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If I Were the King of Grammar…
What a great topic for this month’s group writing. The first thing I thought to write on was, “If I were a rich man…” Unfortunately, my wife told me it had already been done.
I had to think of something else. I have general handyman skills, but I’ve never done fine carpentry work. I would love to have those sorts of skills. “If I were a carpenter…” And then my wife said that had also been done before.
Well, then I thought, I’ve always wanted to dance. But…
Well, it seems like there are a whole lot of people out there writing songs in the subjunctive mood. Now, of course, everyone on Ricochet knows about the subjunctive mood, as well as the English language’s other moods: indicative, interrogative, imperative, injunctive, optative, and potential.
I have a confession to make: I never learned about moods in an English grammar class. When I was going to school, it seems like we never finished getting through the textbooks. Maybe my peers were just more disruptive than most, and it meant we went through the information more slowly than planned. Or maybe the plan was bad and no class was getting through the whole thing. Of course, it wasn’t just grammar books that were never finished. I never had a history class that got to or past World War II. And I’m not that old. Before the first day I had darkened the door of a school building, we had had more than twenty years of history since WWII. Well, it wasn’t like I was going to read the rest of the school books in my spare time over the summer, either. I had too much to do over the summer. I was a kid. I had to whine about being bored. Do you know how much time that takes? You don’t have enough time to do that if you’re reading a grammar book.
No, the first time I heard of the subjunctive mood, it wasn’t spelled that way. It was «le subjonctif». I learned about moods in high school French class. It left me wondering what else I didn’t know about English grammar. How come nobody had ever told me about this stuff before? It really put me into a mood that was more grumpy than subjunctive. There I was, Wile E. Coyote, Super-Genius High-School Student, and I had never heard of grammar moods before. I do declare!
If I were Grammar King, I would ensure everyone knew all the beautiful grammar things we have in our languages. Languages are complex emergent creations. Nobody sat down one day and said, “Dudes, what we really need is a subjunctive mood in our grammar.” No, it emerged out of the practice of peoples’ trying to communicate long ago. And this is a tool in the toolbox of our language. We have subtle ways of indicating moods through word choices. I would have everyone know such facets of the beautiful gem that is our grammar.
How about you, my Ricochet friends? Was there anything in school that you seemed to miss learning when you should have? Perhaps something you stumbled across later?
Published in Group Writing
Much thanks @Percival! One of my Weird Al faves. It actually helped me make sure I was using it’s and its correctly as I would always freeze up when I came to that. Grammar cheers everyone.
I share the wish that people understood, and cared about, grammar more than they do. I feel sorry for people who learn English as a second language, only to find that native speakers themselves don’t seem to follow the rules.
My pet peeve during recent years has been the decline, and near-disappearance, of the pluperfect subjunctive, the form of the subjunctive used to refer counterfactually to past events: “I wish you had told me.” You almost never hear this anymore, at least not in casual usage, and not from anybody under 40. Instead people say “I wish you would have told me,” which means something entirely different. Why people want to replace one short word with two longer words, and in so doing distort the meaning of the sentence, is beyond me.
This battle is probably lost, and the language will be weaker as a result.
Bart, that’s the tiniest pet peeve I’ve ever run across.
Everything I know about grammar I learned in Latin class.
Heh @kentforrester I can probably come up with some very tiny pet peeves myself. Start with prone and supine.
Kinky!
Wow, Colleeen, that is tiny. I had no idea that someone was going to watch my prose for the proper use of “prone” and “supine.” I’m worried now.
Just throw out some pictures of Bob to distract her.
I don’t like the words “easterly” and “westerly” or the phrase “the wind is in the east”. If a car moved “leftly” would that mean it moved to its the left or that it is coming out of a left turn? I always hesitate and I still have to think about the word. Makes me feel dumb that this is always an issue and reminds me of the scene in Big Trouble (2002) where the criminals can’t decide whether they should go to Arrivals or Departures because they are arriving at the airport but they do want to depart once they get there…
Wouldn’t that be “lefterly?”
Oh thanks. For an old broad, I’m thrilled that I made someone even think kinky.
