The dangers of listening to language pedants

Despite my rudimentary grasp of the language, I would caution against the emphasis that JC Wilcox places on English grammar rules.

A language is a set of highly imprecise conventions, not of mathematical equations. The conventions are fluid and fuzzy, have widely diverse forms, and keep changing. Those changes are not wrought by the expert or the pedant, but by the common users, because it is in fact they who “own” the language.

The “rulebooks” of language are more like travel guides for the benefit of visitors. The native speakers know their way around already, so rarely need to consult the guidebooks. Just as a guidebook describes a country as is and not what it “should be”, the language rulebook is also merely descriptive, never prescriptive. The map of a river can only show where the river was yesterday. It cannot instruct the river to behave itself and stick to the map today. The river will smile and flow its own way, while the map will be consigned to the waste bin.

The importance of context in speaking English cannot be overestimated. Language, after all, is a spoken medium. Even the written form, which must have evolved millennia later, is only a mechanism for transmitting the spoken form across space and time. When we read the written words, we sound them out internally. The spoken word has no spelling at all. How do we determine where the apostrophe is, or isn’t, or should be, or shouldn’t, when we hear someone speak? The answer is that we do not care, because the context gives us the meaning.

A written note that reads “bils bils r not paid” will make us shudder at the violence committed against the language. Yet the meaning is crystal clear if someone reads it out: A man named Bill hasn’t yet settled his bills. So why all the fuss over “correct” spelling? 

Americans have ruthlessly downsized many standard British spellings. Does that make “nonsense of a great language” – the words Mr Wilcox uses to describe deviations from his perception of perfect, rule-bound grammar usage?

Mr Wilcox advises students of English to stick to journalism penned before the 1960s. Maybe they should drop further back, to Shakespeare’s times, and use phrases like “the most unkindest cut of all”.

Perhaps we would do better to open our minds and cast aside the shackles of rulebooks, which should instead be left to gather dust.

Utpalendu Gupta