The grammarian your mother warned you about

Lord_Michael

Literotica Guru
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I wonder if it's possible to conduct a serious discussion here. That's what this thread is intended to be: a discussion about grammar, punctuation, spelling and usage - those things that make English what it is. There are actually some of us who still care about such things, so please spare us your snarky, semi-literate, uneducated comments like "who cares, so long as I'm understood," and "what difference does it make?" It makes a great deal of difference, actually, whether you realize it or not.

Let's begin with a few questions. When, for example, did the noun "loan" become a verb? We now "loan" things. What was wrong with lending them?

Another: when did "persons" replace "people" in usage? Does "persons" mean something different?

Speaking of replacements, it seems we're no longer allowed to have problems, only "issues." When did that happen? And why?

And when did "dollars" take the place of "money"? Apparently, we no longer attempt to accumulate money, we save dollars. Is the meaning different?

I recall about 15 years or so ago, reading one of Lord Kilpatrick's columns (James Kilpatrick, presidential speechwriter and essayist) in which he said that it is now acceptable to split infinitives. Sorry, but I don't buy that. It may be common, but splitting infinitives is still wrong in my book. (Of course, I recognize that I may not have the only book on the subject, which, really, is the reason for this thread.)

I look forward to your thoughts.
 
Bottom Line, folks are lazy and cut corners when it comes to using the best words to express themselves.
 
I have answered your first post on the General Board thread.
 
I wonder if it's possible to conduct a serious discussion here.

Let's begin with a few questions. When, for example, did the noun "loan" become a verb? We now "loan" things. What was wrong with lending them? [1]

Another: when did "persons" replace "people" in usage? Does "persons" mean something different? [2]

Speaking of replacements, it seems we're no longer allowed to have problems, only "issues." When did that happen? And why? [3]

And when did "dollars" take the place of "money"? Apparently, we no longer attempt to accumulate money, we save dollars. Is the meaning different? [4]

I look forward to your thoughts.


Well my view, from this UK side of the pond is as follows:
[1] It seems to be taken, over the last few years, where certain words have, if I may borrow from a film, "negative waves". Presumably this gives rise to a reluctance on the part of the would-be customer to actually part with his money. Naturally, the Vendor has a slightly different view.

[2] I suspect this is part of the "Politically Correct" junk, where a black or brown person is referred to as a "person of colour" there are some really sensitive creatures about tee days. A joke about that attitude over here is that a "Shovel" is now referred to as a "hand-operated earth moving device".

[3] This is like [2]. We don't have "an answer to a problem," we have "solutions"; I see this nearly every day on commercial vehicles. I suspect we're back to negative vibes.

[4] "Dollars" This is an advertising one, I feel. It's not so common over here.

As I don't know enough about the technicalities of the English Language, I'll decline to comment on the split infinitive. English is a complicated language at it is, thanks.

PS. Of course, Education and the TV/movie have affected our kid's language.
:)
.
 
Repeated from GB thread

According to my Shorter Oxford Dictionary, loan as a verb is NOW chiefly US usage. That NOW is 1933.

Persons? King James Bible: Luke 15.7 Ninety and nine just persons.

We Brits don't save dollars. We save money.

Split infinitives? That debate was lost in the 1940s in the UK, and Star Trek "To Boldly Go" killed the discussion.
 
As I don't know enough about the technicalities of the English Language, I'll decline to comment on the split infinitive. English is a complicated language at it is, thanks.

I don't recall exactly where I saw the assertion, but I've read that the "campaign against split infinitives" in English originated with Norman french speakers and Latin scholars. Both Norman French and Latin feature one-word infinitives that cannot be split; both also feature rigid rules of grammar. The ban on split infinitives is therefore attributed to French and Latin scholars attempting to impose similar rigid rules of grammar on English, which is actually a pidgin comprised of several different source languages with wildly variant rules of grammar unsuited to the rigidity of French or Latin grammar rules.
 
Bottom line: Languages evolve.
Darwinian rule: Entities that don't evolve tend to be devoured by those that do.
Result: Far more people speak evolved Anglish (of some sort) than stultified French or Latin.
Byproduct: I've read that by year 2050, 90% of all humans will think they speak Anglish, and 90% of those won't be able to understand other Anglophones.
See, it's very simple, right? Right.
 
