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.
actually there are 5 or 6, including infinitive, participial, and gerund depending upon whether you view that as the same or different from the present participial form.
Actually nothing is changing. English recognizes the Germanic habit of a noun, "Vietnam," modifying a noun, "war," just as an adjective, "Vietnamese," can modify the noun, "war." One may be more melifluous than the other, and eschewing endless long Germanic noun-phrases is a stylistic preference that leads to greater clarity of expression, nevertheless, it is an issue of taste rather than grammar.
I learned to diagram with "L" lines instead of "\" ones. I must be really old.
Apparently the punctuation rules already did. This should be written, "'Whom' deserves to die; if it were a living being, its corpse would be so mangled that it would be necessary to use a Hefty bag as a shroud." Instead of the semi-colon you could also use a period and start a new sentence.
That there is a clear distinction in meaning is why the different forms survive in virtually every language on the planet except contemporary English as taught in the American public schools. It survives in street Spanish and street English, just not in the NEA.
As a Technical Editor in a non-English-speaking country, I frequently encounter some real "doozies" of spelling and grammar. Since I deal almost exclusively with technicians and engineers whose first language is not English, I tend to be quite forgiving. And it's nice to feel needed.
Having set myself up as an expert, I am now mentally preparing myself to be "shot down" for any errors which this posting may contain, but here goes:
Since I visit the States only infrequently, I tend to register what I perceive to be subtle changes in spoken English - including changes which I suspect reflect a changing mindset.
Has anyone else noticed the changing use of the verb "to need" in the sense of "I want" or "I expect" or "it is required"? No one seems to have the courage to say "You aren't allowed to smoke in this restaurant!" or "Would you please speak more quietly - the movie's in progrss?" or "The sign says to turn off your cell phone." Instead, they say "I need to have you stop smoking" or "The Democrats need to stop criticizing the President" and other wishy-washy statements.
Has anyone else noticed this, and am I making too much of this?
>>At least the pants have legitimate history. At one time the lower male body was clothed with two separate leggings with a codpiece, or merkin, where the modern zipper is.<<
No kidding?! Men used to wear merkins? I was under the impression that that item of apparel was exclusive to the female gender! In fact, my dictionary plainly states that a merkin is 1) female pubic hair, or 2) a false female pubic hairpiece.
Here's a new one (to me) that I recently read in a novel: "They stood there on the tarmac farewelling him as his plane took off."
Andy, I wasn't going to do this, but now you've made me. LOL.
THE FOLLOWING IS WHY I think we should forget the was and were constructions, and concentrate on such obvious misuses of the English language as, "He gave the book to I." :
>>>The form of verb in the main clause will depend on your intended meaning: If Hamlet was really written by Marlowe, as many have argued, then we have underestimated Marlowe’s genius. If Kevin was out all day, then it makes sense that he couldn’t answer the phone. 7
Remember, just because the modal verb would appears in the main clause, this doesn’t mean that the verb in the if clause must be in the subjunctive if the content of that clause is not presupposed to be false: If I was (not were) to accept their offer—which I’m still considering—I would have to start the new job on May 2. He would always call her from the office if he was (not were) going to be late for dinner. 8
Another traditional rule states that you are not supposed to use the subjunctive following verbs such as ask or wonder in if clauses that express indirect questions, even if the content of the question is presumed to be contrary to fact: We wondered if dinner was (not were) included in the room price. Some of the people we met even asked us if California was (not were) an island. 9
if clauses—the reality. In practice, of course, many people ignore the rules. In fact, over the last 200 years even well-respected writers have tended to use the indicative was where the traditional rule would require the subjunctive were. A usage such as If I was the only boy in the world may break the rules, but it sounds perfectly natural. 10
subjunctive after wish. Yet another traditional rule requires you to use were rather than was in a contrary-to-fact statement that follows the verb wish: I wish I were (not was) lighter on my feet. Many writers continue to insist on this rule, but the indicative was in such clauses can be found in the works of many well-known writers. >>>
http://www.bartleby.com/64/C001/061.html
Do we honestly expect the average student to learn all the above, and if he did, wouldn't he sometimes sound wrong to those who didn't memorize it all?
I once saw a quiz which asked which of the following is correct:
This book is different than that other book.
This book is different from that other book.
The answer was: This book is different FROM that other book.
To my ears, THAN sounded right. So I decided to use FROM only when I was speaking to a professor who knew and used perfect English. That is, until one day when I heard him say, "You handed me the wrong copy. This one is different than the one I wanted."
I give up! Purity in construction is not always desirable.
But, yes, continue to teach it in the advanced classes.
***She can't add either. Where are you going to buy jeans and these really cool shoes for eighty bucks.***
LOL!
The final edit is that flashing second between pushing the post button and yelling, "sh*t!"
Our inflections are withering away. There is an increasing preference for phrases like "California government," "Alaska natives," and so on, the decline of -ess endings to signify women (a construction like "woman poet" or "woman doctor" would have been uncouth not many generations ago), and the increasing archaization of once-normal adjectives like "oaken," "woolen," "silken," etc., in preference to the uninflected noun used as adjective. In more official labels the changes can be directly seen: for decades baseball held a "World's Series"; they changed it to World Series about 1970. Constructions like "Iran-Iraq War," "Vietnam War," were barely heard of before 1950 (cf. the Russo-Japanese War), but since then have become common. The pull is so strong that the "Afghanistan War," in spite of being far less mellifluous than the more traditionally correct "Afghan War," is used twice for every three times the latter is used; entering the two terms in Google Book Search, the first brings up a collection of cites dominated by recent writings, while the second brings up references that are mostly pre-1970.
Linguistic evolution is one thing; the enshrinement of illiteracy is quite another.
When a news story announces "Australia prime minister arrives" or the greengrocer advertises "Belgium endive" or the menu offers "France fries," patting the miscreant on the head and cooing "what adorable linguistic evolution" isn't the first response that comes to mind.
And now, in what Dr. Hannibal Lecter would undoubtedly describe as a ham-handed segue, I need to go scrape up the foot and a half of Global Warming that appeared mysteriously overnight in the driveway. À bientôt, all.
My personal pet peeve is, "Hey, where are you AT?" It grates on my nerves to no end.
My favorite grammar lesson is from Life of Brian when the centurion chastises Brian for butchering the Latin. ROMANES EUNT DOMUS
I can't see why it would, since this isn't something to get very emotional about. Like it or not, a living language will always change, by its own volition, and eventually the English of this time will be as unintelligible to the average reader as the 14th century Midlands English of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" is today.
If I was (not were) to accept their offer—which I’m still considering...
That you are considering and have not decided places the matter in some doubt and the subjunctive is the correct construction.
You also have a tense error. If your acceptance is not in doubt and you are trying to state a definite logical conclusion, then you would be better to say, "If I accept this offer, then I will have to start the new job on May 2." You only put it in the past tense because you are subconsciously expressing doubt, in which case the subjunctive is correct, and you would naturally have used it had the public schools not beaten it out of you with years of mis-education.
Been there, done that. Real men don't proof-read or spell-check.
I take strong exception to that opinion.
The two groups are not mutually exclusive.
In fact, more often than not, they are coincident.
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