Grammar that makes you cringe

[Peter]

Decided by whom?!  What's "euphonic" to someone might not be to someone else.  What's right to someone (e.g. your English teachers) might be wrong to someone else.  In other news, have you got all the articles you need for Arrivee?

Peter

[Cudzoziemiec]

Singers should have more than one voice each.

[Peter]

A singer should both have more than one voices......!

[T42]

Goes to show that grammar should be decided case by case, rather than by pedantic adherence to a rule.

Actually, it doesn't.  Remove the adjective, which is a matter of opinion, and what's left?

[Jakob W]

Language as she is spoke?

[ian]

Goes to show that grammar should be decided case by case, rather than by pedantic adherence to a rule.

Actually, it doesn't.  Remove the adjective, which is a matter of opinion, and what's left?

Language that people understand and appreciate, rather than a clunky set of rules that most don't?

[hubner]

Prescriptive vs descriptive.

[Wowbagger]

Goes to show that grammar should be decided case by case, rather than by pedantic adherence to a rule.

Oi! I earned a pretty decent living as a pedant, I'll have you know, applying rules to small people! 

[Wowbagger]

Anyway, I stumbled in here because I'm fed up seeing such abortions as "singers damaging their voice".  Voices, you egregious dimwits. 

We've discussed this one before...

What I was taught is that since each singer has only one voice, the singular is correct.

It's arguable either way.

ISTR that you and I discussed this very point some time ago, but I cannot remember the nouns in question now.

[T42]

In the end, I reckon that if two argue about grammar and both can produce examples to support them, then there is a basic rule governing all cases that neither of them knows.

[hellymedic]

Yet constructions such as "their voice was damaged" are distinctly queer.

The GLBTQ community uses 'their' as a singular possessive pronoun though...

[T42]

That's not grammar, that's politics.

[Cudzoziemiec]

It's the influence of politics on grammar. And vice versa.

[Jakob W]

'They' as a singular pronoun has *centuries* of previous usage as a precedent. It's weird that people seem to dislike it so much, especially as an unambiguous non-gender-specific singular pronoun makes for a useful distinction in practice.

[phantasmagoriana]

Verbing the nouns to potential students at open day yesterday: https://twitter.com/UofGLEADSLearn/status/902852339245174784

 

[Cudzoziemiec]

We need a specific name for verbing nouns, like we have gerund for nouning verbs.

[CrinklyLion]

Meanwhile, an English FB friend of Mrs T42 asked her the other day what an adverb was, because she had to learn Spanish and had never been taught any grammar at school.  WTF do they learn at school these days? Zen defecation?*

Don't go there.  My youngest was set a target in Y3 (at the age of 7) to use fronted adverbials in his writing.  The teaching of SPAG these days would bring joy to the harshest pedant... it's a shame that it crushes the joy out of writing.

Of course, in those days I clearly remember a lesson in my first year at secondary school when we were suppposed to separate a list of words into nouns, verbs and adjectives.  When I put my hand up to point out that one of the words was none of the above my teacher said it must be, then came to look when I said that it really wasn't because it was like an adjective for verbs and we'd been learning that adjectives described nouns.  That is how my English class learned what an adverb was.

Only three of my (top set) GCSE class could identify the grammatical error in Henry Reed's line "You can do it quite easy if you have any strength in your thumb" when we were studying war poetry.  Of those three, two were confident that to be grammatically (rather that poetically) correct the word needed was 'easily'.  Of those two, only I knew that this was becasue easy is not an adverb...

[Kim]

Yeah, it's a generational thing.  I think I learned everything I know about grammar from, in order:
- My mum
- Foreign languages (at which I am shit)
- Interactive fiction parsers (ditto)
- Fuddy-duddy teachers (often of subjects other than English^[1]) going off-syllabus to improve people's basic writing skills

The pendulum has since swung in the other direction, so we've got teachers (of my clueless generation) inflicting voodoo grammar on kids who are expected to know about fronted adverbials and such.

Still, at least they finally got the right idea about Computer Science.


_{[1] In my day, this was divided into two subjects:  English, which was about metaphysical imagery and rhythmic devices counterpointing the surrealism of the underlying metaphor and such, and English Literature which was exactly the same sort of bollocks, except you knew what the books were going to be in advance for ease of rote-learning the answers.}

[Tim Hall]

Only three of my (top set) GCSE class could identify the grammatical error in Henry Reed's line "You can do it quite easy if you have any strength in your thumb" when we were studying war poetry.  Of those three, two were confident that to be grammatically (rather that poetically) correct the word needed was 'easily'.  Of those two, only I knew that this was becasue easy is not an adverb...

