The Ear Knows

Years of studying English vocabulary and grammar will only take a student so far.

Here, for example, are four unofficial rules that native speakers know but "don't realize they know". They can be illustrated by example:

Right: my brother's car      Wrong: the car of my brother
Right: abso-freakin'-lutely      Wrong: absolute-freakin'-ly
Right: what did you say he ate?   Wrong: what did you shout he ate?
Right: I cheered up my friend.      Wrong: I cheered up her.
(but "I cheered her up" is okay)

I suspect that many of the rules of proper English will fall by the wayside, buried under an avalanche of words, images, and videos that come at us unceasingly; tut-tutting the misplaced modifier or antecedent is not worth the effort.

At one time educated English speakers were fluent in French and Latin, both important now only to a few. And so it will go with the Queen's English.

The Focus of Attention

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a form of mental illness.

From personal observation, however, I suspect that minor OCD afflicts a large part of our population; how many of us, I wonder, must have a cup of coffee before starting work, or must exercise before breakfast, or must tie that half-Windsor knot exactly right (that's dating me)?

One of my OCD's is about correct grammar, spelling and word usage. But how can that be, since this humble journal is rife with such errors?

Here's the point: once I become aware of the error in my own work I am compelled to fix it. If I see the error elsewhere, I become oblivious to the rest of the message. An example of the latter is the image that a friend posted on Facebook about supporting fire fighters. "Affected," not "effected," is the proper usage, and the mistake is all I can think about.

I blame my sixth-grade grammar teacher, Mrs. Helen Matthews. Because she taught me so well, I suffer today.

Related: in the Austin Powers comedies various characters are so obsessed with the mole above a person's lip that it becomes the complete focus of their attention.

Friday Run-on Parentheticals

Three of the people whom I am closest to ["whom I am" is the correct grammatical construction because whom is the objective case though it sounds terrible, but I am compelled to use the correct case because Mrs. Matthews (English) and Miss Sturies (Latin) would otherwise give me a bad grade that would follow me through high school and hurt my GPA and prevent me from getting into the college of my choice, thereby ruining the rest of my life] had their birthdays this week.

The good news is that I can get shopping and visits to the Post Office out of the way in one fell swoop (just like the mandibularly challenged pull all four wisdom teeth out at the same time which happened to me in my late teens by a dentist who was an ex-G.I. who went easy on the novocaine but in those days we boys were supposed to be tough and not simper like the kids do these days at the slightest twinge), but the bad news is that I can't use "I forgot your birthday" as an excuse because they all know each other.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

The Ear Knows

(Economist image)

One inviolate rule of grammar has been the prohibition of split infinitives. The Economist's new style guide proclaims a new rule: [bold added]

to boldly go where grammarians have feared to tread....Infinitives may be split.

The old rule hasn't been around that long, however. The earliest written reference is attributed to writer John Comly, who declared in 1803:

An adverb should not be placed between a verb of the infinitive mood and the preposition ‘to’ which governs it.

Once every three or four months your humble blogger is compelled to rephrase a split infinitive because, well, it's against the rule. But the fix often butchers the meaning, not to mention the rhythm of the phrase:

But the lazy remedy, merely to move a modifier one word left or right, is worse. Constantly to do this results in an odd, jarring rhythm. (Robert Burns wrote “to nobly stem tyrannic pride” because it has a pleasingly punchy beat to it.) And the “move it left or right” manoeuvre often means that the modifier ends up modifying the wrong thing, or creating an ambiguity.

(Rephrasing Star Trek's "to boldly go" as the discordant "boldly to go" or almost-the-same-but-not-quite "to go boldly" illustrates the problem.)

The ear knows.

Quotation Marks Can Be Helpful

Time headline: Scientists Found More Than a Million Rare Penguins in Antarctica

Suggested edit: Scientists Found More Than a Million "Rare" Penguins in Antarctica

The Adélie penguin supercolony (NY Times photo)

A previously unknown “supercolony” of more than 1.5 million penguins has been discovered by scientists in the Danger Islands, a chain of nine islands located off the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula....

The team proceeded to count the number of birds by hand and used a modified commercial quadcopter drone to take images of the entire island from above, to help locate penguin nests that have gone undetected for decades. They counted 751,527 pairs of penguins in total.

As an auditor I counted tons of walnuts, prunes, seeds, blooms and slabs, all for different clients, of course. And I did it while wearing a suit! And I used a notepad with a clipboard! (geezer)

In every profession one has to pay one's dues.

Expectations Upended

Not Mr. Ohara
(visualdepartures.com)

A friend waxed enthusiastic about a landscaper by the name of O'Hara. An Irish gardener--why not?

