English - As She Is Spoke
I was abused by the Irish Christian Brothers - Sorry! I meant taught.I had a few English language teachers, there was the one who was small, had large ears and in fact looked like a chimp. He liked to beat us.... a lot. I heard he also liked to punish certain boys in the privacy of the stockroom behind the blackboard, the portals of which they could enter dressed only in gym shorts He disappeared suddenly one day, surrounded by rumour, innuendo and great rejoicing. Another, apparently more kinder man, let me use turquoise ink all year before informing me that the colour was not allowed and would I please rewrite my entire exercise book. Happy days, but I digress.
We were taught certain immutable laws of English, in our particular case if we transgressed we were beaten. A simple and effective, if brutal, system. Today, however, I see these laws bent, twisted and broken everywhere I look or listen. Most people say that it doesn't matter, that English is a living language, ever evolving, changing for the better or for the worse, but never static. Presumably they have never been strapped with the tawse for using a split infinitive - "To boldly go where no man has gone before....!" or I'm sure they WOULD damn well care.
We were told forcibly, "Never start a sentence with the word AND," but one of my favourite authors does it time and time again. Bill Bryson, probably the most successful travel writer of all time and latterly a writer who explains the many mysteries of science with an insight that is positively refreshing, (see A Short History of Nearly Everything), does it ad nauseam.
TV and radio are no better. I am fed up of hearing things like; the team are...., there isn't no....,What king of England was killed at....? at the end of the day....and so on. If English is in the process of evolving, what is it going to end up as? Please, please, don't let it slip down to the level of gobbledygook that George Dubbya prefers.
posted by Eddie @ 9:41 pm
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