Prone – on your stomach/front; supine – on your back (think spine). It really isn’t that hard. I can’t figure out how ‘prone on your back’ as a phrase got started but it was probably some dumb journalist.
Yes. That is the correct spelling of a word you and I just invented as an example of ambiguity such that it would be pointless to use unless Monty Python or Tom Stoppard happened to need a useless word to provoke a question so as to begin an absurd conversation.
Okay. Now make him stop.
When you have a lot of them, it’s best to keep them small.
Another good one.
And isn’t part of the definition of “pet peeve” the idea that it’s something relatively insignificant and petty, but nonetheless irksome? If it were a significant problem, I wouldn’t call it a pet peeve.
It’s Reagan’s fault. Still. Somehow.
I thought Reagan, Bush, and Bush had stopped having been Satan after Trump took the office.
(I have it on good authority that Trump will stop having been Satan in 2029, just as soon as the next Republican takes office.)
You know, regarding remarks on grammar, it’s hard to improve on Twain ‘s The Awful German Language. An excerpt below.
Every time I think I have got one of these four confusing “cases” where I am master of it, a seemingly insignificant preposition intrudes itself into my sentence, clothed with an awful and unsuspected power, and crumbles the ground from under me. For instance, my book inquires after a certain bird—(it is always inquiring after things which are of no sort of consequence to anybody): “Where is the bird?” Now the answer to this question,—according to the book,—is that the bird is waiting in the blacksmith shop on account of the rain. Of course no bird would do that, but then you must stick to the book. Very well, I begin to cipher out the German for that answer. I begin at the wrong end, necessarily, for that is the German idea. I say to myself, “Regen, (rain,) is masculine—or maybe it is feminine—or possibly neuter—it is too much trouble to look, now. Therefore, it is either der(the) Regen, or die (the) Regen, or das (the) Regen, according to which gender it may turn out to be when I look. In the interest of science, I will cipher it out on the hypothesis that it is masculine. Very well—then the rain is derRegen, if it is simply in the quiescent state of being mentioned, without enlargement or discussion—Nominative case; but if this rain is lying around, in a kind of a general way on the ground, it is then definitely located, it is doing something—that is, resting, (which is one of the German grammar’s ideas of doing something,) and this throws the rain into the Dative case, and makes it dem Regen. However, this rain is not resting, but is doing something actively,—it is falling,—to interfere with the bird, likely,—and this indicates movement, which has the effect of sliding it into the Accusative case and changing demRegen into den Regen.” Having completed the grammatical horoscope of this matter, I answer up confidently and state in German that the bird is staying in the blacksmith shop “wegen (on account of) den Regen.” Then the teacher lets me softly down with the remark that whenever the word “wegen” drops into a sentence, it always throws that subject into the Genitive case, regardless of consequences—and that therefore this bird staid in the blacksmith shop “wegen des Regens.”
Your verb tenses reminded me of this line from the Twain essay.
and after the verb—merely by way of ornament, as far as I can make out,—the writer shovels in “haben sind gewesen gehabt haben geworden sein,” or words to that effect, and the monument is finished.
Teddy Roosevelt was shot????
I were public edumicated in the 70’s. I didn’t learn much of anything until I got out of high school. I’d say “graduated from” but that would give too much credibility to the “education” system at the time.
Of course the best part is his love of the word for “with this” or “with that,” if only the blasted Germans didn’t put the emphasis on the wrong syllable.
And gave his speech before being treated.
I’d been thinking of the far more authoritative work of Dr. Streetmentioner.
Even thinking about Dan’s work makes me tense.
You lost that war the moment you named it pluperfect subjunctive.
I’m still waiting for someone to explain what the heck a mood is.
I knew that. I just don’t think I knew it in high school.
I took AP, so we had to get to the end, but there were significant gaps. I’m pretty sure Ronald Reagan became president right after JFK, and William Jennings Bryant was the most important figure in American history.
Russian has a lot of things I’m glad English doesn’t have. (Lookin’ at you, verbs of motion, and perfective/imperfective).