Montpelier
Quite a few years ago now, Mother and I participated in a sort of group marriage counseling program. Most of the specifics have long since faded from our memories (though they must have worked; we’re still here), but there’s one we both remember. It’s the habit of letting grievances pile up inside until the pressure is unbearable and you let fly with all of them at once. We remember it as “sandbagging,” or “sacking,” or something like that. The name doesn’t matter; what does is that you stop doing it.
However, I will admit to it in one sphere: the care and use of the English language, which seem as much under attack these days as democracy. As Holden Caulfield would say, that really kills me, you know what I mean? Careless, clueless or coarse use of this sacrosanct instrument drives me straight up the wall.
I will admit that my own English — in writing, at least — may be a bit old-fashioned. That’s no wonder; I learned it as a youngster from elderly teachers, the most influential being Charles Dickens, my ninth-grade English teacher, Ida May Quain, her successor the following year, Thomas A. “TD” Donovan, and my 12th-grade teacher, Louis E. “Laughing Louie” Smith. Just remembering them reminds me of a day I spent with a concrete finisher from Lebanon, whose Canadian immigrant grandparents had raised him speaking French. We were working at the home of a Canadian lady, and the two of them yakked away for hours while we waited for the concrete to cure. When he left, she said, “You know, he speaks French the way it was spoken in Canada 100 years ago.” No wonder; that’s when his grandparents learned theirs.
Many of us fossils-in-training feel that our language is in full retreat and deteriorating. I think that’s just because we often hear people breaking rules that our educational success depended upon. All of us freely admit that English, being the world’s largest and most dynamic language, is constantly changing, and thus bound to make us feel as though we’re being left behind.
Never do I feel it more keenly than when I realize almost everyone in my native land uses the noun, “media,” as a singular encompassing all the various forms of media. The true singular, “medium,” has been dropped by the side of the road, like an unwanted old dog. It whimpers and howls for attention, but passersby ignore it — except for me, a few friends and Latin teachers.
That particular beef is related to the dynamism of the language, and there’s no alternative, I suppose, to accepting it grudgingly. But there are many other words (I’ll get a ton of various people’s pet peeves after this appears) that are misused carelessly or incorrectly and set the reader’s teeth on edge. Words of Greek derivation seem to challenge Americans especially. “Criterion” and “phenomenon” are singular; have been for centuries, and I hope always will be. But their plurals are often used in their places. When I see that, I don’t lay it to the offenders as much as I do to their teachers, who either let them get away with it or (horrors!) didn’t know the difference themselves.
Ingrained into my youthful consciousness was the maxim, “It’s impossible ever to convince anybody to do anything.” The word, apparently, has always implied influencing a mind or an opinion, and is invariably followed by “that”; as in “I convinced him that …” Its counterpart, “persuade,” means to create or alter a behavior, and is always followed by “to”: “I finally persuaded him to …” Walter Cronkite used to demonstrate the difference as a matter of course; Matt Lauer, I suspect, doesn’t know it from a can of beans.
I first noticed this next one a couple of years ago, and dismissed it as an aberration. But it’s grown like a virus and is now an epidemic. The past tense of the verb, “lead,” as in “leads me beside still waters,” is spelled, “led.” But suddenly I’m seeing everywhere the past tense being spelled, “lead,” as in the element numbered 82 on the periodic table. Even the Tweeter-in-Chief did it a couple of weeks ago, which means that now at least 62,979,879 people think it’s correct.
The movie, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, has had a devastating effect (thanks, Disney!) on the language. Verbs that we use all the time — spring, sink and shrink — all go “-ink, -ank and -unk” in their three forms. The famous telegram, “Sighted Sub, Sank Same,” would have had much less effect and lasting punch if the commander had wired that he’d “sunk same.” If you tell me, next weekend, that you’ve just sprung forward, be prepared for a sour look, or worse.
Many folks speak of tough cookies who’ve endured through thick and thin as “real troopers,” as if they were members of the constabulary. The word they’re after is “trouper,” an actor or actress who plays every night performance and matinee no matter how challenged. Again, that one’s probably a teacher’s fault.
We’re all familiar with what I call Copspeak, in which officers writing reports speak of “individuals” who don’t get seen, but “observed.” The genre often offers the word, “incidences,” instead of “incidents.” It’s probably safe to say that the plural, if it exists, should be consigned to oblivion. The difference may seem obscure, but it’s the sort of phenomenon that inspired Mark Twain to note, “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’Tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”
I could, like most of you, go on; but these few will have to be all right. Or is it alright?
Willem Lange can be reached at willem.lange@comcast.net.
