A Certain Age

In the early 60s my eldest brother went to a grammar school in Nottingham with an excellent reputation and which was reckoned to the best in the city. After the 11+ my sister, myself and my younger brother were all awarded council scholarships to local boys' and girls' public schools, but these were unavailable when my elder brother took his 11+ (and he is by far the cleverest of us all).

None of us remember being taught much grammar - like how to use a semi colon or anything beyond the basics.

My mother went to a small school in a Lincolnshire market town and reckoned that she had better grammar and could out-spell the lot of us put together - and she was right!

Only some of the structure of Latin applies to English, really, Mike.

A crucial difference is that Latin is what is technically known as a synthetic language, having a large variety of terminal word inflections carrying crucial information such as tense, number, person, gender, mood, voice, and case (there being six, arguably seven, cases), all of which can be a nightmare to learn but does allow for very flexible word order, whereas English is an analytic language, in which inflection plays a much smaller part (there are only two cases, for starters) and more reliance is placed on the use of things such as prepositions, articles [“the”,“a/an"] and a relatively fixed word order to clarify meaning.

One of the unfortunate ideas we’ve not yet jettisoned (and native speakers of all languages are guilty of this, as far as I can tell) is the idea that there are absolute canons of correctness that can be appealed to to establish definitively whether any particular way of saying something in our native language is right or wrong.

Such absolutism is fine when you’re dealing with a corpus language such as Latin, in which a finite body of literature is necessarily the ultimate arbiter of how we're permitted to say something in that dead language, but with living languages we're all collectively both legislators and arbiters of how our language can be used.

This doesn’t mean that in a living language anything goes (usage, ultimately, will determine whether something is generally accepted or not), but it does mean a prescriptivist outlook [“This is right/That is wrong] is on shaky ground, particularly when no allowance is made for dialectal differences that make, for example, "We was/He were" rather than "We were/He was" perfectly standard in certain parts of the country.

It’s worth remembering also that the Classical Latin we know of, being largely formal literature, is quite an artificial construct, and almost certainly doesn’t faithfully reflect the way Latin was spoken by ordinary people of the time.

Edited By Bill Phinn on 10/03/2021 17:59:35

No, you are correct - number is the subject of is in that sentence, and it's singular. 'There is a number' makes sense, whereas 'there are a number' clearly doesn't. Your second phrase does still convey the meaning which is one of the things that makes English tricky to learn, and drives the pedants crazy.

I think it all depends on whether we are looking at "number" or "items" as to whether we use "is" or "are".

There is an argument that says that "items" is the subject in that sentence. If that were the case then "numbers" just refers to the items in the same ways as we could say "some of the items", in which case the use of "are" is correct.

Just suggesting!!

A moot point. You may use the singular with a 'collective noun' e.g. "the army are launching an assault on bad grammar".

You might argue the 'number' is a collective noun for the items.

Neil

It is perfectly possible to be grammatically correct but extremely vague as regard to message.

Maybe we should resist the urge to moan at people when we have actually undersood what they were trying to say.

It is after all a question of communication.

regards Martin

Your teacher was wrong to suggest one form is right and the other is incorrect without further explanation!

Fowler's Modern English Usage has a page and a half on 'is', this is what Fowler says of the multiplication table:

Five times six is, or are, thirty? The subject of the verb is not times, but six, the meaning of the subject being 'six reckoned five times'. Before we know whether is or are is required, then, we must first decide whether six is a singular noun; the name of a quantity, or a plural adjective agreeing with a suppressed noun; does it mean 'the quantity six' or does it mean 'six things'? That question each of us can answer, perhaps, for himself, but no-one for other people; it is equally correct to say twice two is four and twice two are four. Moreover, as the two are equally correct, so they appear to be equally old; four times six was plural as long ago as 1380, and ten times two was singular in 1425.

The next section on is covers 'Confusion between auxiliary and copulative uses'. Don't bother, it's not remotely smutty, no fun at all.

I occasionally suspect most of what I was taught at school was wrong! Unkind of me: I think they did a good job in the time available by teaching simplified rules of thumb. English has too much depth and complexity to cover properly at secondary school, and the time could be spent better on maths. I feel English subtleties are mostly unnecessary in ordinary communication too. Best not to worry about them, and unwise to force dubious 'rules' on anyone else.

Adjectival order is a good example of a grammar rule we all seem to know and follow without being taught it! In English the order is applied strictly, or the sentence sounds 'wrong'. Some sources suggest 7, this one 10:

1. opinion
2. size
3. physical quality
4. shape
5. age
6. colour
7. origin
8. material
9. type
10. purpose

Therefore 'She was a woman, Scottish, black-haired, young, thin. tall and beautiful.' is completely wrong. The odd thing is we all get it right despite adjectival order not being taught at school. It suggests grammar has deeper roots than mere school taught rules. Is grammar nature or nurture?

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 10/03/2021 18:42:07

Bill Phinn expresses it very well. I am a linguist, and it is a minefield. Even Paxman allows 'different to' - but I have been quite prescriptive with my own children. When you correct someone for their grammar you lay yourself wide open to attack.

(I wrote more and checked it several times - and then it disappeared off the screen! O tempora, o computers!

Nope, more is still there.

Dave

"Hit any key when ready"

Afraid that the heaviest that I can provide is a 4 lb Club hammer.

Someone else may be able to provide a sledge hammer!

Computers are like watched kettles; they never boil (except your blood! )

Howard

Yes. My linguistics professor many years ago always said you should never correct a person's spoken English, unless you are married to them -- and want a divorce. Sound advice.

And there often is no definitive right or wrong. A lot depends on context, and whether it is spoken or written.

