ORIGINAL MESSAGE

NAME: Vic Coughtrey   Then & Now

DATE: 05 November 2014

CONNECTION WITH QE: pupil 1954-59

Some of us shown ourselves, in various threads, to be rather keen on discussing points of English grammar. I thought it a good idea, therefore, to start a thread dedicated to the purpose. You can still join discussions concerning grammar in other threads but I will put your reply here, with a link back to the relevant thread.

RESTRICTED THREAD: please make anything to do with the English language the main subject of your reply.

1st REPLY

NAME: James (Jas) Cowen    Then & Now

DATE: 05 November 2014

CONNECTION WITH QE: pupil 56-63

I apologise for being a little defensive, Nigel, in relation to oxymora [see W7/6-8]. I thought that maybe I had erred in producing one but reading up again about them I find that, as you say (and as dear old Oliphant told us in our youth), it is a figure of speech that juxtaposes elements that appear to be contradictory. It is not something that should be avoided at all costs because of saying something which is actually contradictory, just as the split infinitive may be used, as per discussion elsewhere on the site. I note that the great writer Tennyson in his Idylls of the King contains two oxymora in the expression "And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true." Maybe a little competition might be inaugurated as to what contributors to the site think the most interesting oxymoron or even oxymora they have seen.

2nd REPLY

NAME: Nigel Wood  

DATE: 07 November 2014

CONNECTION WITH QE: Pupil 1957-64

So pleased, James, that you approve of Tennyson, deeply unfashionable though he was a few years ago and even though he had certain doubts. I like the wonderful cascade in Maud: "faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null". Starts with a clearcut oxymoron and ends in a more debatable - or more subtle? - one. When I produce my long-awaited literary masterpiece it will have a character saying "Don't start me off on oxymorons!". Incidentally, would anyone understand me if I rudely rebuked a stater of the bl***ing obvious by saying "We're not all mora, you know."?

3rd REPLY

NAME: James (Jas) Cowen    Then & Now

DATE: 07 January 2015

CONNECTION WITH QE: pupil 56-63

You do have a good point, Nigel, about the common English in regard to the plural of moron being usually morons rather than mora. I do not know whether I have any justification for the plural of oxymoron being oxymora rather than oxymorons. I plead perhaps weakly that maybe my classical education at QEs biased me in favour of the former. However I yield on the point and will revert to the more likely English custom of it being oxymorons for the future, should the need arise. I do still call Vienna Vienna rather than Wien and Austria is still Austria.

4th REPLY

NAME: Nigel Wood  

DATE: 09 January 2015

CONNECTION WITH QE: Pupil 1957-64

Regarding foreign plurals for imported words I'm a bag of contradictions. I prefer pendulums to pendula and curriculums to curricula (and morons to mora!) but can cope with either. More strongly, though, I prefer bacteria to bacteriums and phenomena to phenomenons. But the real problem I have is not with singulars but plurals. I just cannot be doing with 'a bacteria', 'a phenomena'. It's difficult to tease out my motives here. Is it élitism of the worst sort? I'm a member of a club of those well-educated enough to understand this arcane stuff and I resent the rise (and the rise is very rapid) of the 'wrong' word, rendering my carefully acquired superiority of language an obsolete curiosity? Or do I genuinely care about the language being impoverished (for example by singular and plural bacteria being indistinguishable)? Actually I find a less high-principled reason more cogent: I don't like to think of us Brits being unable to do things that I bet a lot of continentals have been taught to do (i.e. distinguish bacteria from bacterium etc). Rant over.

5th REPLY

NAME: Stephen Giles  

DATE: 11 January 2015

CONNECTION WITH QE: inmate 1957-64

David Attenborough does a wonderful line in what I call 'singular plurals' during his commentaries for wild life programmes - for instance he would say "wildebeest" when referring to thousands of wildebeests moving accross the landscape!

6th REPLY

NAME: Nick Dean   

DATE: 11 January 2015

CONNECTION WITH QE: Pupil 1964-71

I tend to be a bit of a fusspot about plurals. I'm afraid I do cringe ever so slightly when people say (for example) "a criteria", or even "this data" (though somewhere on this site I used 'data' as a singular noun myself, so common has it become!) There's an old army story about two soldiers on a training course who were asked if they had completed their experiments with their pendula. Their reply was, "Yes, sir. We are sitting on our ba doing our sa".

