Grammar Grumbles and Language Lapses

My subject this time round is my pet hate of pet hates, namely that of our increasingly grammarless society which must surely have come about because English grammar has for the most part long since ceased to be taught in our schools and colleges and so all those rules and guidelines which were inculcated into children of my generation and before are no longer familiar to people in general, sadly not even to many teachers of English, and so they are prone to make the simplest and silliest of mistakes through sheer ignorance, often of the most basic grammatical rules. In addition, I will highlight modes of speech which demonstrate how restricted is our independence of thought in respect of our speech patterns and how like sheep we are in repeating a word or phrase ad nauseam until it loses its force and becomes almost meaningless. Below I give an example of some of these speech patterns and grammatical mistakes, but there will be many more than the few I cite.

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'Reduce'

The English language seems to have been reduced to this one word to express the lessening of something. Where we once varied our vocabulary and used in addition to this synonym other words such as decrease, decline, diminish, fall, drop, restrict, limit, we now seem to have only this word to express this concept of making less. And it is used transitively and intransitively indiscriminately. It started life off as a transitive verb, e.g. to reduce the number of workers. Now one is just as likely to find it used as an intransitive verb, e.g. the supply of food reduced considerably.

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Vast majority

Every majority nowadays is nothing if not a vast majority. It cannot be just a majority or a small majority or a great majority or large majority or a considerable majority or even a huge majority. No, the majority is always vast. And so the expression vast majority has now ended up completely emasculated and makes little impression, since any majority which is not vast must be trifling and hardly worth considering. This is a prime example of the close association of an adjective with a certain noun to such a degree that the noun on its own almost becomes meaningless or appears wanting or at the very least is weak and makes little impression on the listener.

Hello/Hullo/Hallo

There was a time that this word in England was usually spelt hullo. This accurately represented how British people for the most part pronounce the word, as in hug, hunt, hut, hurry, hush, hussy, to name a few. Sometimes the word might be spelt hallo, which was also very close to the way it was pronounced in this land of Shakespeare, as in hat, hand, happy, harry, happen. But no, all this no longer mattered a jot when all of a sudden we noticed that the Americans were writing it as hello which, may it be said, seems to represent fairly accurately the way this word comes out of their mouths but not out of ours. But, hey buddy, what did such a detail matter when the Yanks were writing it as hello. So we too, almost overnight, changed over to hello. And now, practically everyone (except me of course!), be he wordsmith or word-illiterate, is writing it this way. The criterion nowadays is how our American friends are spelling it. Never mind how we here pronounce it or how we have spelt it over hundreds of years for good reason.

Honour/Honor

The above argument of course does not apply to instances where it makes good sense to effect a change bringing us into line with the Americans both in terms of grammar, history, and reason. The superfluous 'u' in words such as honour, favour, labour, savour, etc. is religiously observed in Britain even though it is an intruder who has no business being there and is not even pronounced (though it may have been centuries ago). If one refers to Latin, from which such words originate, there is no 'u' to be seen and it there is no defensible reason why it should be there. But, by some sort of perverted sense of humour (now there's another one!), we insist on hanging on to it even though it long ceased to serve any practical purpose and still doesn't and never will again. We cling to it desperately, much as we do to the 'me' on the end of 'programme' (though it is not in 'kilogram' or 'telegram'), in contrast to the very sensible American spelling 'program' - short and sweet! But, I suppose logic never was a powerful force when it comes to English spelling, only some outdated crusty old tradition that lingers on long after it has ceased to serve any useful purpose.

I, Me

Although there are cases of legitimate use of the object pronoun me where in purely grammatical terms the text would dictate the use of I - because constant use of it in this way has established it as the norm and now the correct grammatical use of I sounds odd to our ears - there are other examples where in an attempt to right the balance an even more ridiculous error is made in reverse, e.g. between you and I, instead of the grammatically correct between you and me, by reason of the fact that prepositions govern the objective case of a pronoun and I is a subject pronoun. Another example of this error is He spoke to my mother and I, where one should say He spoke to my mother and me, since me is just as much the object of the verb spoke as is mother (though the noun does not undergo any change). Of course the persons who fall into this error would not dream of saying He spoke to I, but as soon as another word is interposed between the verb and the pronoun, in this case mother, we somehow lose sight of the grammatical sequence and lose our way.