Now for something partially different

Thanks for your responses Handley-Page, Oggabashan, Trace-Ekies, Weird Harold and Hypoxia! Good, serious thoughts. I love that Churchill quote, BTW. So bottom line is we're evolving and changing (mostly because we're lazy), and if we don't evolve we die.

Harumph.

Ok, how about some pet peeves?
A) mispronounced February - like feb-yoo-ary
B) preventative - which isn't a word at all - it's preventive!
C) mispronounced athlete - like ath-a-lete
D) mispronounced realtor - like real-a-tor
E) people who think an apostrophe must precede every S
F) people who don't know the difference between its and it's
G) people who figure one "there" should be good enough - no need for their or they're
H) the interchangable (and incorrect) uses of site, sight and cite
I) the interchangable (and incorrect) uses of vice and vise
J) use of "artic," which isn't a word at all - it's arCtic!

Especially any or all of the above by newscasters, who are paid to know better.

What are some of yours?
 
Thanks for your responses Handley-Page, Oggabashan, Trace-Ekies, Weird Harold and Hypoxia! Good, serious thoughts. I love that Churchill quote, BTW. So bottom line is we're evolving and changing (mostly because we're lazy), and if we don't evolve we die.

Harumph.

Ok, how about some pet peeves?
A) mispronounced February - like feb-yoo-ary
B) preventative - which isn't a word at all - it's preventive!
C) mispronounced athlete - like ath-a-lete
D) mispronounced realtor - like real-a-tor
E) people who think an apostrophe must precede every S
F) people who don't know the difference between its and it's
G) people who figure one "there" should be good enough - no need for their or they're
H) the interchangable (and incorrect) uses of site, sight and cite
I) the interchangable (and incorrect) uses of vice and vise
J) use of "artic," which isn't a word at all - it's arCtic!

Especially any or all of the above by newscasters, who are paid to know better.

What are some of yours?

is a bit of a problem, I think a Condom could be defined as a preventative.
is different in English English. It's VICE for both.

The one thing that really makes my blood boil is the use of "you know" when the whole bloody point is that I don't! Those being interviewed on the Radio are the most guilty.
 
My simple rule of thumb is that evolution is good if it adds to the language. So, whilst I wince at the use of, for example, 'target' as a verb, I recognise that this is something that writers have done since at least Shakespeare (think of the power of the phrase 'to floor someone'), and that this shifting of categories can produce new and vivid ways of understanding the world.

On the other hand, when people misuse 'literally', for example, it means that we are losing a perfectly good word, since no other word quite expresses what literally does, when used properly. Such a misuse detracts from, rather than adds to, the rich complexity of our language.

So, for me - neologisms, loanwords, playful grammar, split infinitives (which, as has already been noted, are only a problem when we try to misapply the rules of Latin to English) - all fine. Errors which come from a simple misunderstanding, and which are then multiplied until, we are told, they are now 'acceptable usage' - far from fine.

Another couple of pet peeves are Americanisms which are creeping into English. Many of these are fine, and in fact are often older than the English equivalent - think 'fall' for autumn, etc. However, some make no sense when unpackaged:

'Students are protesting the removal of free tuition.' Now, I would write, 'Students are protesting against the removal of free tuition', simply because the word 'to protest' means to proclaim something, not argue against it (c.f. 'protest one's innocence). For me, this mangles the meaning, and creates an ambiguity when clarity is almost always preferable.

An even more egregious example is the Americanism "I could care less." This really grates on the ear: of course, it ought to go without saying, a person who could care less is therefore someone who does care, at least to some extent. The correct phrase is, of course, "I couldn't care less."
 
E) people who think an apostrophe must precede every S

I had a boss who did this. He would write something up, edit it on the legal pad, then have me type it up. He always used "it's" for possessive. And after I fixed it, he would change it back. I finally confronted him about it and was told I was wrong. Oh well. I tried.

Misuse of "I" and "me" drives me crazy too. There are people who use the wrong pronoun because it sounds "smarter" or something.

Whose vs. who's also seems to be a problem for many people.

Lastly, the non-use of oxford commas. I was specifically told not to use them in law school...even though not using one can make a drastic difference in a contract or a will.
That is really becoming more of a personal preference though.
 
