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.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
My favorite peeve is people using interrogative sentences for declarative ones in speech.
Always wondered whether such speech formation is a Southern way of pronunciation or an idiolect form that is passed from one youngster to another.
Caveat: English is not my first language.
They'd have muttered some dark imprecations about "grammar purists."
How about, "a nanometer is 10 times smaller than an atom..."
Another of my pet peeves: the heavy Hispanic accents on the newscasters. That increase as they talk about Hispanic issues. No accent offends me in real life because I too have an accent when I speak non-mother tongues. But do we really NEED people who do not speak English perfectly as NEWSREADERS?? After all, Spanish speakers have channels where they can actually watch news in Spanish.
Hey, Friend. I think you've got a case of indefinite pronoun reference for that underlined pronoun above. Participles are always used as adjectives; another verbal, gerund, is not.
Whosoever uses "whom" will eventually get his bell tolled.
"Free Republic posters' idea of a good candidate" would work and be less clumsy.
To whom are you speaking?
I wonder if this kind of thread would ever appear on a liberal listserv. Maybe in academia . . . alongside ones like "Queer Theories of Shakespeare."
I know I've won the argument when someone calls me a dangling participle.
I don't know. We always say "THE 110" or "THE 405." I don't know why. Interesting. We don't say the "I" part either. We are the only state where the highways are called "freeways," too, aren't we?
Thanks for pointing out my vague antecedent reference. Infinitives, also verbals, may be used as nouns, adjectives, or adverbs.
That sounds correct AND natural. Thanks
Do you mean:
"And then we went to the store? And she saw the cutest pair of sandals? And so we said she should just buy them? And then after that we got those lattes?"
Ugh. I think it is insecurity writ large because it seems to be saying after each sentence "Are you still following me? Still listening? Do you understand me?" It's ugly.
Most annoying to me is the use of apostrophes to indicate plurals. (Or, the use of apostrophe's to indicate plural's.)
People do this all the time and it always gives me an image of someone who flunked the eighth grade.
By who? The grammar Visigoths?
At the risk of getting kicked off here, your post reminded of one of my first experiences in the south, in Florida in 1960.
While waiting to talk to a mechanic I heard him tell the customer, "Wait a minute and I'll have my niggger carry you home."
Shrinking in shame, I turned my head in time to see this young black fellow walking up with a big smile on his face.
That was my first experience with what is now casually called, culture shock.
"Carry" was routinely used in place of "drive."
Expletives and slurs were as common as black-eyed peas.
He be right.
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