basic skills, moves smoothly on to embrace the next fad.
Technology has its uses, but human brains capable of continuing to advance it must be trained to think, to appreciate its limitations, and to value that which is good to know about the world and the past, present, and future of the human condition.
(BTW...I am well aware of the split infinitive above but used it anyway.)
Excellence? Yes, especially when you're carping about minor slips in conversation. In my experience, grammar Nazis know almost nothing about the history of language, and do not realize that it's understandability which mostly defines what's acceptable, not this or that arbitrary rule. The interchangable use of was/were in some situations, which he attacks several people for, has always been a part of English and appears in the works of Shakespeare among others. It's not a big deal.
Language changes (not "devolves") as time goes by, and one of the last things America needs is French Academy-style micromanagement of the way we talk, be it by government or pundits looking to file copy before deadline. Americans are gradually dropping our special adjective endings, for example; we fought in the Vietnam War and Iraq War, rather than the Vietnamese and Iraqi Wars. When Murdock mentions the Vietnam War, as I know he must have, is he contributing to the corruption of culture by speaking incorrectly? Or is it just the language which is naturally changing?
The well-dressed 16th-century English gentleman sometimes wore both: the codpiece, which was the externally visible textile item, over the merkin, which was the (shall we say) wig that restored a somewhat normal appearance to an area that had been shaved as an anti-lice measure.
I think that's wonderful. Figurative language enlivens the drabness of everyday talk, and it's very much in the spirit of the language's Saxon origins, like Beowulf referring to the sea as the "whale-road". Some of these constructions become so widespread that we hear them everyday, like "breakdown," or "crackup".
Another bad indication - whenever a word is used that is even remotely exotic, it is always defined, since no-one could possibly be expected to look up the definition. This does a few things - one, it destroys the flow of language, and insults the reader, etc. As in - "And there are $10,000 in grants available (that don't have to be paid back)".
"Free Gift" - is there any other kind? "Pre-registration is $5". WTF is "pre" registration? Wouldn't registration suffice?
That's a Philly thing, I think. Or maybe Pittsburgh. Had a boss who would write things like "Generator needs replaced." Or "Needs fixed". HIGHLY annoying, for whatever reason.
I'd be happy if people would learn how to use the apostrophe correctly. That bug's me to no end.
I think so. I grew up in California, but I have been living on the east coast for the past 20 years. I still use the word "freeway", and I still get funny looks when I do.
Because the author's name is William Least Heat-Moon, I am assuming that he is an American Indian and that is the Indian's colorful name for such roads. (Pun intended. LOL)
You be hearing some of the ebonics in the hood, youdn't sweat the linguistic excellence.
LOL! Excellent report. I'm glad you survived the "write by committee" job. Your post will help me the next time I'm frustrated by the corporate stupidity.
It takes a little planning, but (in this case at least) it improves the chances of the statement's being true.
***It's the same with the Rule of the Split Infinitive. "To boldly go where no man has gone before" is more dramatic than "To go boldly ..." or "Boldy to go ..." There are always cases where the exception is to be preferred.***
Oh, I'm glad you said that. "To boldly go..." has so much more power than the other choices. You've just freed me from my "Split Infinitive" terror.
The next stake over should be reserved for something called Adios, Strunk and White: A Handbook for the New Academic Essay by Hoffman and Hoffman. It was already in its third edition in 2003, with rave reviews at Amazon.com from various Professors of English -- which may help explain why, as one English friend commented recently, America appears to be a nation of people who don't know what to do with an apostrophe.
"subcutaneous invective,"
Beautiful!!
There's no doubt in my mind that all those glowing recommendations for the NEW! Strunk and White edition were written by PC academics steeped in liberalism and deconstructionism.
As Sir Winston Churchill said, "That is something up with which I shall not put."
The College Board has also banished the subjunctive as I have observed in watching my son prepare for and take SAT's. In other words those who get 800's are more ignorant than those who get lower scores when they know correct things that the idiocrats who run the College Board think are wrong. The subjunctive is a very natural deep-seated mode of expression and you have to "educate" it out of people. Getto-speech is filled with the subjunctive, and even uses the present subjunctive which long ago disappeared from all but the most ignorant and most erudite speech.
She can't add either. Where are you going to buy jeans and these really cool shoes for eighty bucks.
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.