The Idioms Are Running the Asylum

I love language. I love the shape and feel of different words, the twists and glides of sentences, and the flowering of phrases and paragraphs into story.  I love etymologies, the hidden history and carried legacies that hide within the lettered bounds of words. I love the sounds of syllables in fluid progression, the oily shimmer of a word like salubrious and the craggy heft of skullduggery. I love the mischief that language gets up to. I’ll admit I still snicker like a school girl to hear on NPR about “so-and-so, who is a HOMO(wner)”, and there was a time not long ago when news about a Massachusetts “Incan” Paint Factory (or Ink and Paint Factory) dominated headlines. I looked in dumbfounded disbelief when Gina told me her school’s motto was Gropers Who Achieve. (except her school thinks it’s pronounced Grow! Pursue! Achieve!) I am constantly delighted and surprised by the irregularities of our cobbled together English language. We have toad, load and road, so why doesn’t broad rhyme? And who on earth thought it made sense to have the intransitive “lie” (I rather think I might lie down for a bit and see if this ennui doesn’t pass.) assume the form “lay” as its past tense (She lay on the chaise longue until the doctor deemed her hysteria sufficiently quelled.) when ‘lay’ is also the present tense form of a different (but similar in idea) transitive verb (Dear, would you lay that compress over my eyes that my enfeebled nerves not suffer your offending visage any longer?)? Or how about the ending ‘ough’? A tough doughboy who thought he ought to march out with a plough to a Marlborough slough was felled by a cough. It’s a good thing I don’t have kids because if I had a son, I would really lobby to name him Geophgh (pronounced Jeff.)

 

 There are myriad wonderful ways to delight in our language and to revel in its textured complexity, but one aspect of it that seems never to fail to induce agitated palpitations in the hearts of the most phlegmatic of philosophers and stirs the dander on the staidest of staid scholars is, at its heart, a deceptively simple question: 

What is Language? 

This feather ruffling debate evokes such passion because of its philosophical nature. Is language living or dead? Are there certain fixed rules and usages of language by which we simply ought to abide? Or does language and how we use language evolve to suit the needs of those who use it?  Both sides have compelling arguments to make. If there are no standards around which we can agree language ought to be structured, then it ceases to make sense. The sentence, Peter hit Liza with a toy helicopter and dented her head for life.  makes sense because it follows conventional structure. We know Liza didn’t hit Peter, not only because she’s an angel and would never hurt a flea, let along her bullying older brother, but because our sterling grasp of grammar tells us subjects precede verbs and direct objects follow.  But what about this sentence?  Mother, upon hearing a kerfuffle, strode into the room and cried, “Forsooth! This might have been prevented if I hadn’t went to my woman cave for some peaceful repose!  Chances are, you still understand the gist of the sentence (Mother regrets leaving her children alone) even though ‘hadn’t went’ is a grammatical transgression that makes otherwise gentle folk twitch madly and blink their eye lids in aggrieved pain.

Let’s talk for a moment about pet peeves, shall we? Circle up your chairs, people we’ll all go around and count one off. I’ll start: Please don’t throw your slipper at Beulah and I!  Yes, it makes me twitch and spit. Because you wouldn’t ever say, “Please don’t throw your slipper at I!” Would you?  Adding one person or ten thousand people to the list of potential people you might throw a slipper at does not change the fact that you always throw your slipper at me, him, or her, and never at I, he or she.  Please don’t throw your slipper at Tom, Dick, Harry, Eve, Steve, Bathsheba, Genghis Kahn and his whole army, Beulah, him, her, or (especially!) me.  This is called consistency. This particular rule has its roots in Latin grammar, but the more important thing is, we still abide by this rule today. We say, “Don’t throw your slipper at me!” And thus, we also say “Don’t throw your slipper at Beulah and me.” That’s maintaining grammatical structure, and that is why I twitch and spit to hear “I” where “me” is what is correct.