Where more is less

There is an even more pernicious development which has taken place in modern-day speech and this relates to the decline in the formation of the comparative of adjectives by adding the appropriate suffix and instead tagging the augmentative more at the beginning of adjectives whose comparative mood should be formed by the suffix er or equivalent, e.g. she was more lovely than I have ever seen her instead of she was lovelier than I have ever seen her; he was more scary than his enemy in place of he was scarier than his enemy; they are more safe at home than on the street instead of they are safer at home than in the street; this species of bird is more rare than many instead of this species of bird is rarer than many. The general rule about the comparative of adjectives is that, barring certain exceptions, which are very few in number, adjectives of less than tree syllables take the augmentative suffix. Thus we would say she is more beautiful than her friend, but she is prettier than her friend. Beautiful has three syllables whereas pretty has only two, so the former takes the suffix and the latter the stand-alone augmentative more. Unfortunately, this rule is more and more ignored nowadays, mainly because in most cases it is not even known about any more and so the language is being gradually corrupted in this way and not for the better, I think, as it adds nothing to the language but rather impoverishes its structure. One day we may even see the total disappearance of this suffix followed in due course by the superlative st and est, as in biggest, tallest, loveliest, a far neater (not more neat) and more effective means of expressing the superlative than with the detached word more.

Different than/Different from

It is an unfortunate truism that our speech habits and patterns nowadays seem to be dictated from across the Pond, that is from America. And it is more usually the bad speech habits that we adopt than the good ones. A breach of basic grammar in America today becomes the breach of basic grammar in Britain tomorrow. That is the direction in which habits and customs are flowing in this brave new world. And so it is with the phrase different than. This, for anyone who has any inkling of grammatical correctness, is a horrible and pointless aberration based on a mistaken comparison with the use of than after the comparative of adjectives. The thing is that the word different is not in the comparative, it is merely in its simple form. It just happens to make a comparison through its actual intrinsic meaning and not by virtue of being in the comparative. And so the correct link after this adjective is from (or even to at a stretch), not than. Tom's views are different from those of his family and Emily's picture is very different from those of her classmates. Than is used after the comparative of an adjective, e.g. Tom's car is bigger than that of his friends and Emily's painting is more skilful than that of her classmates.

Good/Well

Once upon a time, if we were asked how we were, we would reply more often than not that we were well. Sometimes that we were fine or alright. After all, the question implies that the asker is enquiring about your health first and foremost and perhaps also of your life in general. Now if we are asked how we are, the reflex unthinking reply is good. Yet how can this be? First of all, good is an adjective, not an adverb. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it does not really answer the question asked. And this is because good really means well-behaved, correct in one's conduct. It does not refer to our state of health or our general state of existence. That function is performed by well. "I'm well in health. I'm doing well in general. Things are going well." But that has all gone down the toilet now. All that matters is that our American cousins are now universally using that word, be it ever so ungrammatical and incorrect, and so we too must use it. And so it's farewell to well and welcome to good. Out with the good and in with the bad, the bad in this case being good and the good being bad, if you see what I mean!

Lie/Lay

One of the worst offenders and therefore best example of incorrect grammar is the use of lay, a transitive verb, in place of lie, an intransitive verb. Once again this incorrect usage has come to us from across the Atlantic and is beginning to take firm hold, melding two distinct verbs into one, since lie is tending to disappear as lay takes over a double role. The proper use of lay is when one 'lays something or someone', e.g. 'lay a book down', 'lay evidence before a court', 'lay a tray on a table', 'lay a body in a coffin'. In other words when the action of the verb is done to something or someone. When the action of the verb stays with the subject, lie is the correct verb form, e.g. 'he lies in bed all day', 'they lie in the cemetery undisturbed', 'she lies awake at night', 'the fallen lie here in this field'. The main tense forms of lay are 'lay, laid, laying', those of lie are 'lie, lay, lain', but now, thanks to widespread American misuse, the latter has all but disappeared, its role having been abusively usurped by lay. And so it is that this ungrammatical use is spreading like wildfire and is now heard more and more on this side of the ocean, starting with the uneducated and moving up into educated circles, as is the case with the other examples here. The snowball is growing and as it grows it is becoming unstoppable.

The worst thing about all this is that these grammatical mistakes and lazy linguistic habits are not just the prerogative of the sort of people you might expect to be the culprits, they are committed by those who should know better, that is by the educated and the highly placed, by politicians, lawyers, teachers, and other professionals and well-read individuals, and it is clear that for all their education and professional stature they simply do not know their grammar and therefore have no standard yardstick or measure to help them avoid grammatical errors and ugly speech habits tending to corrupt and pervert the English language and create confusion where there was none before. Unable to recognise, let alone name, the various parts of speech or grammatical constructions, the uninitiated and untutored are easy enlistments for those who would debase and degrade language to its lowest common denominator. And this cannot be good, for careless, sloppy, disordered speech habits do not make for effective communication unless all that is required is a handful of basic words and vulgar expletives enhanced by bodily gestures and grunts. That may be enough for some individuals but it should not be the standard to which we all aspire and it is certainly not enough for those of us who wish to express more than just the most basic ideas.