7th REPLY

NAME: Nigel Wood  

DATE: 11 January 2015

CONNECTION WITH QE: Pupil 1957-64

Listening to Radio 4 in the car this morning, I thought that perhaps all is not lost. I heard the comedienne and journalist Viv Groskop (big head?) using 'criterion' consistently correctly. But now I discover she was Cambridge-educated, and I suppose she hasn't been able to get all taint of privilege out of her system. She also gave us a delightfully mixed metaphor ... Speaking of Downton Abbey she said "It's a cash cow; they've got to keep it going; they've got to keep feeding the flames." [It might have been "stoking the fire".] I think my love of mixed metaphors started when, years ago, I heard someone say, again on radio 4, "The lemmings in the city are reading the tea-leaves." IKYN !

8th REPLY

NAME: Stephen Giles  

DATE: 13 January 2015

CONNECTION WITH QE: inmate 1957-64

For "upstairs" I always say "upstairn" to my wife, and for "yours" I say "yourn" (which I heard my Grandmother say!). Now I have seen "yourn" used in Flora Thompson's book of Lark Rise - which should, in my view, be compulsory reading for all school children, being a first hand snapshot of English village life in the late 19th century. "The hamlet stood on a gentle rise ..."

9th REPLY

NAME: Vic Coughtrey   Then & Now

DATE: 13 January 2015

CONNECTION WITH QE: Pupil 1954-59

The question of just how reactionary one should be as regards language is a tough one for me to answer, since I'm by nature an arch-conservative in that matter. Had it been up to people like me, the English language would have changed little since the late 18th century. However, even I lack the courage to replace many hideous modern constructions, words and usages with more elegant older ones. For example, the other day I said "They've just got back from London" when I should have liked to say "They are presently returned from London". There are, of course, constructions once perfectly acceptable that have unaccountably become ugly to our ears. "Like what I do" has long been an easy way of getting a laugh at the expense of comical numbskulls in sitcoms, yet it was good enough for Charlotte Brontë (and when you think about it, there's nothing grammatically wrong with it).

Of course, in speech and even in writing, I'm guilty of employing plenty of forms and words that are borderline cases, in the process of crossing over from no good to acceptable. However, I'm still holding out against asking a waiter "Can I get two poppadums?" Similarly, I'm not yet prefixing my answers to questions with 'So' or worse, 'Ok, so' ("Do you have an issue with your poppadums, sir?" "Ok, so they're burnt" What would Charlotte have made of that?)

10th REPLY

NAME: Nick Dean   

DATE: 14 January 2015

CONNECTION WITH QE: Pupil 1964-71

So, one modern usage I dislike especially is "meet up with" instead of "meet" (rather on a par with "at this moment in time", which is now less common than it was). And what about "in" and "on" in relation to streets? My wife often used to cite the song Chicago ("On State Street/That great street") as an example of American usage, whereas now, even in Downton Abbey, people in the UK almost invariably say "on Oxford Street", "on the King's Road", etc. As regards, "so" at the beginning of sentences, although it takes a bit of getting used to, for me it's essentially no different from "well" or even "oh" or "um". It's just a conversational device to avoid appearing too direct.

11th REPLY

NAME: Nick Dean   

DATE: 15 January 2015

CONNECTION WITH QE: Pupil 1964-71

Just heard two fairly ghastly verbs on the Radio 4 news (14/1) - "to empty podium" and "to empty chair" (in respect of possible leaders' debates). These are just the latest examples of a tendency to use nouns as verbs, a longer-standing one, which I always baulked at when I was in a position to do so, being "to agenda". And as regards 'agenda', I'm reminded of an episode of Yes, Prime Minister (the 1980s original) in which Jim Hacker says there is only one item for the Cabinet agenda, whereupon Sir Humphrey points out that, in that case, it would be 'an agendum'.

12th REPLY

NAME: Vic Coughtrey   Then & Now

DATE: 15 January 2015

CONNECTION WITH QE: Pupil 1954-59

There are, of course. some even longer-standing noun-verbs connected with meetings, such as 'to chair' and 'to minute'. The practice has long since become such an important (and admittedly strange) part of the on-going development of the English language (to sun oneself, to gun down, to bed someone, to leg it, to star, to power, to motor etc, etc) that it seems difficult to object to the further spread of it - although I do object from time to time. Proper nouns are not exempt, of course: I make liberal use of 'to hoover' and 'to google'.

13th REPLY

NAME: Stephen Giles  

DATE: 16 January 2015

CONNECTION WITH QE: inmate 1957-64

I find the use of the word 'chair' both as a verb and a neuter noun to be hideous. I have often reminded people at meetings I have attended that it is incorrect English, and that one is either a Chairman or a Chairwoman - or even 'char-lady' for one particularly arrogant female specimen!