This reminds me of where Richard Feynman talks about bird watching. <fx:tappity tap>

The next Monday, when the fathers were all back at work, we kids were playing in a field. One kid says to me, “See that bird? What kind of bird is that?” I said, “I haven’t the slightest idea what kind of a bird it is.” He says, “It’s a brown-throated thrush. Your father doesn’t teach you anything!” But it was the opposite. He had already taught me: “See that bird?” he says. “It’s a Spencer’s warbler.” (I knew he didn’t know the real name.) “Well, in Italian, it’s a Chutto Lapittida. In Portuguese, it’s a Bom da Peida. In Chinese, it’s a Chung-long-tah, and in Japanese, it’s a Katano Tekeda. You can know the name of that bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. You’ll only know about humans in different places, and what they call the bird. So let’s look at the bird and see what it’s doing—that’s what counts.”

Or to put it another way, The Naming of Parts is one of my favourite poems. The best words in the best order.

[T42]

'They' as a singular pronoun has *centuries* of previous usage as a precedent. It's weird that people seem to dislike it so much, especially as an unambiguous non-gender-specific singular pronoun makes for a useful distinction in practice.

It's been in used for centuries as a colloquialism.  In formal use it still looks as if it has wandered into a wedding reception wearing unmatched gumboots.  I don't much mind it, though, as long as the rest of the text is consistent.  Sentences that begin with "a person" and "their" only to end with "him" and "his" make me unbutton the flap of my holster.  And it's bloody stupid when it's under the photo of what is patently a bloke. Or must the genitals be in view?

[citoyen]

Why the fuck are kids being taught fronted adverbials anyway? Do the educational authorities want to make them all sound like Yoda?

[T42]

Meanwhile, an English FB friend of Mrs T42 asked her the other day what an adverb was, because she had to learn Spanish and had never been taught any grammar at school.  WTF do they learn at school these days? Zen defecation?*

Don't go there.  My youngest was set a target in Y3 (at the age of 7) to use fronted adverbials in his writing.  The teaching of SPAG these days would bring joy to the harshest pedant... it's a shame that it crushes the joy out of writing.

Of course, in those days I clearly remember a lesson in my first year at secondary school when we were suppposed to separate a list of words into nouns, verbs and adjectives.  When I put my hand up to point out that one of the words was none of the above my teacher said it must be, then came to look when I said that it really wasn't because it was like an adjective for verbs and we'd been learning that adjectives described nouns.  That is how my English class learned what an adverb was.

Only three of my (top set) GCSE class could identify the grammatical error in Henry Reed's line "You can do it quite easy if you have any strength in your thumb" when we were studying war poetry.  Of those three, two were confident that to be grammatically (rather that poetically) correct the word needed was 'easily'.  Of those two, only I knew that this was becasue easy is not an adverb...

Aye, but the error was necessary to put across his instructor sergeant's level of education.  Take it easily.

WRT adverbs in general, I have an idea that their decline is due to mass German emigration to America in the 19th century.  German adverbs and adjectives are identical, and mature folk learning English for the first time would have trouble remembering the distinction.  Leaving off the -ly doesn't distort the meaning, so you could achieve a usable level of comprehensibility by ignoring it.

[hellymedic]

Why the fuck are kids being taught fronted adverbials anyway? Do the educational authorities want to make them all sound like Yoda?

Cos SATs, targets and League Tables or sumpfink.

I dozen kno wot a fronted adverbial is and I pretend to be literate.

(I believe this to be part of some monetarist ploy to commoditise 'education' but that's a tad POBI.)
 

[citoyen]

I dozen kno wot a fronted adverbial is and I pretend to be literate.

'Fronted' in this context just means 'moved to the front of the sentence'.

(Adverbs usually come after the verb in English, but you might move them to the front of the sentence for emphasis or just to vary your sentence structure to make it more interesting. Seems an elaborate waste of time teaching this to 9-10 year olds.)

[CrinklyLion]

Why the fuck are kids being taught fronted adverbials anyway? Do the educational authorities want to make them all sound like Yoda?

Because Gove?

I did say to not go there, didn't I... the primary curriculum and SPAG test has a tendency to get me a bit soapbox-ranty... because I see teachers twisting themselves in all directions trying desparately to make this shit into something interesting, and pupils getting the joy of words sucked out of them despite the very best efforts of those teachers because of the systems they are working within.  And my own SmallestCub is right in the middle of all that nonsense.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/may/09/fronted-adverbials-sats-grammar-test-primary

And you really don't want to get me started on the comma/semi-colon SNAFU
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/jul/10/primary-school-children-lose-marks-in-sats-tests-for-mis-shaped-commas

Of course, the privately educated kids in fee paying schools don't have to put up with all that nonsense.

ETA
It's not 9-10 year olds that get the fronted adverbial shite, it is the 7-8 year olds.  By Year 5/6 it is all about your sentence and clause types...