Second pet peeve: Mangled subjunctive sentences: When people say something like If I wouldn’t have looked before I crossed the road, I would have been smashed flat by that speeding tractor. The subjunctive territory is tricky business, and I appreciate this. Perhaps because it is in the land of subjunctive where we slip from the solid ground of certainty towards the dreamy world of possibility: If I had a million dollars, I would buy you a K car (Bare Naked Ladies). If I hadn’t bought a case of mead, I would be anxious about running out this weekend (Liza M.).  I should have gone to the bathroom when I didn’t have to, so that later, if I need to go, I won’t have to (My grandfather. Not strictly subjunctive, but a tangled logical delight nonetheless). It is tricky because such sentences are conditional: if X, then Y.  If I had gone to the bathroom when you told me to,  I wouldn’t be in this smelly rest area toilet now.   If only I hadn’t gone to my woman cave, my precious daughter’s head might still be dent free.  Throwing around should have, would haves, and could haves with reckless abandon muddies up an already complex idea. You are entitled to one per conditional sentence. Are there any exceptions to this rule? Honestly? I am too lazy to dig around and try to find it if one exists. 

       Saying “should have went” instead of “should have gone” also grates on my ears, but I recognize that irregular verbs basically make no sense, so how they are declined can seem fairly arbitrary as well. The past (in Latin, perfect) tense of go is went, so it sort of does make sense that the past perfect (had verbed) would be had went. Except it’s not. It’s had gone. But I understand where you’re coming from with had went. I don’t like it, but I understand. Sigh.

Now it’s your turn.  What are your grammatical pet peeves? Why do they annoy you? And here’s a challenge for you to think about: Do they annoy you because you believe these transgressions somehow fundamentally undermine the foundation upon which our language rests? (See irksome use of “I” as a direct object, above.)  Or do they annoy you, well, Just Because? Here’s an example of a transgression that fails to unleash the full force of my fury: I will always fight for my right to proudly split infinitives. I believe this little no-no comes from the Latin again, where infinitives are one word. Esse means to be. That’s it. Just Esse. No matter how dextrous your Latining skills, you cannot slip an adverb into a Latin infinitive without fracturing it. But here’s where English is different from Latin: We can. Without too much effort, really. Because our infinitives come packaged for us with the handy little helper, to. To Verb. There’s a wee space in the middle, just large enough to squeeze in your adverb. So go ahead, try to casually slip in an adverb. See how easy that was?

Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker breaks the debate around language into two camps: Prescriptivists, who talk about how language ought to be used, and Descriptivists, who describe how language in fact is used.  Where should we stand our ground and defend the integrity of our language in order to preserve its clarity and, ultimately, usefulness, and where should we step back and shrug our shoulders and say with a gentle chuckle, tempora mutantur lingua et mutatur in illis.* I don’t know in which camp I stand. I am of two minds, as I think most people who care about language are.  I know people who would just as soon smite any fool who doesn’t halfway know the proper time to use who or whom but who couldn’t give a fig about apostrophes, while other normally civilized souls might upturn tables in a fury over a participle that’s been left dangling, but then go on Facebook and write OMG, WTF!! And does anybody besides me care about the technical difference between a student and a pupil? My point is we all draw lines in the grammatical sand in an effort to Defend (or preserve?) Language, but then contribute in some other area to changing it. Sometimes we are right to defend it, sometimes we should stay cool and let things change. So where to draw that line? Those who would clutch their pearls and shriek that the word ‘gay’ has been hijacked from their vocabulary demonstrate their ignorance with the word’s sordid and ribald march through the ages. On the other hand, don’t we sacrifice precision and risk losing a rich etymological history when we say the crops were decimated by locusts and rogue children when what we probably mean is the crops were devastated by locusts and rogue children?

So all this brings me back to that question. What is language? What is its purpose? Is it a tool whose integrity relies on the steadfastness of its inflexible truths? Or is it a tool whose integrity lies in its ability to shift and adapt and change according to the needs of its users? The answer, of course, is yes.

* I am dusting off some cobwebs to riff off this speech from Illiad. Roughly, speaking, it means times change, and language changes in those times. With apologies to my friend and Latin teacher, Julia Brown.