Do you rue the loss of February?
Has the Library been buried?
Has the Library been buried?
American English is one of the fastest changing languages in the world. Unlike French, with its Academie, or British English, with its prestigious universities of Oxford and Cambridge, US English has no official organization that decides what "proper" English should be.
The closest thing to an arbiter of language in the US is national network and cable news. When Murrow, Cronkite or Brokaw spoke, they gave a level of authority to what was considered the "best form" of American English.
But, with the loss of these national Titans, and with the proliferation of 24-hours-a-day cable news and its ever-changing faces, there is no longer any nationally recognized paragon of "prescriptive English" - as opposed to "descriptive English" - that we can reliably refer to.
So, we come to the questions of February and the library.
February is almost everywhere now pronounced as "feb-YOU-ary" rather than "feb-RU-ary."
Likewise, now if you wish to borrow a book, you more often say you are going the the "li-BURY" rather than to the "lib-RARE-y."
It is not just in pronunciation, however, that US English as become less prescriptive. For many years i taught English to non-native speakers - both as a foreign language overseas, as well as a second language in the United States.
One of the most important lessons was on the distinction between "lie" and "lay," between "rise" and "raise," and between "sit" and "set."
"The papers lie on the table," vs. "I lay the papers on the table."
"I rise every morning," vs. "I raise my head every morning."
"The books sit on the shelf," vs. "I set the books on the shelf."
This distinction between "intransitive" and "transitive" verbs is only one area in which grammar keeps a distinction between words, while practice blurs the difference.
The distinction between "I" and "me" and between "he" and "him" or "she" and "her" also seems to have vanished in public usage, and the "subject" and "object" pronouns have been melded into complete interchangeability.
"He and I went," vs. what is often heard, "Him and me went."
"They will bring her and me," vs. what is heard, "Them will bring her and I."
One more: there is the sticky issue of using "a little" or "a few."
"there was a little rain," and "There were a few drops of rain."
When I was a child, my father was a stickler for "proper" English usage. I remember, at the age of about five, hearing him lecturing on the distinction between "I did," and "I have done."
He was a strong advocate of "prescriptive" English: the exact adherence to the "rules." He often explained that his interest in the rules of language was no doubt due to his having been brought up in an age (the early 1900s) when schools routinely taught Latin. As Latin was considered a "dead language," its rules were immutable, and were thus applied to English grammar as an ideal of what language should be.
Due to the current shift in US English usage, it is often only university students who are now expected to follow English language rules when they suddenly become aware of them at the time they are given copies of either Kate Turabian or the "Chicago Manual of Style" to prepare their theses or dissertations.
It is interesting to note that, as English is now becoming (if it has not already become) the principal language of international communication, it is this very flexibility that makes it so adaptive and so applicable across cultures and fields of study or endeavor.
The old saying that, "The Americans and the British are divided by a common language," is not only truer now that it ever has been, but the saying is perhaps the best future for this very assimilative, adaptive, and flexible language.
So whatever you say is the shortest month, or wherever you go to borrow your books, you can be sure that whomever you speak with (oops! I almost wrote "whoever") will still understand - although not always approve of - what you are saying.
The closest thing to an arbiter of language in the US is national network and cable news. When Murrow, Cronkite or Brokaw spoke, they gave a level of authority to what was considered the "best form" of American English.
But, with the loss of these national Titans, and with the proliferation of 24-hours-a-day cable news and its ever-changing faces, there is no longer any nationally recognized paragon of "prescriptive English" - as opposed to "descriptive English" - that we can reliably refer to.
So, we come to the questions of February and the library.
February is almost everywhere now pronounced as "feb-YOU-ary" rather than "feb-RU-ary."
Likewise, now if you wish to borrow a book, you more often say you are going the the "li-BURY" rather than to the "lib-RARE-y."
It is not just in pronunciation, however, that US English as become less prescriptive. For many years i taught English to non-native speakers - both as a foreign language overseas, as well as a second language in the United States.
One of the most important lessons was on the distinction between "lie" and "lay," between "rise" and "raise," and between "sit" and "set."
"The papers lie on the table," vs. "I lay the papers on the table."
"I rise every morning," vs. "I raise my head every morning."
"The books sit on the shelf," vs. "I set the books on the shelf."
This distinction between "intransitive" and "transitive" verbs is only one area in which grammar keeps a distinction between words, while practice blurs the difference.
The distinction between "I" and "me" and between "he" and "him" or "she" and "her" also seems to have vanished in public usage, and the "subject" and "object" pronouns have been melded into complete interchangeability.
"He and I went," vs. what is often heard, "Him and me went."
"They will bring her and me," vs. what is heard, "Them will bring her and I."
One more: there is the sticky issue of using "a little" or "a few."
"there was a little rain," and "There were a few drops of rain."
When I was a child, my father was a stickler for "proper" English usage. I remember, at the age of about five, hearing him lecturing on the distinction between "I did," and "I have done."
He was a strong advocate of "prescriptive" English: the exact adherence to the "rules." He often explained that his interest in the rules of language was no doubt due to his having been brought up in an age (the early 1900s) when schools routinely taught Latin. As Latin was considered a "dead language," its rules were immutable, and were thus applied to English grammar as an ideal of what language should be.
Due to the current shift in US English usage, it is often only university students who are now expected to follow English language rules when they suddenly become aware of them at the time they are given copies of either Kate Turabian or the "Chicago Manual of Style" to prepare their theses or dissertations.
It is interesting to note that, as English is now becoming (if it has not already become) the principal language of international communication, it is this very flexibility that makes it so adaptive and so applicable across cultures and fields of study or endeavor.
The old saying that, "The Americans and the British are divided by a common language," is not only truer now that it ever has been, but the saying is perhaps the best future for this very assimilative, adaptive, and flexible language.
So whatever you say is the shortest month, or wherever you go to borrow your books, you can be sure that whomever you speak with (oops! I almost wrote "whoever") will still understand - although not always approve of - what you are saying.
