The Evolving English Language
I know, of course, that language evolves; and that it is by this evolution that we have reached the present state of English as it is spoken today.
I also know that English is spoken differently by the English, Scots, Irish, Welsh, Yankees, Canadians, Indians, the Hong Kong Chinese, etc., not to mention the myriad different social classes into which our present British culture can be divided.
I make mistakes, and am a shockingly bad speller. I can make allowances. Yet I cannot resist the idea that some departures from my English are plain wrong; they cannot simply be dismissed as variants of equal standing. They seem to me to be undeniable errors; errors by the following criterion: that if the speaker saw both variants, his and mine, he would agree that his was wrong and mine was right.
Nominative and accusative cases. Take for example the very common usage:
"Me and my friend went shopping."
(Instead of My friend and I went shopping). No one says "Me went shopping." It is the addition of "my friend" that causes the trouble. (Perhaps there is some awkwardness about "I and my friend", which is solved by reversing the order into "My friend and I.).
But you can fall over backwards as well as forwards. There are people who know there is dangerous ground with 'I' and 'me', and who erroneously think they can avoid social pitfalls by sticking with the former pronoun:
"Tickets were kindly give to my friend and I." Or
"..legislation...that allowed Michael and I to get married."
But this is just as bad as avoiding "I". Again, it is "my friend" that causes the trouble; no one would say "Tickets were given to I"; or "that allowed I to get married". It is certainly a great help, in understanding these problems, to have been taught the concepts of Subject, verb and Object; the concept of Nominative case (I) and Accusative case (me)
Conditionals: past, present and future. I was shocked when Hannah Fry said on the radio:
"They may never have met if not for a few tattered bits of paper".
Surely she meant "They might never have met but for a few bits of paper." It is over, past tense, they did meet.
There is some arcane and obsolete grammar around hypotheticals and subjunctives, some of which lingers on in scraps and jingles: "So be it!", "Would that it were so!". Traps for foreigners. And it may be that Hannah Fry is speaking correct (albeit contemporary) English. However, my version so exactly captures the fact that they did meet, though, in other circumstances they might not have done so, that I think Hannah would concede.
Or take Terry Eagleton, in the LRB 45(13) p. 12 of 29 Jun 2023):
“Emma Raducanu may have led a fuller life if she had played less tennis…”
No! Surely she “might have”; but it is now too late; it is past tense. However, I am somewhat daunted by finding this in the (somewhat) learned London Review of Books.
As a scientist, I attach particular importance to using language that makes a clear distinction between an hypothesis and an observation.
"When oxygen is limiting the cytochromes become reduced."
"If oxygen were limiting the cytochromes would become reduced."
Tweedledee is a help here.
"Contrariwise", continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be [i.e. 'might still be']; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic."
Compared with/to; differ from/to
I think the prefix is a reliable indicator of the correct, I mean the most appropriate, preposition. "Con" and "com" mean "with" (in Latin). So I would always compare one thing with another. Yet Shakespeare famously wrote:
"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"
and people have been wriggling ever since, trying to justify the "to". Perhaps Shakespeare wanted the explosive brevity of "to" – and 'hang the logic!'
I have a similar, but opposite, problem with the common pairing of "differ" with "to", and even greater problem with "than":
"Adam is different to his brother." (UK)
"Adam is different than his brother." (USA)
In my head differing is a process of moving apart. I prefer "to differ from".
Well and Good: the vanishing adverbs
"I'm doing good, thanks."
Well, he may be doing good to somebody, but not to the language. He means to say he is "doing well". Verbs are qualified by adverbs, nouns are qualifed by adjectives. A large fraction of the population of the USA have more-or-less abolished adverbs. They "run quick" and "think smart'. It raises the question (thought it does not "beg the question"; see below), is it important to be able to distinguish between adverbs and adjectives. That is worth a thought, later; for now I shall cherish the richness I inherited, and scorn the apparent degeneration of the language.
Begging the question
On the BBC, one frequently hears the modern (naive) use of the phrase "To beg the question", where 'beg' means simply to 'ask', 'suggest', 'raise', 'pose, or 'provoke'; perhaps with a touch of urgency.
"Aresnal paid a million pounds for X, which begs the question "Why?"
The earlier erudite usage is now very rare. In my youth the phrase, only used by educated people, meant 'to pre-empt the question'; 'to pre-suppose the answer to the question', 'to assume a premise as shaky as the conclusion being deduced from it', 'arguing in a circle'; in Latin "petitio principii".
"Is tax-evasion wrong? Surely not, because many people do it."
"It seems that foxes enjoy the chase, as they show wonderful spirit."
The verb 'to beg' must have meant something more like the present 'to beggar'; i.e. 'to denude', 'to impoverish'. Two rather different meanings for one word, 'to crave' and 'to deprive'; like the verb 'to want', which currently means both 'to lack' and 'to desire'.
Now that the people at the BBC have adopted an altogether different (and, dare I say, simpler) meaning, the case is lost. The phrase may still be used in its original sense, but mostly as a signal of membership, like wearing a college tie. It flags someone who knows the elements of logic, and a little Latin.
Maybe those of us who wish to retain the older meaning should adapt the phrase, and say "To beggar the question".
Attendee
Given that:
'payee' means the person paid, while payer means the one who does the paying;
'addressee' means the person addressed, addresser is the one who addresses;
'employee' means the person employed, while employer is the one who employes;
using 'attendee' to indicate someone attending (a function, conference, dance, etc) (as is common in the USA and growing in the UK) is clearly an error. The correct term (by this logic) would have to be 'attender', and that word is widely used for that purpose in the UK.
(It is hard to think what the word "attendee" could possibly mean, or to what it could correctly be applied. It would have to be a person to whom attending had been done?)
I think the name for this formation might be the Supinum. In Latin the word 'dare' (=to give) gives rise to the word 'datum' for the thing given. Similarly, 'sputum' is the thing spewed; and 'elutum' the thing washed out. However, I have found this hard to confirm, and I am not a Latinist. It seems to me that "Payee" etc. are derived in a similar way.
The end
