Posted on 03/25/2005 1:24:59 AM PST by Robert Drobot
"Yes, polysyllabificationizing should be absolutely forbidinated."
Have to admit, strategery is a good one? LOL
To not write a split infinitive is a very good rule. And yeah, what you said - "what you writes is what you is."
;-)
At the same time, a lot of our language--and the words in it--is essentially the same as it was during the heyday of Greece, and of Rome, and of older empires going back to a time before written record. This is also true of words that are frowned upon in polite usage, words such as okay and common words for bodily parts--very, very old words.
--Boot Hill
True enough...but a language grows out of use. Once a word is 'out of the bag' there's nothing any authority can actually do to stop it being used. If the new word or usage has any 'real value' [i.e. meets a need] then it will last, e.g, for the next few years at least freeper and blog. I didn't mean to suggest that the beauty of English [or French...which, if nothing else, does sound very good] shouldn't be taught, encouraged and respected.
Unless you're saying "More different than similar", "different than" always sounds awful to my ear.
As to adoption of single words I concur completely; and no language in history is better at such adoption than English (the apolitical reason for its world-dominance). BUT grammar-changes do not (and never have) come about overnight: what gave rise to adding "or her" to "would everyone kindly take his* seat" led us to "would everyone kindly take THEIR seat." This is nothing less than raw feminist power, fomented by craven academicians and politicians.
I don't know wabout 'raw feminist power'. I think if said to a mixed group 'would everyone take his seat' the women would be in a fair [and linguistically correct] position to doubt that you were addressing them.
I agree that PC has done damage, but the wilder things, that did not reflect 'real' changes and needs have never caught on in the wider community.
Linguistically "correct" TODAY--not in 1970. Grammatically correct--never. My guess here is that you're well under 60. The masculine pronoun (regardless of case) was used exclusively; and no-one misunderstood or took offense--it was the language we spoke, not the politics we espoused. Consider "To each his own."
Fair enough, and under 60. I would say that 'to each his own' is an idiomatic expression that has no straight grammatical reading - a low-intermediate non-native speaker would understand all the words but scratch his [er...their...] head over the true meaning, as they would for 'would everyone take his seat'.
You're right, strictly speaking, but language is use and grammar changes too, the move from 'his' to 'their', like from spokesman to spokespeson is one that rankles those who grew up with something different but which will be adopted unthinkingly by younger folk. Hence the genius of Orwell's Newspeak satire. Witness the generally unlamented imminent demise of 'whom', which survives largely in legal texts and English tests for foreign students. Also the survival of 'gotten' in American English and the misperception of it in the English English-speaking world as some awful drawling, Yankee coinage.
I recall an English teacher bravely insisting that 'to boldly go' had no meaning because of the split infinitive, despite the fact that everyone in the class knew what it meant.
That we able to communicate at all is a thing of wonder.
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