Top 5 myths of English grammar

Grammar fiends are everywhere! They are always quick to ‘correct’ our grammar, but when you find yourself ‘corrected’, ask yourself who they are to judge your grammar. Where does their knowledge of English originate from? More often than not, people who correct grammar make their judgements based on what they believe to be correct without actually having sufficiently studied the language. Here are the top five incorrect ‘corrections’ that you need to be aware of:

*A sentence cannot end in a preposition.

Was it not Winston Churchill who comically illustrated this point with “this is the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put”? I think this ‘rule’ refers to using a preposition with a relative clause (‘with which’ in this case) rather than phrasal-prepositional verbs (‘to put up’ in the case). But putting the preposition at the end is a completely legitimate part of English syntax (even more so in its sister language, Dutch) and it is rather the style that governs its usage.

*A sentence cannot start with "and" or "but"

This practice has actually been around for centuries. Perhaps it is because they are classed as conjunctions that a misconception has arisen in the belief that they must join two (or more) independent clauses within one sentence. But no...(see what I did there?). They can join two or more ideas, not bound by full stops. Again, this boils down to style. I would do my utmost to avoid starting a sentence with ‘and’ or ‘but’ in a legal text, a technical manual or another situation requiring a formal style. Otherwise, if you want to personalise your text, or adopt a marketing approach, go for it!

*The passive voice is incorrect.

With its strictest spelling and grammar settings applied, Microsoft Word often puts a green squiggly line under any passive constructions.  However, they actually serve some very practical purposes. We may not know who the subject is in order to use the active voice, or we may want to place emphasis on the action rather than the agent.

*Contractions aren't appropriate in ‘proper’ English.

Humans have always sought ways to economise their spoken language. It’s particularly trendy amongst the youth nowadays to shrink adverbs, such as “totes” from totally. We have atrocious programmes like Made in Chelsea to thank for these. I don’t think this highly colloquial phenomenon will catch on to subsequent generations, in the same way that we don’t say ‘groovy’ anymore.

Nevertheless, contracted verbs did catch on in spoken language and we needed to reflect this change in writing. On the other hand, this grammar myth can ring true when it comes to style. We may write contractions, but only where the less formal context allows.

*‘Me and you’ is incorrect.

Ah, an interesting point. A few years ago, a friend of mine went to an Oxford University open day, where some of his peers ‘corrected’ his use of ‘me and you’ to ‘you and I’. Unfortunately for them, they were wrong:

We must look at the grammatical context in this case. Using two object pronouns (me/you) in the place of subject pronouns (I/you) is obviously incorrect, for example ‘me and him are going to the cinema’ instead of the grammatically correct ‘he and I are going to the cinema’, although the former is more acceptable in colloquial usage, but the linguists amongst us will continue to hold this contempt.

But there are those who hear ‘me and you’ without listening to the words that precede and follow it, automatically assuming that this set phrase (and similar ones involving her/him/them etc.) is incorrect.

Of course, these object pronouns are correctly used as...well...objects. And after prepositions too. So, phrases like ‘she is looking at you and me’ or ‘that present is for me and him’ are correct. Try replacing ‘me’ with ‘I’ in those sentences and you’ll see what I mean.

Let us remember that the English language, unfortunately, does not have a regulatory body unlike French and Spanish, so there is no single authority to tell us what is and is not ‘correct’. Most of these myths result from the disdain of one certain linguist towards a certain grammar point, who publishes his opinion and centuries later it is taken as the word of God. So, let’s take the time to analyse these so-called rules from now on, as we are in charge of our language, not the other way around.  

Denglish - Destroying our planet

Many regular visitors to this website will be familiar with my profound hatred of hybrid interlanguages, that is the result of one language unnecessarily using modern vocabulary from another, where appropriate terms already exist.

For me, this primarily concerns English terms used in French, German, Spanish and Dutch, but it is most prevalent in German, and has created a horrible phenomenon called Denglish.

Throughout history, languages have borrowed words from other languages to enrich their vocabulary. English itself is not as "pure" as say French or German, which have a clear, direct Latin and Germanic heritage respectively. Whilst English is considered a Germanic language, it is in fact a diverse mix of several languages.

A survey of 80,000 words from the Shorter Oxford Dictionary revealed that only a quarter of English words are actually "native", inherited from Old English, which in turn was influenced by Old Norse when the Vikings invaded. Another quarter comes from French, and another quarter from Latin. Five percent comes from Greek and the rest come from other or unknown sources.

Words borrowed from other languages are absolutely fine, if there is no existing alternative. When chocolate was introduced to this country from the New World, they had no name for it in English, so the sensible thing to do would be to use an anglicised version of the word where this strange, exotic delight came from.

Germans do this to some extent. Whereas we "unfriend" someone on Facebook, they entfreunden. This is a literal germanicised version of the word that has been adapted to German grammar rules, with ent- being a negative prefix, like "un-" or "de-" in English, freund meaning friend, and the suffix -en indicating a verb.

But when Germans want to chillen, surfen the Internet, go to eine Afterparty or talk about "ein Shitstorm", this gets ridiculous and redundant. There is so much English used in German today that they feel the need to have an Anglicism of the Year competition, which this year was won by "leaken" - to leak.

Personally, I think this is happening more so in German than other languages due to the lack of national identity following the war and the influence of the presence of the British and American military in Germany afterwards. But the Germans have re-discovered their identity, following the reunification of the country in 1990 and events such as the Football World Cup in 2006, which have proved it's okay to be German, to wave the German flag and to speak the German language.

Whilst the German youth may think its cool to use English words and phrases like these, older Germans are not so happy about this bastardisation. The Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache (Society for the German Language) and the Verein Deutsche Sprache (German Language Association) were set up preserve the language, and they believe there seems to be this attitude that English is somehow 'better' than German, and that German somehow sounds old-fashioned, particularly for a certain group of people.

The easy thing to do would be to blame English and English speakers, but this would wrong. Whilst the use of English is growing internationally, it is native speakers of other languages who choose to learn it and then adopt its vocabulary into their own languages. We Brits who do speak foreign languages, on the other hand, would rather speak them in their purest form and we prefer for our language not to be abused in such a way.

Now, you may ask, "Language Man, why do you hate Denglish so much?" Well, the problem with introducing English terms into other languages, for which there is actually an existing term already, is that the meaning may become blurred and get lost in translation. Just look at "ein Handy", a mobile phone, and "ein Beamer" a video projector.

More complicated examples can cause hell for us translators, because although we may see an English-looking word in a text, it often looks out of context due to the change in meaning and we may not fully understand what is actually meant. If I'm wearing a "Smoking" in German, it's unlikely that most will know I'm actually wearing a dinner jacket, and what is a "Streetworker" in German? Someone who collects money for charity on the street or someone who helps homeless people? Or perhaps a 'lady of the night'? No, it's actually a social worker.

Besides excluding older Germans from their own language, Denglish diminishes cultural boundaries and increases the likelihood of all of Planet Earth's cultures and languages merging into one, which perpetuates the stereotype held mainly by Americans that Europe is one country and everyone speaks English there.

So, Denglish ranks number one on Language Man's list of things that are going to metaphorically destroy our planet. In preparation for the end, I shall put on my Abendanzug rather than my Smoking.