Pedantry

In times of yore, I have written essays criticising pedantry and prescriptivism, as being unenforceable, indefensible, and illogical clap-trap, not worthy of second thought. I encouraged you all to speak and write with vigour and originality, to ignore those who would cordon off sections of the language as unusable, and be fearless in the invention of new phrases with which to describe the world.

Today, I go a step further.

I am sick and tired of pedantic crap. It is entirely indefensible on every mentionable level, and I am going to comprehensively show you why.

Pronunciation.

If you were to go put an ad for your business in the paper, you would go to AD-vertise. But if someone were to read your ad, they would be reading an ad-VERtisement. For a bit of context, this was the horrifying gaffe that prompted this essay. I pronounced it “AD-vertisement,” much to the merriment of my friends.

“’AD-vertisement’ is so hideous,” they exclaimed. While the word “AD-vertise” is a good and proper member of the English language, sticking a “ment” on the end of that turns it, like a grasshopper becoming a locust, into a vile, blackened and oozing foulness – a blight on the Tongue and sore to the ear.

Well, I am advertising AD-vertisement. The pronunciation of a word in a way more befitting to its surrounding etymology, better aligned to words with similar meaning, spoken with greater consistency, in perfect step with spelling, with simpler logic, with more sense, and following all other rules of emphasis apart from the one enforced in this particular instance – why is this not a good thing? Perhaps the pronunciation with the emphasis on the second syllable gives greater flow to the word itself, but what about the phrase it helps describe, or the sentence in which it resides?

Try with another blunder – I said ‘laboratory’ pronounced the British way, or lab-ra-to-ry. This is wrong, however. In Australia, we say it the American way, giving each syllable its full due. Try it with this sentence: “The scientist went to the laboratory for the results.”

If you say it the correct way, then it feels as if all the flow dries up mid sentence. It’s as if the words are the wheels of a bike, and la-bor-a-to-ry is a patch of sticky mud on the road. It is conspicuously wrong. You feel like you’re taking forever to get to your point because you’re too busy saying it the proper way, instead of the right way, plodding your way through five mouth-twisting, contrary vowel sounds to get to the point. The rhythm of the word is not natural at all; it feels as if you were straining to make a poem fit a meter rather than saying a gorram sentence.

Pronunciation is and always has been a contradictory mess. The word ‘Pronounce,’ for instance is verbed into ‘Pronunciate,’ not pronounciate. Go ahead and whinge about how ugly this logical progression sounds. Little do you know that you are walking down the same path as generations of self-absorbed fools, each and every one proven wrong by the unstoppable march of progress. If enough people decide that a particular pronunciation is good enough, it joins the lexicon. In all likelihood, the very same change will be upheld as a fundament of language the next time our language changes once more.

Because language is alive, kicking, changing, and unstoppable in its evolution, the idea that you should oppose new pronunciations is wilfully ignorant and futile. This deficiency is compounded by regional accents, by the lack of regulation, and by the emphasis-based nature of English itself.

Say ‘hegemony.’ Is that hedge-e-mo-ny? Or he-GEM-on-y? Or hayg-e-mo-ny? It could be pronounced any of these ways. In fact, there are nine distinct pronunciations for this word, depending on class, region, etc. If English cannot decide on the pronunciation of its words – and don’t go running to dictionaries, they collect conventions, not standards – then English cannot enforce pronunciations. And if English cannot enforce pronunciations, then no speaker should. Prescriptivist and pedantic policing of pronunciation pays no pennies. It is useless, and irrelevant and indefensible, and at best a form of better-than-thou bullying.

Grammar

Grammar is the basis of any Grammar Nazi’s campaign of idiocy. It misjudges the basics of our language in order to bully and cajole. To understand why it is wrong, you need to question the basics.

Define what a sentence is. Most people would say a collection of vaguely related words with a verb in it – we all know that from Kindergarten. More specifically, it is a full concept with a subject and a predicate – an idea, involving a thing and what you’re doing with it.

So is ‘How?’ a sentence? Obviously. It is a self-contained thought, begging description. To get around this obvious flaw in their carefully fenced off perceptions of our language, grammarians pretend such sentences do not exist, or are really shorthand for “How on earth did you manage that, you old devil you?” (Or words to that effect.)

This is cheating, and can only ever be dismissed as such. You can’t change sentences to make your definitions fit; you need to change your definitions to make sentences fit. However, by ignoring this little flaw in their dizzyingly well-structured delineation of English, they can get away with greater mistakes.