After repeated calls I finally made contact with the man's wife, who had a Japanese accent. Oh, oh, Ohara.

In her email my friend used both the apostrophe and the capital H in the spelling of O'Hara. My expectations were easily set, and I did find their upending amusing.

Related: in modern English apostrophes inhabit a wacky world.

Not in the Mood

An overlooked aspect of Christianity in the English-speaking world: churches are one of the few places where the subjunctive mood can be heard regularly.

Few are conversant with the grammatical definition, but the subjunctive mood is easily recognizable when it is used.

Subjunctive	Indicative
The Lord be with you.	The Lord is with you.
God bless America.	God blesses America.
Heaven forbid.	Heaven forbids.
God shed his grace on thee.	God sheds his grace on thee..

Rules about the subjunctive can be quite involved, and one is likely to be called a fuddy-duddy if one insists on following them. Furthermore, over-use risks losing the younger audience:

Should churches regularly update their translations, keeping the religion fresh and relevant, or preserve tradition and authenticity? The debate is as old as the faiths themselves....The practical answer is that young people and new converts should study in their own vernaculars. As they progress in the faith they can get closer to the original through study.

Personally, I like the formal--some say musty--sentence construction because it reminds me of my youth. It's inevitable, however, that as we fade away so will our language.

As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

Memories of the Five-Year Mission

(Photo from startrek.com)

Though we didn't have a strict rule against watching on school nights, I missed most of 1960's television. In those days, kids, there were after-school activities, homework frequently required researching "books" in "libraries," and free time was much better spent with friends than looking at grainy black-and-white images displayed on a tiny box in the living room.

I missed Star Trek's debut on KHON in Hawaii on September 15, 1966--there was a one-week lag from the Mainland debut as programs had to be flown in on "tape-delay"--and only managed to catch a few episodes during its three-year run on the NBC affiliate. (I distinctly remember the Devil in the Dark, which had the monster that turned out to be a mother protecting her young; William Shatner called it his favorite episode.)

After we got jobs and bought a television, we would relax every night by watching Star Trek reruns.

Volumes have been written about Star Trek's impact on the culture---the crew's diversity, the first inter-racial kiss on network television, the coverage of controversial themes in an outer-space setting---but for your humble blogger, who had the rules of proper English drummed into him throughout elementary school, the most jarring aspect of Star Trek occurred at the beginning of each episode when William Shatner intoned "to boldly go where no man has gone before."

Breaking the Prime Directive is bad enough, but splitting an infinitive? In space no one can hear English teachers scream.

Blind Adherence

Now that Hillary Clinton is the betting favorite to win the Oval Office, the debate is raging among grammarians whether "woman President" is proper English. (The controversy has nothing to do with Mrs. Clinton's politics; presumably the issue would apply to a President Fiorina as well.)

According to the Associated Press style book the adjective female is the acceptable modifier for "President." Woman, of course, is a noun, and nouns don't modify other nouns. In other words "female President" yes, "woman President" no.

The Economist's language columnist Johnson, named after Samuel Johnson, asserts (bold added[

In the phrase "the first woman president", woman is an attributive noun, which can certainly modify another noun. And although attributive nouns may initially look like adjectives in a sentence, they are indeed different.

Johnson goes on to explain that, while the "woman" in "woman President" functions as an adjective, it most definitely cannot be used as in adjective in common circumstances, i.e., "the governor is woman" sounds and is wrong, while "the governor is female" is proper usage.

Your humble observer's grammatical education never progressed further than the basic "a noun is a person, place, or thing", and "an adjective modifies a noun or pronoun." The Associated Press appears to be guilty of this blind--and deaf--adherence to these childhood rules. Never argue English with the English.

[Note: The great man himself would likely have disapproved of either woman President or female President.

Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."
--------from Boswell's Life of Johnson]

The Good of the Many Versus the One

(Image from the Oxford Dictionaries blog)

Readers of this modest journal may have noted the inconsistent treatment of the third-person singular pronoun. When the antecedent is unknown, your humble chronicler most often uses the traditional he and occasionally he or she [but never the abominable (s)he--I can see Mrs. Matthews, my sixth-grade English teacher, frowning in disapproval].

After two generations of wrestling with awkward-sounding alternatives, consensus may be coalescing around they, which, though plural, has the virtue of being gender-neutral.

there is no question that “they” is more idiomatic than clunky alternatives that include both genders, as in “he or she,” “he/she” or “(s)he.”

When pressed on whether “they” could serve as a singular pronoun, [lexicographers] pointed out that it already has done so for about seven centuries, appearing in the work of writers from Chaucer to Shakespeare to Jane Austen.

Thank goodness I'm not sitting for the SAT's.