OK, I Give!

St. SebastianYeah, that’s the way it is with me. Not one to be a martyr in a lost cause, I give up, already.

See, you don’t know me, but I am one of those people–one of those really disgusting people, apparently–who knows all the words and all the grammar and usage rules, but what’s the use, really? I mean, none of it seems to do anyone any good anymore, does it? It’s certainly nothing to boast about in today’s cultural milieu. One should, rather, hang one’s head in shame for knowing all those words and all those rules. Sign of a misspent youth and all that, what?

“Hey, wait,” you say. “You cocky jerk, isn’t it ‘all of the words’ and ‘all of the rules'”? Not really. Nope. And what about knows? Surely, people know things, don’t they? Well, they do, but one person knows things. This one confuses M$ Word’s grammar checker, too, so give yourself a pass. Score one for you if you marked the cliche near the end there, however.

The fact is, though, I’m tired. Having fought the good fight in an English classroom for a quarter century, I can say rather authoritatively that the fight already is over and the other side has won. The barbarians are at the gates, and we’re trapped inside the walls living in our own filth. We’re obviously correct in everything we say or write, but that doesn’t make the air smell any better in here, does it?

But, as my in-laws from Long Island say, “wadda-ya gonna do?” The forces acting to change language are just too strong. Resistance is futile, or perhaps I should say, feudal. I am going to go ahead and be ass-immolated.

And happily so. In a freeing epiphany, I have become aware that my puny struggle against the cultural abyss toward which our language seems to be slipping is just not a battle worth fighting, nor does it have any hope of success. English simply has too many ways to go wrong, and in a world in which no one reads and no one really cares about the niceties of language, trying even to slow the slippage is just a waste of time.

And yet, reflexively, as you see above, I keep my infinitives fastidiously unsplit. Old habits die hard, but really, I plan to slip into a relaxed, comfortable state of semi-literacy just about any time now. Really, I do. See, while there once was a time in which people actually wanted to be correct in their written and spoken expression, that time has passed. Being correct now just leads to being misunderstood and worse, being heaped with scorn for one’s efforts.

But back to my own slow arrival at satori, this transformation has occurred within a particular context. I was sitting around at home one evening and became annoyed upon hearing someone on the radio say “hone in” when anyone with half a brain knows the phrase is “home in” as it has been since at least the middle of the last century (references here and here). The frustration comes from knowing that the vast majority of the people who say it don’t even know what the word hone means; they simply say it because the misuse of the term has such currency in the circles in which they, um, circulate. These are media, marketing, or sales types, mostly–people who should know better but who describe their cars or homes as “immaculent” (sic) without a trace of irony.

Somehow, these people have become the arbiters of linguistic correctness, their blank stares in the face of correct usage being, as they are, enough to cow the correct into a state of regret for their sin of rectitude. You’ve seen the look, perhaps? You state something, clearly and correctly and perhaps with a certain puckish turn of phrase, only to be greeted with a look, somehow both uncomprehending and condescending at the same time. The more “polite” among these folks might struggle to find some way to “correct” you so that you won’t “embarrass yourself” with the same “mistake” at some later time. The rest just express impatience and contempt at having to share space with the hopelessly ignorant. It is their cross to bear, apparently. My sincere que lastimas go out to them. It’s the new me, remember?

I used to run into this all the time as an English teacher–all this and much more, I assure you. The task of teaching non-readers to write often led to head-snapping revelations and insights as to the workings of intelligent minds that just don’t have that much to work with, really. I mean, they try, but they don’t bring much to the effort. Imagine a superlative athlete who never saw a basketball and was suddenly thrust into a varsity game. You’d see his or her native gifts, but you’d hope the coach took him or her out pretty quickly, too. I mean, for all their native gifts, they’d be stinking the place up, you know?

Well, I don’t know how it happened exactly, but this particular phenomenon, by which so much mistaken verbiage arises, has gotten a name. OK, the name was only coined five years ago, but there is now such a thing as an “eggcorn” (see here and here). The definition has it that these eggcorns are “idiosyncratic substitution[s] of a word or phrase for a word or words that sound similar or identical in the speaker’s dialect. Characteristic of the eggcorn is that the new phrase makes sense on some level (“old-timer’s disease” for “Alzheimer’s disease”). Eggcorns often involve replacing an unfamiliar, archaic, or obscure word with a more common or modern word.” The WikiPedia definition goes on to clarify that these are not folk etymologies, false etymologies, malapropisms, or mondegreens. It turns out a group of linguists has even put together an eggcorn database for your perusal. It is worth checking out if you can stand the frustration.

No, wait. It’s not frustrating. It’s enlightening. It’s the future of the English language as we educators continue to explore and teach 21st century literacy skills. It’s all about collaboration and teamwork in the 21st century, folks. It’s no place for priggishness, believe me. That’s just off-putting, yo? “OMG, U R so wack,” if you should do such a thing.

I fear, however, that my transformation into an enlightened being is not yet complete. I still find the mispronunciation of et cetera as ek cetera particularly grating. I mean, these people see the abbreviation “etc.” and somehow, through inattention or dyslexia, transpose the abbreviation into ect., and then say it that way. That is just so wrong.

But that’s how weird and hopelessly unfit for the collaborative 21st century I am; I still recall the day my high school Latin teacher explained et cetera to the class, and I remember it as a minor revelation. Nothing I learned in school prepared me for the utterance of a colleague the other day; she said “egg-zed-er-a.” She was an experienced, veteran teacher, a person who virtually had to have graduated from some sort of institution of higher learning, and here she was rather ostentatiously enunciating “egg-zed-er-a,” leading me to know it was fully intentional on her part. I mean, how do I deal with that, Master Po? Some things are just unforgivable, even for a recently enlightened individual such as myself.