14 Weird Lies About the English Language Upheld by Grammar Fascists
Who taught you how to write, your fourth-grade teacher? Was she there when the English language was invented? Didn’t think so!
Language is a living organism, and the English language in particular is nonsensical and arbitrary. Sure, we have norms and traditions we all need to agree on to make any sense, but a lot of those norms were fabricated by absolute jagaloons, and haven’t been around as long as you think.
It’s Perfectly Fine to End a Sentence With a Preposition
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The idea that it’s invalid to do so came from an ill-fated push by 17th-century poets to manhandle the English language to become more like Latin. Fuck John Dryden and the horse he rode in on.
‘Xmas’ Isn’t Disrespectful, It’s About As Official as You Can Get
Far from being an edgy attempt to take Christ out of Christmas, it’s derived from the way religious scribes would write Jesus’ name. As far back as 1021, they used the scribal abbreviation Xρ (“Chi-Rho”) as a stand-in for “Christ,” almost like an old-timey stenotype.
‘Which’ and ‘That’ Can Be Interchangeable
Technically, they say, “which” should never be used as a relative pronoun. That means the sentence “The United States is one of the countries which failed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol” is technically incorrect. But here’s a counterargument: Shut the fuck up with that nonsense. Or, as an editor of the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language put it, “The alleged rule has no basis.”
Nause“Nauseating” means “causing nausea,” while “nauseated” means “suffering from nausea.” Some people will tell you that the word “nauseous” can only mean the former, but those people are jagoffs. That’s not just my opinion — Merriam-Webster says the misconception started with one dipshit physician writing a shitty little letter in 1949.
‘Ye Olde’ Doesn’t Mean Anything and Never Did
“The” was never spelled “ye,” but rather with the character þ, which was pronounced “th.” Printing presses made the executive decision to print the word as yͤ, and 19th-century nostalgia baiters started slapping “Ye Olde” onto their storefronts.
Only Idiots Want You to Not Split Infinitives
If you separate the word “to” from the verb it’s partnered with, the entire English language will tumble to its demise as foretold in Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. Right? Not according to The Oxford Guide to Plain English, which says, “There is no such rule.” This was another attempt to Latin-ify English.
And You Can Go Ahead and Start Your Sentence With a Conjunction
Conventional wisdom says that starting a sentence with a word like “and” or “but” is a mark of illiteracy. But that’s a modern (and arbitrary) distinction. Garner’s Modern American Usage calls the rule “rank superstition” and “a gross canard,” which are fighting words in the biz. Even the Chicago Manual of Style says about 10 percent of sentences in “first-rate writing” start with a conjunction.
Double Negatives Aren’t Not Good
Double negatives can feel clunky, but there’s a very common type of double negative called a litote, or “nested negative,” that’s important for conveying nuance or suggesting an unspoken third option. “I’m not unconvinced by his argument” means something very different than “I’m convinced.”
A Paragraph Doesn’t Have to Be Three Sentences Long
That’s a fine rule of thumb for teaching a sixth grader how to write an essay, but there’s simply no hard-and-fast rule about it. Look at The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde or like any newspaper article.
‘Crap’ Is Not John Crapper’s Legacy (And It Isn’t Much of a Dirty Word at All)
Thomas Crapper didn’t invent the toilet, though he was a plumbing wiz who held three bathroom patents, including the floating ballcock. His commode bona fides are legit, but “crap” actually comes from the Latin crappa, meaning “chaff.” It’s closer to “debris” than “dookie.”
While We’re at It, ‘Fuck’ Is Not a Cute Little Acronym
It doesn’t mean “fornication under consent of king” or “for unlawful carnal knowledge.” The word “fuck” has a common ancestor with words like “focka” (Swedish), “fokkelen” (Dutch) and even “pugnus” (Latin). They all have multiple meanings along the lines of: to thrust, to prick, to copulate and even just a stand-in for “penis.”
Your Ancestors Didn’t Have to Say ‘Healthful,’ and Neither Should You
For centuries, “healthy” could describe a person in good health and a thing that is good for one’s health. But in the 19th century, people with nothing better to do started insisting that the latter must be represented by the word “healthful.” In sociolinguistics, this is called a hypercorrection — people applying broad guidelines to narrowly and making up new, pointless rules.
If a Plural Noun Feels Weird, You Don’t Have to Use It That Way
Writing phrases like “the data are” or “the media are” feels like accidentally biting your tongue; it pains you somewhere you can’t reach and it makes you mad for the rest of the day. But the Oxford English Dictionary has no problem using terms like “the data produces,” citing this exact phrase in a philosophical journal from 1820.
Unfortunately, Annoying Words Are Still Words
Words like “funnest,” “mentee” and “irregardless” get dunked on by grammar pick-me’s, but they’re still real and valid words at their core. Morphemes are the smallest meaningful nuggets of expression (sort of the atoms of a language), and people have spun up new words using existing morphemes since the first grunts around a cave fire. Just because you know “proper” etymology doesn’t mean that new words aren’t real.