14th REPLY

NAME: Nigel Wood  

DATE: 16 January 2015

CONNECTION WITH QE: Pupil 1957-64

A verb that I find especially annoying is 'to exit'. What's wrong, for heaven's sake, with 'to leave'? It's an interesting case, though, because - presumably - the third person singular present indicative of the latin verb was appropriated a long time ago for use as an English noun (as in fire exit etc.), so there's a certain wry justice in its increasing popularity as a verb in British English. I remember Mr Finnett giving our fourth form (?) latin set, as some sort of stocking-filler, a short list of particular parts of latin verbs and nouns that had gone straight into English with person/tense/case endings intact. 'Exit' might have been one of them.

It's all Shakespeare's fault (As You Like it, Act II Scene vii) that it ever became a noun in the first place.

15th    REPLY

NAME: James (Jas) Cowen    Then & Now

DATE: 19 January 2015

CONNECTION WITH QE: pupil 56-63

I find these discussions of the changed use of various words in regard to both nouns and verbs very interesting but I am surprised somewhat at the vehemence of thoughts and words expressed by some. It does show I suppose how we QE boys have received such a strong education on literacy matters. I am equally perturbed how little emotion is expressed so far on other subjects such as football, gardening etc. Maybe that will come in later replies. In regard to my own recent observations I am surprised to see the eating place recently installed at the new Andover Bus Station with the description "Caffè" (note the grave accent rather than the acute accent in "café"). I have not researched further yet but is that the Italian way to go along with "Mocca"? If so that is a real sign of change in the use of foreign language on the street nowadays compared to my youth.

16th REPLY

NAME: Martyn Day   Then & Now

DATE: 19 January 2015

CONNECTION WITH QE: Inmate 1956-63

I must admit that I do get steamed up by all this wittering on about what is 'good' and 'bad' English and the like. When it comes to this kind of discussion I'm firmly on the side of Eric Partridge, the lexicographer and authority on slang, catchphrases and what he called 'the underside of language'. He once commented "Slang is when English rolls up its sleeves and gets to work!" Hear! Hear!

17th REPLY

NAME: Vic Coughtrey   Then & Now

DATE: 19 January 2015

CONNECTION WITH QE: Pupil 1954-59

Martyn, I don't think anyone here has (so far) taken issue with slang, catchphrases or, for that matter, dialect. Slang is part of a linguistic register - the rolled-up-sleeves register, indeed. There is no reason why that register, or any other, such as legalese, journalese, politico-speak or the gushing of sports writers should be ungrammatical, although getting your registers mixed up can sound a bit weird: "I'm banging you up in chokey for the duration, for topping the old trouble and strife, you low-life scumbag" would no doubt raise an eyebrow or two at the Old Bailey, perfectly grammatical though it be.

As to why some of us get a little worked-up about errors (while doubtless committing a few ourselves} - well, I'll leave that to others to answer: it's not easy!

18th REPLY

NAME: Nigel Wood  

DATE: 20 January 2015

CONNECTION WITH QE: Pupil 1957-64

Martyn: Relax! I, for one, claim to be expressing nothing but personal taste in English usage. Indeed, in reply 4, I took quite a critical look at my reasons for holding the opinions I do. I'm not keen, speaking for myself, on the americanisation of British English, nor on the flouting of well-established rules and usages for no good reason. As for slang, I'm rather fond of it, especially if it's ingenious or memorable. I'm sorry, for example, that it's some time since I heard anyone talk of "giving the old Harvey Smith" . 'To google' (like 'to hoover') seems to me an excellent coinage, mainly because there's no single-word equivalent. So l, too, approve of Eric Partridge on slang. But bear in mind that Partridge's most famous book, Usage and Abusage is subtitled A Guide to Good English,, so HE was clearly not afraid to put forward definite views!

19th REPLY

NAME: James (Jas) Cowen    Then & Now

DATE: 20 January 2015

CONNECTION WITH QE: pupil 56-63

You certainly take me back many years there, Vic [reply 17], in regard to the raising of an eyebrow or two at the Old Bailey with the expressions given. I remember one of my law tutors at City of Westminster college saying if caught in a crime it is best to say in your statement: "It's a clean cop, governor. You got me bang to rights." Such an archaic response would sound ridiculous if quoted in court and may get you off for false testimony being given by the police. I have in fact actually appeared at the Old Bailey as a prosecution witness in a case (HM Customs and Excise v Oberoi), sometime in the 1980s. That was an interesting experience but that is another story !!!

20th REPLY

NAME: Nick Dean   

DATE: 22 January 2015

CONNECTION WITH QE: Pupil 1964-71

One of the great things about English - and a measure of its success - is that you (one) can sound off about its various manifestations in the knowledge that large numbers of people won't take the blindest bit of notice. That said, I was reminded of one common, but slightly odd, formulation on one of Mr Portillo's new railway journeys - "We are arriving into Grantham station". "We are arriving at" or "we are coming into", but "arriving into"? I suppose as one hears it all the time, it must be OK.