Another very interesting read

...at least to me, is the following article I found yesterday:

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.

Dinosaurs of the world, unite

One way to tell you’re becoming a dinosaur is when changes occur in the language and you do not keep pace with them. In fact, mes amies, you are downright determined to keep to the old (translation: correct) ways.

Dinosaurs, as we all know, eventually become extinct and no trace of them is left on planet Earth except the occasional fossil found by an enterprising paleontologist.

Which reminds me that my daughter reported this conversation with her 13-year-old son the other day on the drive home from school:

“Mama,” said the 13-year-old, “is it possible to know when a pterodactyl goes to the bathroom?”

“I have no idea,” my daughter said. “Is it?”

He replied, “No, ma’am...because the P is silent.”

Which proves that although language may change, 13-year-old boys never do.

However, language changes so slowly that no one notices what is happening until suddenly no one speaks Anglo-Saxon any more. Except J.R.R. Tolkien, of course, and he is dead.

My current pet peeve (and I hope it is occurring just in America and not throughout the entire English-speaking world) has to do with the past tense of the verb (or rather, the infinitive) to sneak.

Forty years ago the dictionary said the past tense of sneak is “sneaked”.

Twenty-five years ago the dictionary said the past tense of sneak is “sneaked non-standard snuck”.

Ten years ago the the dictionary said the past tense of sneak is “sneaked informal snuck”.

Today, dictionary.com says the past tense of sneak is “sneaked or snuck”.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

At one time, correct word usage was determined by what educated people said. Nowadays, you don’t have to be educated. Anything goes.

I for one will never say snuck. Accordingly, I will soon be extinct myself.

One more thing: Despite what millions of Americans say every single day, drug is not the past tense of drag.

It’s dragged, people. Dragged.