Is “suffering” a verb? Well, it is in the sentence, “I am suffering,” yes. But in the sentence “My suffering is great,” it is a noun. The same word expressing the exact same thought is an entirely different thing in a marginally different context. In fact, the divide between the various grammatical particles is as random as it gets. Quickly and sleepily are adverbs but sickly and deadly are adjectives. Breaking is present tense, except when it is past tense (“He was breaking the window when I saw him.”) Broken on the other hand, is future tense whenever it isn’t past tense (“If he wins this race, he’ll have broken the record.”)

All this is driving at the fact that to properly define or pin down any English grammatical particle, you’d have to phrase it in a way that does everything but define it or pin it down. A noun is something that describes a person, a place, a thing, action or quality. Except that actions are most often verbs and most qualities are adjectives, whenever they aren’t being adverbs, participles or each other. To think of language – by its very nature an organic, bendable, twistable, living thing – as being composed of strictly defined particles that build strictly defined sentences in strictly organised paragraphs is patent nonsense. If a single misuse becomes commonplace, as it has done throughout history, then you need to excuse away the inconsistency to make your definition fit.

You may be asking how they would get away with this. Well, actually, you may be asking how, but what you’re really asking is “How on earth did they manage that, those old devils?” A point that I have already answered: using complicated circular arguments and No True Scotsman fallacies.

This is important. If you can’t correctly define English, you can’t enforce correct definitions. You can’t punish wrongs if you can’t decide what rights are. You can’t be pedantic about grammar when grammar is – simply put – a nicety; a set of guidelines that clarify ambiguities but go no further. That doesn’t stop people from trying.

Early authorities on English Grammar thought that the only way to properly express the forms of English is to think of it in terms of Latin – going so far as to write entire theses on English Grammar… in Latin. A distressing amount of this gibberish survives, like the idea that you cannot split infinitives. Infinitives are things like ‘to go’; splitting them means to insert words in the middle, like ‘to quickly go.’ Pretty much the only reason why you can’t start a sentence with a conjunction is because Julius Caesar didn’t – the same reason why you spell debt with a ‘B’, receipt with a ‘P’, and so on and so forth.

In fact, there are precisely two reasons why one would be picky over this: One, because you think that our language should be defined in terms of another – a language unspoken these last two millennia; or Two, because you wish to cling to an arbitrary affectation of usage that has gone without authoritative support for 200 years, making all your sentences inelegant, ambiguous and contorted in the process. Take your pick, boys and girls.

In fact, a large number of the most arbitrary rules in our language have their basis in one particular man – Robert Lowth, a clergyman with no experience or degree in linguistics who in 1762 plucked a bunch of rules from thin air and wrote them in “A Short Introduction to English Grammar.”

Examples include:

• The idea that two negatives make a positive. Shakespeare regularly used double negatives, even for his noble characters, and Chaucer recorded a triple negative. Ergo, no historical or linguistic value.

• The idea that you should say different from rather than different than or different to. This is mistaken for an Americanism today, despite the fact that Defoe, Dickens, Coleridge and Thackeray all wrote it. No value.

• The rule that you must say the heavier of rather than the heaviest of two objects. No value.

But perhaps his most peculiar subtraction from the English language would be the fact that he thought that sentences should not end in a preposition (like for, in, on, with, of, and to.) Of course, since this is common in every day speech (“Are we going in? Where are you going to? Who are you going with?”) even Lowth only meant his advice as a suggestion, for ‘solemn and elevated’ writing. It has since then become gospel for nonsense-spouters everywhere. Why? Who cares. It’s the rules.

Some of his suggestions did actually get through unopposed, like the banishment of the construction “you was,’ in common use up until the 18^th century. The construction makes perfect sense, when you think about it. Was is a singular verb, and were a plural. Why should you – an obvious singular – require a plural verb? The logic of this is better than the logic we use for our language today, yet because of one self-obsessed priest, it is banished.

I find it ironic how many people take pride in calling themselves ‘Grammar Nazis.’ Don’t they realise that Nazi’s are bad guys? I call Grammar World War 2 on their ass. No seriously, if a point is made clearly and unambiguously, then it is grammatical. If a sentence is constructed so that every verb has an object, and every comparison has comparatives, and all components are clearly related to their fellows, then the grammarian can nod their head, and then shoot it. Their work is done on this earth – their presence is no longer necessary.

Americanisms

Since my original writing, I have come to realise that in the majority of cases, the idea of Americanisms is mostly a wrong one. It is true that they have clear differences, but when most people think or complain of so-called “American influence,” the truth is that the Americans have kept an expression or word, while the English or Australians have lost it. That is not American influence, it is English negligence.

