English and I -- or Maybe Me

English — or at least the way we interact with it — is another slightly off-kilter adventure. For example, "It is I" is grammatically correct, but it's also the answer to the question, "Who sounds like a pompous fool?" And — sorry — pronouncing the "t" in "often" doesn't make you appear educated. At least not to people who spend their time pontificating about stuff like that — other people, not me. I could care less, a phrase we say to mean "I couldn't care less." However, if you wake up one morning and find yourself in the year 1452, "of-ten" is the correct pronunciation. Back then, they also said "lisnen" which those who could spell spelled as "listnen" though they never pronounced the "t", which we now do, though we've dropped the first "n" — got it? This is all going to be on the midterm.

Much of what people think they know about grammar is closer to superstition. For example, the idea that you shouldn't split infinities. If you don't know what a split infinitive is, congratulations! And don't worry about it. You can use that area of your brain for storing something more useful, like the square root of pi (approximately 1.77724538). If you do know what a split-infinitive is, try to forget it. And again, don't worry about it. I know Shakespeare didn't split infinitives. But Shakespeare didn't bathe that often either. So you might not want to make him your role model.

And if you've spent your writing life torturing innocent sentences to avoid ending them with a proposition, I can only ask, what for? You should find a support group. Or just listen to Churchill, who called it, "pedantry up with which I will not put." Once his words got out, a generation of British grammar teachers sank into lives of despair and dissipation.

Then there are the plurals. The plural of mouse is mice. The plural of house is houses and the plural of moose is of course ... no one actually knows. So a moose stampede is simply "MOOSE! RUN!" More than a hundred English nouns have irregular plurals.

Spelling is even more annoying. "Vittal" is spelled v-i-c-t-u-a-l. "hiccup" is spelled H-i-c-c-o-u-g-h and "relief" is simply spelled wrong: releif, releaf, releef and — occasionally, for those over fifty — rolaids. I could fill pages with words that most of us can't spell. And I'm not talking about National Spelling Bee words like zugzwang. (I don't know what it means either, but it's fun to say. Zugzwang!) I'm talking about everyday household words like calendar and acquire and svarabhakti (my household may be somewhat different than yours.)

It's as if English were (was?)* designed to be a language you almost had to be born into. Even then, you need years of training to use it in a way that identifies you as "educated." As James Harbeck wrote, "We've taken a useful tool and turned it into a social filter." Esperanto anyone?

* "were," subjunctive mood for hypotheticals; "was," indicative mood for less hypothetical, more possible situations. Which one is appropriate for this sentence depends upon your view of history and your paranoia.

Those attempting to write in English can contact Barry Maher via JWR.