English Is Not Normal
Please note, before you get your knickers in a twist, that the article is about English (the language), not The English (the people), in which case the verb would have had to be Are and not Is.
I should get extra credit for using the conditional past imperfect, or whatever it's called, in the previous sentence.
I hope I am not boring you with these articles. I just am extremely geeky and nerdy when it comes to words and language.
Those of you who want to say that the nerdiness and geekiness is not confined to just words and language, please stifle yourselves at this time.
P.S. - Two hundred and forty-five years ago today, Paul Revere made a famous ride that was made even more famous than it might have been otherwise by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow with such words as "Listen, my children, and you shall hear / Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere; / On the eighteenth of April in Seventy-five, / Hardly a man is now alive / Who remembers that famous day and year." and also "One if by land and two if by sea, / And I on the opposite shore will be, / Ready to ride and spread the alarm / To every Middlesex village and farm"....
I thought you would want to know.
I love that photo of your good self and Mrs Brague during a stressful time several years ago. I read the interesting language article that nicely sums up the historical complexities of this organic language. However, I did not like the author's surname. "McWhorter" suggests a frequenter of whorehouses.
ReplyDeleteYorkshire Pudding, I do not know whether your final sentence is true or just another attempt at humour from your warped but creative mind. On the outside chance that you were being serious, I would suggest rather that "McWhorter" does not suggest a frequenter of whorehouses, it suggests the son of a frequenter of whorehouses.
ReplyDeleteInteresting...and I went down a rabbit hole with Yan,tan,tethera.
ReplyDeleteHope you and the Mrs. are doing well.
Kathy, not being as much of an Anglophile as I like to think I am, I had no idea what you were talking about with yan, tan, tethera. So I looked it up in good old wikipedia and ended up going down a few rabbit holes myself!
ReplyDelete