Just for curiosity's sake, my UK friends, how do you pronounce "garage?"
I've often heard it said "garridge," and when I asked, I was told "That's because we hate the French." :)

(the actual quote was "bloody frogs" -- but I'm one of those sensitive persons. :p )
 
...Misuse of "I" and "me" drives me crazy too. There are people who use the wrong pronoun because it sounds "smarter" or something...

Lorelei Lee!

A masterful item of characterisation from Anita Loos.

But I don't think I've ever heard it in real life.

I do know of one place where "me" is used for "I", which is American Sign Language, ASL. "I'm hungry" is signed as "want, food, me."
 
... What are some of yours?

For me 'input' will always be a noun. We have computer programming languages and their high priests to thank for such gems as 'Input your name', which is now considered acceptable to some.
 
...
B) preventative - which isn't a word at all - it's preventive!
...

preventative - according to my Shorter Oxford Dictionary has been a word since 1654 and is a synonym for preventive.

As Handley_Page mentioned above, a Condom can be referred to in British English as a preventative.

Mispronunications: There are so many variations in British English that how a word should be said is arguable. Realtor or real-a-tor is not used at all. We have Estate Agents.
 
Just for curiosity's sake, my UK friends, how do you pronounce "garage?"
I've often heard it said "garridge," and when I asked, I was told "That's because we hate the French." :)

(the actual quote was "bloody frogs" -- but I'm one of those sensitive persons. :p )

It can be said ga-rah-ge, or garridge. Both are right in context, but the use of the wrong one to the wrong people can diminish your apparent social status.
 
I wonder if it's possible to conduct a serious discussion here.

I'm interested in grammar and usage, but I like to start from the understanding that English is a living language and that change is not automatically bad. Or as James Nicoll put it:

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle [sic] their pockets for new vocabulary."

Without that awareness, discussions about the language tend to turn into thinly-disguised metaphors for social status: mocking "incorrect" usage as a way of deriding the groups who favour it, or complaining about neologisms as a fancy way of saying "the world has gone to hell and kids don't respect their elders and you call this music? GET OFF MY LAWN!" If I want to watch that, I'll switch on David Attenborough and look at giraffes banging heads or something.

For an example of what I mean, look at the use of "they" as a singular pronoun. Singular "they" has a long and respectable history in the English language: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Austen, and many other greats were happy to use it. But just in the last few decades, "purists" have started complaining about it as a hideous neologism - because now it's being used in discussions about gender politics (usually by one particular side of the debate) and those "purists" feel threatened by it.

Funnily enough, one of the complaints they raise is that "they" is a plural word, so it can't possibly have a singular usage... and yet those same folk tend to sneer at constructions like "y'all" or "youse", which attempt to distinguish between singular and plural "you".

So, yeah, I'm very interested in discussing language and usage but I'm picky about the quality of that discussion.

Let's begin with a few questions. When, for example, did the noun "loan" become a verb? We now "loan" things. What was wrong with lending them?

Nothing. People still lend things, just that we now (for very long-term values of "now") have more than one way to express that. IMHO one of the good, splendid, wonderful, awesome, terrific, OK, cool, great things about English is that it offers so many different ways to say the same thing, each with a different nuance.

As for when: Google's Ngram viewer is a handy way to get some idea of usage changes (though it's biased towards books, and so doesn't necessarily reflect spoken language).

Here's a graph showing frequency of "loan me" vs "lend me" over time. You can see that "loan me" has been around for a very long time, and it hasn't changed a great deal; it's a little less common now than it was in 1920. "Lend me" has been declining, but it's still by far the more common usage.

Another: when did "persons" replace "people" in usage? Does "persons" mean something different?

Actually, "persons" is an old usage that's become less popular over the years; it was about 3x more common in books in 1800 than it is now. You can see the decline here.

And yes, there is/was a distinction: 'Traditionally, "people" was proper when referring to a mass of people (e.g., Squiggly couldn't believe how many people were at the wrestling match), and "persons" was proper when referring to a distinct number of individuals (e.g., Squiggly noted that eight persons showed up for the book club meeting).'

Speaking of replacements, it seems we're no longer allowed to have problems, only "issues." When did that happen? And why?