"There is a number of items" is technically correct. And in this instance even sounds ok. But what about "A number of items was left sitting on the table" ? Still technically correct with singular subject and verb agreement, but just sounds so wrong. "A number of items were left sitting on the table" would be far more common in everyday speech and thus has seeped into written English too.

While "a number" is technically singular, its common meaning of "some" is multiple/collective. So the sentence sounds ok to a native speaker with "a number of items were left" or "A number of tired horses were tethered to the handrail" Try saying that out loud with "was" instead of "were".

Similarly "none" is technically singular but commonly used as plural. Derived from "not one" it should be used as "None of the boys comes to school on a Monday." Sounds wrong to most native speakers these days. It's meaning is taken today as "not any" hence it is used most commonly as "None of the boys come to school on a Monday".

I spend a lot of time reading the world's best writers in English -- both classics and current Booker Prize winners and NYT best sellers etc -- and see both of the above done both ways regularly but seems the less formal "a number of items are" and "None are" formats are most common among the world's best practitioners today.

Edited By Hopper on 11/03/2021 04:12:25

Edited By Hopper on 11/03/2021 04:13:08

The one I see all the time is the term "very much", as in "I love you very much" or "It is very much the same thing", which to me (with far less experience of Grammar than the rest of the posters here I suspect) seems like two adverbs clumsily smashed together. Is it an acceptable use of English? I've always wondered.

JL . "I love you much" How much?

"Less much than the typist"

Probably wouldn't have been the answer the recipient wanted to hear !

Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, held that the word 'very' was almost always unnecessary, and should be rigorously edited out! I agree it's a noise word, and try hard not to use it. Not the law though, it's just another rule of thumb that improves readability. 'That' is also likely to be superfluous. Most of them can be ripped out without altering the meaning of a sentence.

I'd say 'I love you very much' is fine, because She Who Must be Obeyed is likely to appreciate it even though 'I love you' says it all.

Just for fun, this Reader's Digest website covers '14 Grammar Myths Your English Teacher Lied to You About'. Although written in US English the examples are also good for British English.

Roy mentions the BBC, but I think they reflect current usage rather than get it wrong. English changes continually and some of what was thought 'right' when I was a boy is no longer valid. The old BBC also made stupid mistakes. Lord Reith formed a committee of the great and good to decide how new words like Margarine and Garage should be pronounced correctly. They got most of them wrong! Unlikely today to hear people saying mar-gar-ine, or ga-ra-juh rather than garidge.

Bit upsetting really - at school you painfully learn stuff well enough to pass exams only to find in later life some of it was built on sand. Now I can't write angry letters to the Daily Mail about the foolishness of everyone under 60 without revealing my own shortcomings. It's a cruel world...

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 11/03/2021 10:29:17

Nice, was the word hated by my English teacher.

.

I shall risk calling this etymology .. ‘though there is probably a better word : **LINK**

https://youtu.be/MjnkmNyArNg

MichaelG.

.

Edit: Try to skip the advert ... it ruins the effect somewhat.

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 11/03/2021 10:45:28

I don't think that anyone has mentioned split infinitives so far. When I was at school, so to do was to incur the English teacher's wrath immediately, but nowadays there seems to be competition between reporters as to who can split the most. What are people's thoughts on this? Is a split infinitive really so bad?

It's another invented rule, from people who learnt Latin grammar and arbitrarily decided it also applied to English. Consider how tortuous sentences appear when rearranged to not split the infinitive.

Garage (pron. ga - raj) / "garridge" to rhyme with porage... Local accent may influence matters like that, so whenever we say "most people" pronounce a given word in a certain way, are we reflecting our own area?

I recall a couple of young lady friends of mine Up North (afore ye all start wondering if I'm a Hello! "celebrity"... fellow-members of my caving-club in that fair region) once arguing over whether Colne is Cohn or CoLn. Eventually I remarked that "If you two Lancashire Lasses can't agree how to pronounce your own town names, what hope has a Soft Southerner like me of getting it right?" (Reet or raaight.)

One later moved abroad as a teacher - a mutual friend said she's "teaching the Italians, Lancashire".

'

"Nice" was not nice in my primary school, either. Nor was "got" - a word almost always superfluous but also responsible for frankly ugly idioms, clichés and advertising slogans.

The wish would be compounded if written, worse still if written in what our teacher called "pig's-grease" (ball-point pens, which as we all know, ruin one's hand-writing - though mine was never good, anyway.)

'

I blame Star Trek for boldly splitting infinitives, of course; and Wall Street for forcing us all not to understand what BI and TRI -llion really mean! Whilst the world of international geology has deemed it was not the Cainozoic, but Cenozoic time - the latter, by US directive on a science invented mainly in Britain and France, reverses the meaning from Full of Life, to Devoid of Life.

'

The old Reithian rule on diction, leading to past BBC announcers' and presenters' very stilted Received Pronunciation, had a genuine reason. Those people had often to interview people for whom English was a second language, when such skill was rarer and American less the dominant language it has become. The aim was clarity of interviewer's diction to help the interviewees.

Why American the dominant language? A Briton who teaches English in a Swedish business college explained this to me. Speaking with US idioms and a generic American accent even if when representing a government that hates the USA, is from having used as examples US films and TV shows; and now of course Wikipedia and Google.

'

A friend in medical-education gave me an amusing side to it all though. Some of the howlers she reads from students are pure News Quiz - "Mrs. A--- was eliminated with a bed-pan", being among her favourites. She also recounts asking one student why he started his formal essays with "Once upon a time...". He explained English-teaching in his African country was quite basic, so he searched the local shops for English literature to help him. Unfortunately, all he could find were old stories written for children!

I wonder if any of you have heard "special English". It was (is still ?) a vocabulary of just 200 words that are enough to read the news for worldwide broadcasts on the Voice of America radio stations.