Think of the most repugnant Americanism you can. Gotten instead of got, as an example. That wasn’t invented in America at all – it was uninvented in Britain. Relics of it can be heard in forgot and forgotten, and ill-gotten gains. Trash instead of rubbish or garbage was recorded in Shakespeare. Samuel Taylor Coleridge riled against ‘that vile and barbarous word talented,’ which was in fact first sighted in England in 1422. He also disparaged glee, jeopardy, and smoulder, scientist and, progress (as a verb) – all British words.

Of course, Americanisation has been opposed for generations. A short list of words once scoffed at as Yank innovation – and this is a cherry-picking of the examples available to me, while the example source ensures me that he himself only took ‘the barest sampling’ of other examples – include: mean (as unpleasant), mayhem, maybe, magnetic, chore, ‘I guess,’ commuter, bedrock, cold spell, lengthy, teenager, typewriter, ‘to butt in,’ to sidetrack, hang-over, fudge, publicity, joyride, blizzard, stunt, law-abiding, notify, currency (as money), to park, hindsight, beeline, raincoat, scrawny (Damn Americans!), graveyard, and that most obvious import – okay.

This is not all. We say “I don’t have.” That is an Americanism. The correct form is “I haven’t got.” To remove all Americanisms from our language would be a torturous impossibility. Trying to describe the world in which we live without words like maximise, minimise, input, loan, normalcy and many of their ilk would be convoluted and difficult, despite the fact that all of these words are useful and expressive (and further, in that despite their opposition, all of them have British origins.)

Ironically, many words that the British have always held firmly as their own are in fact part of that nefarious American conspiracy. Until World War Two, today and tomorrow were spelt to-day and to-morrow; forever and onto, for ever, and on to; Jail rather than Gaol; Reflection rather than reflexion. And while the English make the firm point of keeping the u in colour, vigour, and humour, they have, perhaps thankfully, dropped it in governour, terrour and horrour.

Americanisms – where they aren’t antique British words brought back from the dead – are indisputable and indispensable additions to our language. If they were coined in Mother England rather than Creepy-uncle America, then they would be unopposed.

Despite the actual usefulness of the vile American influence, no logical case can be made against it. Calling them Americanisms and thus worthy of attack is ad hominem, xenophobic and so insular it hurts. American and British and Australian are dialects of the one language. The ONE LANGUAGE. That means that any words used in one can be transferred across to the others. And that means that the only excuse against words you don’t like is that you don’t like its inventors. And it goes without saying that you can’t oppose something because you don’t like its inventors. The only excuse for any of this is that it is just another chance at snobbery – and that snobbery is the only reason for pedantry at all.

After all, what’s the fun in being openly, logically correct? Nobody will fall for your nefarious and self-defeating nonsense! You don’t get that self-satisfied feeling of correcting them! Pedantic rules are made opaque and cryptic as possible almost on purpose, with no justification at all, and then defended to the death. The rules are not for clarity – if they were, then it would be difficult to correct mistakes, because what they said would not be clear, yes? But since correction always comes instantly and gloriously smugly, one must infer that what was said was right – but not proper.

I accept the need for grammar, and a certain degree of grammatical rigidity. I accept that some pronunciations should be kept separate, lest they transform into homonyms. I accept that while Americanisms are useful and mostly unavoidable (and mostly not American), British spelling should be retained – if not at least for a bit of national pride. I will go far enough to say that correct punctuation is necessary - you can't just slap apostraphe's on everything, as that distorts meaning. But that is as far as I will go.

You cannot regulate language. It cannot be done. It is like trying to regulate the tides and flows of the ocean. You can mark ocean currents on maps, but you cannot change their flow. You can invent currents on these maps – if you for some reason feel compelled – but you can’t make people sail down them. You cannot ban sailors from using certain winds – especially when the winds are useful. And you especially cannot ban them using the excuse of ‘those are American winds, we don’t use them.’

For the majority of Grammar Nazi rules, there is absolutely no basis. For the rest, the basis is irrelevant. As is made abundantly clear every time we speak, grammar is cooked up, cut up and swallowed every time we open our mouths. It is an intrinsic property of language, not a rulebook, and you can only enforce an inbuilt property of our brains if our brains have been raised and taught to follow it. If we have not, there is no point. Most of us have not. There is no point.

I cannot stress how wilfully stupid pedantry is in strong enough language. It is a relic of the repression of the Victorian age, and it belongs in the Victorian Age. Not only does correcting other people’s grammar make them feel inadequate, it makes you look foolish. No formally trained linguist recognises pedantry as accurate, relevant, anything – they just don’t recognise it. And neither should you.

Parts of this liberally sourced from Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue.