Ransonwrites
Eternal factotum
Polemic... rant, call it what you will. It's been bugging me for some time and it's past time I vented it so I can get on with life. So here goes.
I pay attention to language, how it's used, how it flows, how both word choice, and peculiarities of grammar and punctuation, can be used to compose linguistic music, to imply meaning and create subtexts within a passage of prose that otherwise makes no direct reference to them. This is a great strength of language and a great boon to those who can master it.
Thus, I get very annoyed when I hear stupid and wilfully ignorant distortions of spoken English from people who are intelligent enough, and sufficiently educated, to know better.
This isn't simply a case of things like pronouncing hospital with a 'k' in it: the blame here lies squarely with one's parents for inculcating their child from an early age to mispronounce a word. Such bad habits are almost impossible to defeat in later life and I'm grateful for an upbringing that didn't saddle me with such a burden. My own parents never indulged in baby speak, for example. Hospital was always pronounced correctly. But don't get the idea they were some sort of education fascists! They used whimsical language, too. They simply used proper language. Doggy, for instance, contains the correct form 'dog' and as an adult I can make the choice to drop the 'gy'. This is not so with "hospikul".
But this is not my chief grievance. I am incensed by two very common and recent examples, in particular. These are the words 'impact' and 'lay'.
Rant Number 1.
I am gut sick of hearing 'impact on' all day every day. Impact on. What does this mean?
Well, the speaker is trying to say something that would otherwise involved the use of the word 'affect' or 'effect' but for some reason that I cannot fathom, fails to choose between either of these perfectly good words and, instead, finds a completely inappropriate word and slams it into their sentence as if hammering a square peg into a round hole.
But where is the confusion that led to this?
Affect is a verb meaning 'make a difference to'.
Effect is a noun meaning 'a result' or a verb meaning 'to bring about a result'.
But if that's too much to easily remember (and I sympathise, honestly: I use grammar but hate studying it) then try this useful mnemonic:
The action is affect; the end result is effect
I have underlined 'a' and 'e' to illustrate how the mnemonic also contains clues to remembering it, correctly.
So why oh why... oh why... do I have to listen to the constant use of 'impact on' all day?
Rant Number 2.
Why do people say lay when they mean lie?
For example, "I will lay down and look under it." When uttered by a native english speaker who has completed their formal education, this can only be a gross and inexcusable misuse of the past participle in place of the correct present tense, "lie".
"I will lie down and look under it."
Simples! But for some reason it is now taboo to use the word "lie" to mean anything other than a falsehood, and I can't get my head around it.
I can just about understand some confusion when it comes to the present continuous forms: lies and lying. I can see that some people would question whether the spelling of lying is correct as it isn't a very intuitive spelling. But I don't think this excuses the wholesale abandonment of "lie" and the resulting grammatical mess it results in.
And why does all this matter?
English, used well, is a beautiful and poetic language full of deep meaning and clever subtleties. But if we start 'dumbing it down' because we, as speakers of it, can't be bothered to remember (or to go and look up) the correct forms we will all be impoverished - those who speak will be unable to give voice to their thoughts accurately, and those who listen will be unable to hear them.
Mike's Law of Accurate Language #1:
The dumbing down of language is directly proportional to the intellectual diminution of the speakers of that language.
But before you accuse me of being a language Nazi and of ignoring the fact that language evolves, and that English is the most mongrel language of them all, let me first say that no, I am not and I do not. Then let me point out my use of 'dumbing down' in the paragraph, above.
When 'dumbing down' first came into being I was deeply uncertain of its merit, and categorised it alongside 'sex it up' as a journalistic buzz phrase that would probably die out in short order (opps... sorry... in keeping with the new rules of language I should have said "... would probably day out in short order.")
But it didn't die out. And now I appreciate it because it brings new meaning. I cannot simply substitute 'dumbing down' with 'simplified' or even 'over-simplification' because these last two words don't have the same meaning. Dumbing down provides a new dimension that 'simplified' doesn't have: it suggests an agenda on behalf of those accused of dumbing a thing down, and this is entirely in keeping with 'dumbing down's origins as a political and journalistic phrase.
Supplanting perfectly good words like affect/effect with 'impact on' adds nothing at all, and only weakens 'impact' in it's own right.
Playing silly games with tenses because the speaker is, for some inexplicable reason, reluctant to use the word 'lie' is just ridiculous and pointless and, apart from being incorrect and making the speaker look ill-educated, also destroys the poetic value of the sentence.
Here is a hasty and simplistic, yet illustrative example of the point I tried to make right at the beginning of this essay:
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
I can't say lie because of the impact on you.
Grrr...
I shall now go and have some caffeine.
I pay attention to language, how it's used, how it flows, how both word choice, and peculiarities of grammar and punctuation, can be used to compose linguistic music, to imply meaning and create subtexts within a passage of prose that otherwise makes no direct reference to them. This is a great strength of language and a great boon to those who can master it.
Thus, I get very annoyed when I hear stupid and wilfully ignorant distortions of spoken English from people who are intelligent enough, and sufficiently educated, to know better.
This isn't simply a case of things like pronouncing hospital with a 'k' in it: the blame here lies squarely with one's parents for inculcating their child from an early age to mispronounce a word. Such bad habits are almost impossible to defeat in later life and I'm grateful for an upbringing that didn't saddle me with such a burden. My own parents never indulged in baby speak, for example. Hospital was always pronounced correctly. But don't get the idea they were some sort of education fascists! They used whimsical language, too. They simply used proper language. Doggy, for instance, contains the correct form 'dog' and as an adult I can make the choice to drop the 'gy'. This is not so with "hospikul".
But this is not my chief grievance. I am incensed by two very common and recent examples, in particular. These are the words 'impact' and 'lay'.
Rant Number 1.
I am gut sick of hearing 'impact on' all day every day. Impact on. What does this mean?
Well, the speaker is trying to say something that would otherwise involved the use of the word 'affect' or 'effect' but for some reason that I cannot fathom, fails to choose between either of these perfectly good words and, instead, finds a completely inappropriate word and slams it into their sentence as if hammering a square peg into a round hole.
But where is the confusion that led to this?
Affect is a verb meaning 'make a difference to'.
Effect is a noun meaning 'a result' or a verb meaning 'to bring about a result'.
But if that's too much to easily remember (and I sympathise, honestly: I use grammar but hate studying it) then try this useful mnemonic:
The action is affect; the end result is effect
I have underlined 'a' and 'e' to illustrate how the mnemonic also contains clues to remembering it, correctly.
So why oh why... oh why... do I have to listen to the constant use of 'impact on' all day?
Rant Number 2.
Why do people say lay when they mean lie?
For example, "I will lay down and look under it." When uttered by a native english speaker who has completed their formal education, this can only be a gross and inexcusable misuse of the past participle in place of the correct present tense, "lie".
"I will lie down and look under it."
Simples! But for some reason it is now taboo to use the word "lie" to mean anything other than a falsehood, and I can't get my head around it.
I can just about understand some confusion when it comes to the present continuous forms: lies and lying. I can see that some people would question whether the spelling of lying is correct as it isn't a very intuitive spelling. But I don't think this excuses the wholesale abandonment of "lie" and the resulting grammatical mess it results in.
And why does all this matter?
English, used well, is a beautiful and poetic language full of deep meaning and clever subtleties. But if we start 'dumbing it down' because we, as speakers of it, can't be bothered to remember (or to go and look up) the correct forms we will all be impoverished - those who speak will be unable to give voice to their thoughts accurately, and those who listen will be unable to hear them.
Mike's Law of Accurate Language #1:
The dumbing down of language is directly proportional to the intellectual diminution of the speakers of that language.
But before you accuse me of being a language Nazi and of ignoring the fact that language evolves, and that English is the most mongrel language of them all, let me first say that no, I am not and I do not. Then let me point out my use of 'dumbing down' in the paragraph, above.
When 'dumbing down' first came into being I was deeply uncertain of its merit, and categorised it alongside 'sex it up' as a journalistic buzz phrase that would probably die out in short order (opps... sorry... in keeping with the new rules of language I should have said "... would probably day out in short order.")
But it didn't die out. And now I appreciate it because it brings new meaning. I cannot simply substitute 'dumbing down' with 'simplified' or even 'over-simplification' because these last two words don't have the same meaning. Dumbing down provides a new dimension that 'simplified' doesn't have: it suggests an agenda on behalf of those accused of dumbing a thing down, and this is entirely in keeping with 'dumbing down's origins as a political and journalistic phrase.
Supplanting perfectly good words like affect/effect with 'impact on' adds nothing at all, and only weakens 'impact' in it's own right.
Playing silly games with tenses because the speaker is, for some inexplicable reason, reluctant to use the word 'lie' is just ridiculous and pointless and, apart from being incorrect and making the speaker look ill-educated, also destroys the poetic value of the sentence.
Here is a hasty and simplistic, yet illustrative example of the point I tried to make right at the beginning of this essay:
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
I can't say lie because of the impact on you.
Grrr...
I shall now go and have some caffeine.
