DON'T GIVE UP ON ENGLISH
By Will Stanton
Reader's Digest
(New York, N.Y)
The English language is like a woman's wardrobe - full of things she can't use, and yet the one thing she needs she can't find.
For instance, we don't have a good general interrogative like the French N'est-ce pas? One possibility is the word Right? The trouble is that people who start using it can't stop. "So, I'm driving down the street, right? Now, I'm not going to hassle any truck, right?"
And how do you contract Am I not? Amn't I? Ain't I? Aren't I? I can't use anyone of these without feeling like a simpleton, so I am forced back to am I not. Right?
Then there are words that have been kicking around the language for centuries without ever doing a lick of honest work.
Take adumbrate, which means to foreshadow or reveal, to overshadow or conceal, to outline in a shadowy way - or to reveal some, to conceal some. It's like a dispenser that puts out salt, pepper, napkins and maple syrup all at once.
There are combinations of words that don't make sense. Raise means to build up; raze means to tear down - as for instance by burning up. Which means burning down.
Fasten is the opposite of loosen. But unfasten and unloosen are the same. If you look over something, you give it a good look. If you overlook it, you don't look at it at all. If you oversee it, you give it a good look again.
Then there is the way we put words together. You hear a cuddlesome girl referred to as honey lamb - as a young sheep dipped in honey was something you might hug.
When a person does something stupid, we call him a dumb bunny. Like if he gets out of warm bed to go outside in the wet bushes and hide easter eggs. True, it's the bunny who gets credit for this idiocy, but who actually does it? And what do you suppose the bunny is doing in the meantime? Okay.
The language is constantly changing, and its not experts who change it. It's the dummies who don't know any better.
The word awful used to mean something awe-inspiring like a cathedral. When a new church was built, everybody would go to see how awful it was. Sunday after Sunday. The kids would maybe rather have fooled around down at the creek or over some girl's house. But no, back to the old cathedral. "You ever see such an awful church?" they'd say. "No, I've seen churches, but this takes the cake for awful." And they would cross their eyes and make gagging sounds, and the word acquired the meaning it has now.
According to the rules, you shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition. This is a rule I don't believe in. A preposition at the end gives a sentence zing - show's where it's at. My son seems to share the same feeling. One time I went up to his room to read him a bedtime story and took the wrong book. He said, "What did you bring that book I didn't want to be read to out of up for?"
English has a rule that says two negative make a positive. This may be alright for math, but it's a little unrealistic in practice. Let's say you ask a girl for a date and she says says, "I don't want nothing to do with you, no time, no way." To an English professor she means yes. This may be the reason so many scholars wind up overcautious.
Two words that cause a lot of trouble are lie and lay. You can lay your head down or lay yourself down, but you can't just lay down. Unless it's the past tense. If you lay down half a second ago, that's fine. But right now you are not laying, you are lying. When the change takes place, I don't know - and try explaining it to somebody from Albania.
Sit down and set are just as bad. A setting hen sits on eggs. When she's laying, she's not lying - she's sitting again. The only time a chicken lies down is when it's dead. Just looking at a chicken, you'd never guess it led such a complicated life.
Don't get me wrong. I have no patience with people who say English is a "dying" language. That's not the word to describe it at all. The words you might use to describe English are the same ones you might apply to your wife: charming, exasperating, enchanting, maddening, unreasonable, beloved.
By Will Stanton
Reader's Digest
(New York, N.Y)
The English language is like a woman's wardrobe - full of things she can't use, and yet the one thing she needs she can't find.
For instance, we don't have a good general interrogative like the French N'est-ce pas? One possibility is the word Right? The trouble is that people who start using it can't stop. "So, I'm driving down the street, right? Now, I'm not going to hassle any truck, right?"
And how do you contract Am I not? Amn't I? Ain't I? Aren't I? I can't use anyone of these without feeling like a simpleton, so I am forced back to am I not. Right?
Then there are words that have been kicking around the language for centuries without ever doing a lick of honest work.
Take adumbrate, which means to foreshadow or reveal, to overshadow or conceal, to outline in a shadowy way - or to reveal some, to conceal some. It's like a dispenser that puts out salt, pepper, napkins and maple syrup all at once.
There are combinations of words that don't make sense. Raise means to build up; raze means to tear down - as for instance by burning up. Which means burning down.
Fasten is the opposite of loosen. But unfasten and unloosen are the same. If you look over something, you give it a good look. If you overlook it, you don't look at it at all. If you oversee it, you give it a good look again.
Then there is the way we put words together. You hear a cuddlesome girl referred to as honey lamb - as a young sheep dipped in honey was something you might hug.
When a person does something stupid, we call him a dumb bunny. Like if he gets out of warm bed to go outside in the wet bushes and hide easter eggs. True, it's the bunny who gets credit for this idiocy, but who actually does it? And what do you suppose the bunny is doing in the meantime? Okay.
The language is constantly changing, and its not experts who change it. It's the dummies who don't know any better.
The word awful used to mean something awe-inspiring like a cathedral. When a new church was built, everybody would go to see how awful it was. Sunday after Sunday. The kids would maybe rather have fooled around down at the creek or over some girl's house. But no, back to the old cathedral. "You ever see such an awful church?" they'd say. "No, I've seen churches, but this takes the cake for awful." And they would cross their eyes and make gagging sounds, and the word acquired the meaning it has now.
According to the rules, you shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition. This is a rule I don't believe in. A preposition at the end gives a sentence zing - show's where it's at. My son seems to share the same feeling. One time I went up to his room to read him a bedtime story and took the wrong book. He said, "What did you bring that book I didn't want to be read to out of up for?"
English has a rule that says two negative make a positive. This may be alright for math, but it's a little unrealistic in practice. Let's say you ask a girl for a date and she says says, "I don't want nothing to do with you, no time, no way." To an English professor she means yes. This may be the reason so many scholars wind up overcautious.
Two words that cause a lot of trouble are lie and lay. You can lay your head down or lay yourself down, but you can't just lay down. Unless it's the past tense. If you lay down half a second ago, that's fine. But right now you are not laying, you are lying. When the change takes place, I don't know - and try explaining it to somebody from Albania.
Sit down and set are just as bad. A setting hen sits on eggs. When she's laying, she's not lying - she's sitting again. The only time a chicken lies down is when it's dead. Just looking at a chicken, you'd never guess it led such a complicated life.
Don't get me wrong. I have no patience with people who say English is a "dying" language. That's not the word to describe it at all. The words you might use to describe English are the same ones you might apply to your wife: charming, exasperating, enchanting, maddening, unreasonable, beloved.
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