“It’s tough,” she said with a cough, after falling from a
bough into the slough.
Indeed, she is right. English is tough. It gathers words
from all over the globe, and even when they have the same linguistic source, they
may be pronounced differently, hence those Old English “ough” words. It picks up new words and lets go of others. It
discards some colloquialisms and hangs on to others. What was slang becomes
common usage. In 1922 Emily Post considered “taxi” barely acceptable slang. (I
wonder what she’d think of Uber). Yet its flexibility and accommodation are what
make English so useful.
Clearly, having spent my entire professional career teaching
it, I love the language. What I do not like is when I am introduced as a former
English teacher, and the immediate response is, “Now I’ll have to watch what I
say.” To many, we are seen as guardians of “proper English,” the scolds of
acceptable speech and writing. My usual response is, “No need to worry, I’m
retired.”
All this is not to say that “between you and I” or “Me and
Lucy went to the dance” don’t grate on my ears, or that I get the urge to grab
some Wite-out and eliminate apostrophes in plurals. Truth to tell, I actually
corrected the grammar on some graffiti in a bathroom stall once. It’s an
occupational hazard!
I started thinking about all of the again after a friend
sent me a link to Oliver Kamm’s article “There is no ‘Proper English'" in last
Friday’s Wall Street Journal. His
main point is, “If it is in general use, then that is what the language is.”
Split infinitives, ending a sentence with a preposition, using “hopefully” to
modify an entire sentence—all these are remnants of 18th century
prescriptive manuals “intended to teach propriety to an emerging merchant class….The
whole debate about English usage has been bedeviled ever since by this
snobbery, whereas the real task of language instruction (for adults as for
children) should be to help people learn how to address different types of
audience at different sorts of occasions.”
Right you are, Mr. Kamm, and one of those audiences is
people like me who learned those rules. When I was teaching, it was not uncommon
for students to complain that the language they used was the language they heard around them, so how could it be wrong. It was then I would give my
wardrobe speech:
Language is like a closet full of clothes. The language you
use should suit the situation. You wouldn't go to the beach in a ball gown, nor
to the prom in jeans. You decide what to wear according to the situation, likewise
with language. There is language that is appropriate for the locker room and
different language appropriate for a job interview. I do not have to teach you
how to speak in the locker room. In fact, you could probably teach me about
that language. What I do have to teach you is your “best dressed” English, the
kind you need to use when you go on that important interview.
English must change to remain alive. Try reading Beowulf in Old English if you don’t
agree. To allow for change, and at the same time hold on to a common
understanding, that is the challenge.
