My reading, mostly online, recently turned up some revealing, often highly amusing examples of the dictum that truth is often found buried in details, that little things reveal a lot.
1. In today's New York Times, the Opinion writer Gail Collins, who is gifted at finding an amusing perspective on the daily news, writes about guns and gun control. At one point, she wonders why people "leave [guns] laying around the house." The use of laying instead of lying here seems to reflect either the fact that the editor of the Times was careless, or, more likely, that the accepted standard for this often confused word has shifted: "to lay" used to mean "to put something down" (it was followed by an object) whereas to lie meant to recline, to rest (oneself). Standards are set mainly by writers and editors of major publications like the Times, not by grammarians.
I often used to say to my doctor when he told me to "lay down" to be examined, that I will "lie down, thank you," and thereby lighten the mood with a distracting bit of English professorism. I've now abandoned noting this distinction; even the most educated people seem to ignore the difference between lie and lay; I often find people laying down on the sofa in books and articles, especially when the tone is conversational, indicating a grammatical change akin to the shift from shall (still used in England) to will or to the rare use of whom, which now sounds very formal. All of this shows, of course, that language is constantly in flux, that there are no fixed rules, only conventional standards.
2. Who knew that George Washington, father of our country, was an early cultivator of hemp (cannabis) who advised farmers in 1794 (long before it was outlawed), "make the most you can of the hemp and sow it everywhere." This comes courtesy of Jeff Kacirk's "Forgotten English," a daily compilation of arcane historical lore. His source is an 1844 Farmer's Encyclopedia, which recommends that the "fine oil" from hemp seeds is effective in expelling vermin from cabbage patches and discouraging caterpillars. I'm glad that cannabis is now legal, more or less, and that its uses are so many and varied.
Showing posts with label English grammar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label English grammar. Show all posts
Saturday, February 9, 2019
Friday, April 5, 2013
Whom you gonna call?
Just after reading an amusing Atlantic piece by Megan Garber on the decline of the pronoun whom, I saw on the sports page of the Orlando Sentinel this morning the headline: "Whom to trust--a coach or an accused robber?"
I wondered if the readers of the sports page were really so demanding and traditional in their grammatical usage as to expect "whom" in this construction since, as Garber and others have pointed out, "whom" has been slowly dying for a long time; it's been on a decline since 1826.
Will we speakers and writers of English be using who instead of whom as the object of a verb or preposition exclusively in the future? Garber and others say Yes, that it will have disappeared in 50 to 100 years because it costs readers more than it benefits them. It has become a pompous word.
The problem? Confusion over whether the word is in the subject or object slot in a sentence, as in these examples, which make "who" the correct or standard choice and "whom" the antiquated choice since, yes, grammar does change as language usage changes.
1. Jack said to his wife, whom he had just learned had been unfaithful to him with the man next door, "Go to hell." Problem: The writer thinks that "whom" is the object of "learned" when in fact it is the subject of "had been unfaithful," the "he had just learned" being parenthetical. It is easy to be confused by the grammar of such a sentence.
2. I don't believe in relying on whomever is sitting at the table. Problem: "whomever" is not the object of "on," as the writer thinks, but the subject of the verb "is sitting." Few people bother to figure such things out.
WHO has been traditionally been the personal pronoun used in the subject slot, WHOM in the object slot. Now, with "whom" being increasingly loathed and avoided, we can use "who" not just for subjects but in general--unless the effect is totally jarring.
So it's Who do you trust? and Who you gonna call?--or preferably, Who are you going to call? And, instead of "To whom am I speaking?" we can say something simpler: "Who is speaking?"
I wondered if the readers of the sports page were really so demanding and traditional in their grammatical usage as to expect "whom" in this construction since, as Garber and others have pointed out, "whom" has been slowly dying for a long time; it's been on a decline since 1826.
Will we speakers and writers of English be using who instead of whom as the object of a verb or preposition exclusively in the future? Garber and others say Yes, that it will have disappeared in 50 to 100 years because it costs readers more than it benefits them. It has become a pompous word.
The problem? Confusion over whether the word is in the subject or object slot in a sentence, as in these examples, which make "who" the correct or standard choice and "whom" the antiquated choice since, yes, grammar does change as language usage changes.
1. Jack said to his wife, whom he had just learned had been unfaithful to him with the man next door, "Go to hell." Problem: The writer thinks that "whom" is the object of "learned" when in fact it is the subject of "had been unfaithful," the "he had just learned" being parenthetical. It is easy to be confused by the grammar of such a sentence.
2. I don't believe in relying on whomever is sitting at the table. Problem: "whomever" is not the object of "on," as the writer thinks, but the subject of the verb "is sitting." Few people bother to figure such things out.
WHO has been traditionally been the personal pronoun used in the subject slot, WHOM in the object slot. Now, with "whom" being increasingly loathed and avoided, we can use "who" not just for subjects but in general--unless the effect is totally jarring.
So it's Who do you trust? and Who you gonna call?--or preferably, Who are you going to call? And, instead of "To whom am I speaking?" we can say something simpler: "Who is speaking?"
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