{"id":5225,"date":"2017-07-28T15:22:22","date_gmt":"2017-07-28T13:22:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=5225"},"modified":"2017-07-28T15:25:30","modified_gmt":"2017-07-28T13:25:30","slug":"grammatical-nonsense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/5225\/","title":{"rendered":"Grammatical Nonsense"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If there&#8217;s one thing more irritating than grammar snobs, it&#8217;s counter-snobs who spout nonsense that&#8217;s equally puerile. For example:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">As <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/OliverKamm\">@OliverKamm<\/a> rightly points out in his superb book &#8216;Accidence Will Happen&#8217;,if its meaning is clear,it is good English.English is not Latin <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/Y141rcbAEj\">https:\/\/t.co\/Y141rcbAEj<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Peter Hitchens (@ClarkeMicah) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ClarkeMicah\/status\/890881268648484864\">July 28, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve not read the book in question, but I&#8217;ve seen the sentiments echoed a number of times on Twitter: if something is understandable it is therefore correct, especially so if lots of people speak or write in this way.<\/p>\n<p>One of the things I noticed when learning Russian is how easily you can get by without articles, i.e &#8220;a&#8221; and &#8220;the&#8221;. Russian doesn&#8217;t have them and, seemingly, doesn&#8217;t need them. When Russians speak English they often get confused by the articles and leave them out altogether, sounding like the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Compare_the_Meerkat\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">meerkats<\/a> on Compare the Market adverts:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">&#8220;I sit at table, ashtray is full, I use cup instead and drink beer straight from bottle. When bottle is finished I go to toilet.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>If Oliver Kamm&#8217;s logic is consistent, this ought to be correct English: it is perfectly understandable. But according to Hitchens this isn&#8217;t the case because:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">As I said, no English person would ever write or say that. Only someone whose first language was not English. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/LvPOI0E0zT\">https:\/\/t.co\/LvPOI0E0zT<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Peter Hitchens (@ClarkeMicah) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ClarkeMicah\/status\/890906967832768512\">July 28, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Apparently, the correctness of English depends on who is saying it. But read the sentence in Russian-English in a Yorkshire accent and you&#8217;re not far off native English. Native English varies wildly, and includes Indian. If we&#8217;re to assume that <em>&#8220;if its meaning is clear, it is good English&#8221;<\/em>, then the concept of good English is basically meaningless: I can understand English when spoken with a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2635\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">10% accuracy<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s amusing is the people who push this sort of thing are the types who usually boast they know additional languages (almost always a Latin-based European one, though: it&#8217;s never Turkish or Korean). These pompous arses wouldn&#8217;t dare suggest that one could say <em>la chat<\/em>, but they think <a href=\"https:\/\/sayspod.wordpress.com\/2014\/02\/17\/infer-vs-imply\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8220;implies&#8221; is the same as &#8220;infers&#8221;<\/a> because the mistake is made often and appeared in ancient literature. Perhaps no French speaker says <em>la chat<\/em>, but plenty of Russian speakers abandon the genders and say <em>xoroshiy pogoda<\/em>, usually Central Asians. Thankfully Russians, sensible folk, don&#8217;t write books saying it&#8217;s correct and encouraging it.<\/p>\n<p>The whole thing is a sort of reverse-snobbery, whereby posh Oxbridge types in London embrace the quirks of the masses while speaking with a plum in their throat themselves. For all the &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetimes.co.uk\/article\/oliver-kamm-the-pedant-rfng3k78c\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">you decide what words mean<\/a>&#8221; nonsense peddled by Kamm, you can be sure anyone following his advice when applying for a job alongside him at <em>The Times<\/em> wouldn&#8217;t get very far, and he&#8217;d never write in such a manner himself. But then, I&#8217;ve <a href=\"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=4835\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">written<\/a> about the quality of his professional advice before.<\/p>\n<p>A cynic might suggest they&#8217;re deliberately dishing out poor advice to protect their own cushy positions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If there&#8217;s one thing more irritating than grammar snobs, it&#8217;s counter-snobs who spout nonsense that&#8217;s equally puerile. For example: As @OliverKamm rightly points out in his superb book &#8216;Accidence Will Happen&#8217;,if its meaning is clear,it is good English.English is not &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/5225\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[72],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5225"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5225"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5227,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5225\/revisions\/5227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}