Posted on 02/24/2007 10:03:44 AM PST by rhema
"If I was President, this wouldn't have happened," John Kerry said during Hezbollah's war on Israel last summer. As 2004's Democratic presidential nominee should know, he should have said, "If I were President…"
It's sad, but hardly surprising, that the subjunctive evades someone of Kerry's stature. The English language is under fire, as if it strolled into an ambush. It would be bad enough if this assault involved the slovenly grammar, syntax, and spelling of drooling boors. But America's elites -- politicians, journalists, and marketers who should know better -- constantly batter our tongue.
The subjunctive, for instance, lies gravely wounded. Fewer and fewer Americans bother to discuss hypothetical or counterfactual circumstances using this verb mood. "This would not be a close election if George Bush was popular," Rep. Chris Shays (R.-Conn.) told reporters last summer, using "was," not "were." He erred further: "This would not be a close election if there wasn't a war in Iraq."
Similarly, a HepCFight.com newspaper ad declared: "If Hep C was attacking your face instead of your liver, you'd do something about it."
In an Ameritrade ad last year, a teenage girl begs her father for $80. "80 bucks?" he asks.
"Well, there's these jeans,” she replies, adding later: "There's these really cool shoes."
Forget the shopping spree. Dad should have sent his daughter upstairs without dinner until she mastered noun-verb agreement. Since they are plural, "there are" jeans and shoes, not "there's," the contraction for "there is."
This is a burgeoning linguistic blunder.
United Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten told a Manhattan labor rally: "The muscle and the zeal that built our union is still with us." As a teachers' unionist, for crying out loud, Weingarten should know that muscle and zeal are still with us.
Likewise, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.- Nev.) said, "There was no terrorists in Iraq." Actually, there were, and Reid should have used that plural verb with those plural Islamofascists, even if he considered Baathist Iraq a terrorist-free zone.
In a taped, on-air promo, one cable news network's announcer said, "Inside the UN, there’s more than a thousand doors." No, there ARE more than 1,000 doors.
In another odd grammatical glitch, plural subjects of sentences interact with singular objects. Confusion follows. As one cable TV correspondent reported: "Every day, 1.5 million Americans ride a 747." Visualize the line for the bathroom on that jet. Make that "747s," and the turbulence vanishes.
Just before January's Golden Globe awards, a major newspaper's headline read: "Stars put their best face forward for the Globes." Wow! Eddie Murphy and Helen Mirren share a face?
A cable channel's news crawl correspondingly revealed: "Iraqi authorities find at least 21 bodies, many with nooses around their neck." Who knew so many Iraqis shared one neck?
Consider run-on sentences. A sign in a San Francisco M.U.N.I. streetcar recommends: "Please hold on sudden stops necessary." At the local airport, a men's room sign asks: "Please conserve natural resources only take what you really need."
Would it kill people to spell properly? A New York outdoor display company solicited new business by announcing in huge, black letters: "YUOR AD HERE."
A cable-TV news ticker referred to the "World Tade Center." Another explained that President Bush said he needs wiretaps "to defend Amercia."
Such sloth generates nonsense. Ponder these three items, all from cable-TV news crawls written by practicing journalists: Arab diplomats last August tried to change “a U.S.-French peace plan aimed at ending nearly a month of welfare.” Imagine if Hezbollah lobbed food stamps, rather than rockets, into Israel.
Another channel described a deadly, anti-Semitic attack at a Seattle “Jewfish” center.
And then there’s this beauty: “Disraeli troops kill two Hamas fighters” including one implicated “in the June capture of an Disraeli soldier.”
Today's explosion of rotten English should motivate Americans to speak, write, and broadcast with greater care, clarity, and respect for grammar and spelling. Also, when even college graduates in Congress, newsrooms, and advertising agencies express themselves so sloppily, America's education crisis becomes undeniable.
Is it pedantic to expect linguistic excellence? No. Unless Americans want English to devolve into an impenetrable amalgam of goofs and gaffes, protecting our language, like liberty itself, demands eternal vigilance.
Not to mention your's and her's.
the worst one is laying and lying
Al Capp started that ball rolling over 50 years ago.
The rumor was that he loved to sneak something past the prissy editor.
That may become necessary as gender confusion assumes its proper role.
"I'm going to the movies."
"What happened?"
"I said, I'm going to the movies."
It really bugged me until I realized that the Dominicans use 'que pasa?' the same way and the local culture just co-opted it in translation.
The main reason they should be mentioned is to show how the smug Left makes fun of his intelligence while making similar errors of their own.
Okay, so here is a semi-grammatical-only-slightly-off-topic question for southern California experts on the "thuh" and/or "thee" word.
Here in the midwest we refer to Interstate Hwy. 57 as "I-57", Interstate Hwy. 80 as "I-80", etc. When I lived in SoCal, I noticed insertion of "the" as in "the I-5", "the I-15", "the I-8", etc. What gives with that?
I'd put it in my top five, to be sure. Lying is rarely used (except by those who invoke the name of Bill Clinton). Poor little old whom is just about extinct,too, at least in spoken English.
I was leaning toward, "The idea expressed by..."
With laying, the lying usually comes first...
I'd probably type, "For many posters on Free Republic, the idea of a good conservative candidate is. . . ."
Whom deserves to die, if it were a living being, its corpse would be so mangled that it would be necessary to use a Hefty bag as a shroud.
I'd agree; the past participle works well there.
"One grammatical error that's been grating on me in recent times is the use of the word "less" when the word "fewer" is the correct choice."
I was hoping that someone else would mention this one; it has been abused by most media outlets.
Call me sentimental, but I can't countenance relegating that fine old pronoun to the ash heap of grammar history.
My pet peeve is the constant use of the word "bring" instead of "take".
I first noticed this misuse in the late 70s during the play "Seven" when Maureen McGovern exclaimed to Raul Julia's character, "Bring her some clothes!"
In the dark, I actually let out a gasp that the people seated around me heard. I often wonder what response I might have received had I written to the producers and asked them to correct the phrases to "Take her some clothes!" :)
Here are my pet peeves.
"I can't speak to that," said by someone answering a journalist's question.
"The Smith's invite you to their home." The apostrophe is cropping up in wrong places in all sorts of ads. IT IS ONLY FOR POSSESSION, PEOPLE! You don't need it for plurals.
My never done thunk us'ns orta bug we chilluns wif al them detales uv grammer. S'long as thu content uv there brillant thowts are cleer, why git bogged down wif trivier?
Showing my age here, but I have always believed our spiral into semi-literacy began with our having abandoned sentence diagramming in school. It sharpened verbal skills and taught logic simutaneously, great exercize.
By the way, I also believe we need to put the missing gerund case on the side of milk cartons. Anyone seen one lately?
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