Of double superlatives and hetches

This post by Sue  had me thinking. I have read just a few of the posts bloggers have put up for this. Here I am with the things that get my goat. Often.

I see red when people are most happiest doing something. I would be most happy if they weren't. Sometimes they are even more happier now than they were before. That makes me just as sad now. When I protest that, that is not how they should say it, they go 'what men, what you're telling men?'  Men? Which men are they speaking about? I look around. No men. Unless there are some men around. However, I am sure that they weren't directing their comment to those men. Even if I was a man, (which I certainly am not,) I would certainly have been one man, not men.

Speaking of men and women, it is a women's college, not a womens' college. Also notice that here we are speaking about a college in the singular. This college has many women, not womens, as students. Similarly it is a girl's voice, but many girls' voices, not girl's voices.

I see red when I ask someone the reason for something and they answer, "Why because..."  I know that a sentence should not normally start with 'because', 'and', 'but,' etc., (although it can be done for dramatic effect, sparingly) but to say why because to begin an answer! Oh, no.

Then there are those who will ask you to "just tell !" Tell what, tell whom? "No, simply telling!" Not so simple, this telling (what?/ whom?).

When Professor Higgins told Eliza Dolittle (no questions of whom/what are necessary here, as you can notice) to practise (not practice-that's a noun) saying "In Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen", he could scarcely have realised that there would be a lot of people who would speak of the alphabet "H" as hetch, not etch. When I hear this, I itch to etch on their minds that it should be an 'etch' and not a 'hetch.'

I see red when 'me and her' do something, when it is actually 'she and I' who do it. What has been done is by 'her and me', not 'she and I'. I am also annoyed when someone will do 'this one thing only,'  and not 'only this' or 'just this.'

The latest in the list of what irks is the SMSese that people write these days. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I would rather write,  "I like my tea strong, and I like to eat something with it." Instead of  "I lIk my T strng, & I  lIk 2 Et smTIN w it."  Makes me want to throw up the tea. It's worse when people write emails or letters in this way.

I am OK with using two languages together. If speaking in English, if there is something for which I do not immediately recollect an English word, I don't mind substituting a word in Marathi, my mother-tongue. Or vice-versa. For example I could say "I have poli-bhaji for lunch today." It would seem contrived to me to search for an English substitute for poli-bhaji. I also feel OK saying a whole sentence or a whole phrase in another language if that makes me express myself better. After all, we are multilingual. But it gets my goat when it is done to 'seem cool, you know!' We have enough Hindi film songs with 'angrezi' words as examples.


In a foreword to the book THE STORY OF ENGLISH, by Robert McCrum, it says that, "A living language is like a man suffering incessantly from small haemorrhages, and what it needs above all else is constant transactions of new blood from other tongues. The day the gates go up, that day it begins to die."  So we have a lot of Indian origin words getting their rightful place in an English dictionary. As Mrs. Granger says in FRINDLE, "We decide what goes in that book." Where else would the Englishman go for his curry and chutney?

Any language needs an understanding of the way it works, for us to be really able to enjoy it. The 'feel of a language' is that elusive thing which occurs only by reading and re-reading, again and again, books that are rich in its beauty. Reading classics in the original or reading poetry is a great way to go about it. A has a wonderful book that I would recommend for all children. And adults too. There is nothing dreary about this book although it is about grammar.

GRAMMAR REPAIR KIT
Written by Angela Burt and William Vandyke.
Illustrated by David Farris.
Published by Hodder Children's Books.
Age 8+

Image: Courtesy Amazon.

The book uses a lot of cartoons, questions like, "Why is it important to KNOW about nouns if I have been using them perfectly well ever since I learned to talk?". Games like 'I Spy' and 'How many action words can you make from this word?', and many more excercises. A loved the book and we have gifted it to many of her friends and my nephews/nieces. One also gets a sense of that elusive 'feel of a language.' Worth a look.

In the meantime, I need to go and have that cup of tea, with something to eat with it!