"Problem" has declined a bit over the last 20 years, but it's still used about twice as often as "issue". Comparing plurals gives a similar result. And some of that usage of "issue/s" will be other senses of the word: issues of a magazine, issuing equipment, children, etc etc.

As to why... I'm not certain, but I suspect it's part of the old tendency to avoid words with negative connotations by substituting a euphemism with less baggage. Eventually the euphemism picks up the same connotations, at which point we start looking for a new euphemism. See e.g. the history of "toilet", "bathroom", "powder room", "lavatory".

And when did "dollars" take the place of "money"? Apparently, we no longer attempt to accumulate money, we save dollars. Is the meaning different?

"Money" outnumbers "dollars" in usage about four to one and has done for a long time. (That's an interesting graph, BTW - you can really see when the Great Depression hit!)

That's including all use of "dollars", including sentences like "he paid me five dollars"; as a substitute for "money", I doubt it'd hit 10% of usage.

So "money" isn't being squeezed out of the language, it's just that occasionally "dollars" is used as a less formal substitute. Is it really so awful to have more than one way to express the same idea?

I recall about 15 years or so ago, reading one of Lord Kilpatrick's columns (James Kilpatrick, presidential speechwriter and essayist) in which he said that it is now acceptable to split infinitives. Sorry, but I don't buy that. It may be common, but splitting infinitives is still wrong in my book.

Let's unpack that a little: why do you consider it to be wrong?

If the answer comes down to "because once upon a time authorities agreed that it was wrong", why is it still wrong now that the authorities have shifted?
 
It can be said ga-rah-ge, or garridge. Both are right in context, but the use of the wrong one to the wrong people can diminish your apparent social status.

And that approaches the crux of the matter: social status. Any particular dialect of a language, with its established pronunciations and usages, serves as a marker of caste or, if you will, class. I believe that people take umbrage at usages that are not theirs, thereby reaffirming that that their usages are somehow special and deserving of more respect. The particular class that comprises writers, editors and professional orators have a special vested interest in their particular dialect because they see themselves as guardians of that dialect and resent the incursion of other usages into that dialect, whereas most other classes don't much care.

I sometimes mourn the passing of a usage that I thought was proper, in the same sense that I mourn the loss of an old house in our town that was torn down (particularly when it is replaced by a McDonald's!) but I accept that such change is a part of living. So feel free to protest the use of "contact" or "loan" as a verb. But don't think less of people who find themselves comfortable with that concept.

There's a book that Jehoram recommended to me whose name escapes me. It was about how the English language has evolved and changed despite all the machinations of the authors, lexicographers, editors, and pendants who sought to preserve it in what they considered its pristine purity. I hope he reads this thread and can furnish the name of that book. It was a good read. (Yes, "read" is a noun.)
 
For me 'input' will always be a noun. We have computer programming languages and their high priests to thank for such gems as 'Input your name', which is now considered acceptable to some.

You know in my 40 years of programming, I have never used that phrase. I have seen others use it and made them change it.

You "Enter your name." Then you press the Input button. ;)
 
... I have seen others use it and made them change it. ...Then you press the Input button. ;)

Yeah, but I've never been able to find the 'Input' button. My keyboard has an 'Enter' key, but no 'Input' button. :) Also I've noticed that some instructions call for you hit any key but I can't find the 'any' key either. :D
 
Ok, how about some pet peeves?

D) mispronounced realtor - like real-a-tor

If we are going to get out the red pen and start splitting the finest of grammar hairs, Realtor should always be capitalized since it is a trademarked word denoting membership in a professional organization. To generically use it as an automatic substitute for "real estate broker" or "real estate agent" is also incorrect.

That said, I completely agree with you on the pronunciation pet peeve issue with it. Used to really piss off a physician friend who liked to ask, "How's the real-a-tor business?" by answering with: "Not bad. How's things going in the doc-AAAH-tor world?" :D
 
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In his younger days, my father (who only died a few weeks ago) could usually tell where a person had grown up by the way they pronounced certain words. This didn't mean that one group of people pronounced the word correctly and every other group pronounced it incorrectly, it just meant that every group, every region, had their own usage. In the north of England, a room tends to be a 'room'; in the south it is often a 'r'mm'. Neither is incorrect.

Oh, and a preposition is something we are quite happy to end a sentence with. :)
 
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