78 lines
3.4 KiB
Plaintext
78 lines
3.4 KiB
Plaintext
From werner Wed Oct 26 14:06:34 1988
|
||
Flags: 000000000001
|
||
From: roller@hocpa.UUCP
|
||
Subject: The Future of the English Language
|
||
Keywords: smirk
|
||
Date: 26 Oct 88 03:30:04 GMT
|
||
|
||
|
||
I'm sorry to report that I don't know who wrote the following
|
||
discussion of the future of English. It given to me nearly ten years
|
||
ago when I was a professor at Southern Methodist University.
|
||
Although I had many excellent students at SMU, there is no denying
|
||
that the style of this document resembles that of some term papers I
|
||
received.
|
||
|
||
Paul Michaelis AT&T Bell Labs att!hocpa!roller
|
||
|
||
----------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
|
||
This sentence demonstrates alot of the to frequent
|
||
errors that occur in my freshman composition classes, its
|
||
not just there willingness to gleefully split an infinitive
|
||
or end a sentence with a preposition which are the problems
|
||
kindly boarding school masters used to be concerned with.
|
||
Its true my students arent the good mannered middle class
|
||
bunch who I went to school with, there more often cops or
|
||
shoesalesmens or garbagemens (pardon me, sanitationmens)
|
||
sons and daughters, and yet there a sharp group, wary,
|
||
skeptical, bright.
|
||
So when I knock myself out day after day class after
|
||
class explaining the genitive case in english, the proper
|
||
position of commas, the runon sentence, the distinction
|
||
between the three theres and still these mistakes appear
|
||
even in the work of the best of them I wonder.
|
||
I wonder if just maybe they know something I dont about
|
||
the english language. Something intuitive about its history
|
||
and something instinctive about its future. After all, its
|
||
been the movement of the language to progress toward
|
||
simplicity. The case structure, with its confusing endings,
|
||
was an early victim. Why say "On his dagum hierde Gregorius
|
||
goda lara" when with a little reliance on word order and
|
||
common sense you can more simply say "In his time Gregorys
|
||
heard good lectures"?
|
||
Besides the nagging whom the last vestige of the case
|
||
structure in english is the genitives use of the apostrophe.
|
||
But surely common sense and word order indicate the genetive
|
||
usage and my students perception is correct in eliminating
|
||
the troublesome superscript.
|
||
Theres wisdom in doing away with punctuation that
|
||
doesnt contribute to clarity and when my classes
|
||
monolithically dispose of pointless spelling distinctions
|
||
where the sense is obvious there judgment may be sound.
|
||
Then again, alot of my colleagues lose sleep over the
|
||
way some students slam two words or letters into one but
|
||
metathesis or the changing of the position of sounds or
|
||
letters is a venerable tradition, or else a newt might still
|
||
be an ewt.
|
||
Words in english usually explain themselves by position
|
||
and context, though of course there exceptions to this rule
|
||
which my students in there foresight have not anticipated
|
||
but give them awhile and they will.
|
||
I cant go into detail about every grammatical
|
||
innovation made by my students, theres alot to recommend
|
||
them though and if your an editor, the author of an english
|
||
grammar or the perpetrator of a work on footnote logic and
|
||
you can read this you should pay attention to my class
|
||
because one day they might take over and one day you might
|
||
wake up. And discover your fired.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
--
|
||
.
|
||
If you MUST reply to a rejection, include a description of your joke
|
||
because there is 0 chance I will remember which one it was.
|
||
|
||
|