{"id":802,"date":"2010-03-04T17:18:27","date_gmt":"2010-03-04T22:18:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2d823b65bb.nxcli.io\/?p=802"},"modified":"2016-10-03T18:37:23","modified_gmt":"2016-10-03T22:37:23","slug":"national-grammar-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/2010\/03\/national-grammar-day.html","title":{"rendered":"National Grammar Day, Bah Humbug!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Evidently today is National Grammar Day<\/a>.\u00a0 I am not a fan.<\/p>\n

Like most Americans of my generation I was taught to identify parts of speech, diagram sentences and intone with the rest of the class the mysteries of the three-and-twenty most holy helping verbs: “is, am, are, was, were, be, being, been, have, has, had, do, did, does, may, must, might, can, could, will, would, shall, should”.\u00a0\u00a0 Because I was good at it, and felt a call to the service of pedantry, I continued my novitiate in stranger accents, in German, Latin and Greek.<\/p>\n

I was well on my path the the priesthood of a grammarian, when in 1992 I abandoned all my vows in a bus in Somerville, Massachusetts, when a drunk showed me what language was really all about.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"Somerville,<\/a>
Image via Wikipedia<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

I’m not one to start a conversation with a stranger —\u00a0 even a sober one — on public transportation.\u00a0 But in this case I had little choice in the matter, since this particular gentleman insisted on initiating a debate on the virtues of the Allman Brothers<\/a>, a subject which I was neither equipped nor inclined to discuss with him.<\/p>\n

When I expressed my disinclination to debate, and further, my ignorance of all things Allman, the dear fellow was offended and let out a string of expletives, starting with “Un-freakin’-believable” (albeit with a more emphatic, saltier interposed participial adjective than I can relate to you here) and continuing for several minutes.\u00a0 Nothing he said was grammatical.\u00a0 Little was even coherent.\u00a0 But what I did understand was pure genius.\u00a0 I wish I had a tape recorder.\u00a0 As my stop approached, I hesitated a moment, intending to thank the man, offer him my congratulations and laud him as a poet of the first order.\u00a0 But the smell, as well as my own instinct for self-preservation, held me in abeyance.<\/p>\n

Since that day I have been an apostate to grammar.\u00a0 I think we should all have a range of ways to speak and write,\u00a0 and should be able to modulate according to circumstances. Language is like a wardrobe.\u00a0 A man should have jogging shorts as well as a tuxedo.\u00a0 In the end, language is not about rules.\u00a0 It is about suiting the words to the occasion, of putting the right words in the right places, and what is “right’ will depend on circumstances.<\/p>\n

So down with grammar, down with the rules! Go, split an infinitive, dangle your participles, and like my good friend on the #86 bus, even separate your inseparable prefixes.\u00a0 To quote Duke Ellington, “If it sounds<\/em> good, it is<\/em> good”.\u00a0 And remember that the goal in the end is expression and understanding.\u00a0 If you are understood, then you’ve accomplished more than many.<\/p>\n

As Gertrude Stein wrote:<\/p>\n

Clarity is of no importance because nobody listens and nobody knows what you mean no matter what you mean, nor how clearly you mean what you mean. But if you have vitality enough of knowing enough of what you mean, somebody and sometime and sometimes a great many will have to realize that you know what you mean and so they will agree that you mean what you know, what you know you mean, which is as near as anybody can come to understanding anyone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Evidently today is National Grammar Day.\u00a0 I am not a fan. Like most Americans of my generation I was taught to identify parts of speech, diagram sentences and intone with the rest of the class the mysteries of the three-and-twenty most holy helping verbs: “is, am, are, was, were, be, being, been, have, has, had, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[155],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-802","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-language","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=802"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2517,"href":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/802\/revisions\/2517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}