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"The unexamined life is not worth living." SocratesLet's Change the Language (Just a Little) |
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Did you ever say a sentence out loud and then ponder why
a word sounds as it does? Who invented the word ogle or goggle?
Who thought that mice was a proper plural for mouse,
and geese was good for goose, but allowed no change for moose.
Milk
sounds funny to me. "Milk, milk, do you want some milk?" It sound
strange, and it looks like a silly word -to me anyway, but it really doesn't
pose a problem to English speakers. (Doesn't pose in the last sentence look odd to you?
And what about odd? You know they do, don't you?) But let us not stray to
the odd words but stick to words that are actual problems.
There is one word that seems a problem. The word is ended. That's right, the past tense of end. Read the following out loud and listen to the sound of the words: "The day has ended."Don't those sentences sound clunky to you? Doesn't it seem as if there is just one too many syllables for the mouth to roll out? Yes, I knew you would. You hear it, too! Now that you think about it, I bet, you are starting to wonder whether this is the correct form of the word at all. "Is it really supposed to be ended?" you say. This is my point precisely. It sounds horrible. This is a major problem with our language. We need a patch on this wound in the lexicon. We need a solution. I have one. Try this. Say the following sentences without judgment for a while and listen to how the sentences sound. Listen to the flow and ease of the words as they fall from your tongue. (Tongue, yeech, but I digress): "The day has ent."How about it? Mellifluous, no? Okay, maybe mellifluous is a stretch, but it is smoother. The clunkiness is now gone and it sounds as if that's the way it should be. C'mon, admit it. It does sound better. And why shouldn't it? We would never say, "I bended the clothes hanger," but rather, "I bent the clothes hanger." Megan K., Class or '04 reminds us of send and sent. Would you ever say, "I sended the message yesterday?" Ms. Tammy Due adds lend and lent. How about rend and rent meaning to tear and tore? See? Bend, bent, send, sent, lend, lent, rend, rent and end, ent! It is a natural. This needs to be done. And you will help, of course. First, we must become aware of when we use the old, clunky word ended. When you hear yourself saying this, you must consciously correct yourself. Be vigilant! Second, When you hear others use the tired old form, you must do nothing. That's right, do nothing. If you correct someone's grammar or speech and you are not an English teacher who is charged with this task, then you are being a prescriptive grammarian and this is rude and rudeness will not help our cause. A prescriptive grammarian will try to prescribe how people should speak. This is judgmental and annoying and it has done the fellowship of English language arts professionals a world of harm over the decades. (It's why acquaintances and even some friends become self conscious when speaking when they realize what I do for a living. I myself never judge. People should always feel that they can speak freely.) Instead people might want to be descriptive grammarians. Descriptive grammarians describe how people speak without passing any form of judgment on which words are better. The goal of a grammarian should never be how to instruct people on how to speak and write better, but how to speak and write more clearly. The more people there are to understand us, the more people there will be that we can touch. If we don't tell people how to speak our new word, what shall we do? This is our third strategy. We will be patient. When we use the word, trust me, people will ask about it. When they ask, explain clearly, cogently, why you use the word form that you do. They will see the logic behind it just as you do, and you will have enlisted another volunteer in the crusade to coin the word. Fourth: we will infiltrate the mass media. We already have a person placed on the yearbook staff and at least one person set in the newspaper staff. Will F., Class of '03 (who else?), has agreed to front for us at the television studio. Annmarie B., Class of '04, has suggested a plan to finish broadcasts with a tag line of something along the lines of "This newscast has ent." The seeds are sown and the sprouts are beginning to show. Imagine the future. Suppose this should work and we will have established our word in the language. Imagine the joy and pride of telling our children that we were there when it all began. We started it. We changed some part of the world. We will tell tales of how we suffered for the cause. (And you will. No other English teacher will give you credit for this word as I will. Many teachers may even deduct points for this, but such is the price for influencing posterity.) We will tell tales of the converts we inspired and the minute changes we detected along the way. We will recall the first time someone mentioned, "Oh, ent. That's something that the people of the North Shore of Massachusetts say." Or the first time we saw it used on the internet. The first time we heard it used on the radio or television. The Boston Globe. The New York Times. We'll regale our relatives and friends of the day when it made it into the dictionary, first as slang, but later as a variant and then as an alternate spelling until finally as the preferred spelling. We will go on and on until finally ended is listed in Webster's as archaic. And then, the pinnacle of our success: The Oxford English Dictionary. We will be listed in their etymology as the first recorded use of the word. Glorious! This then is our crusade. You have heard the arguments. You have seen the logic and heard the word in action. You know you must enlist in this march into American lexicography. I know not where this struggle will have ent, but I know whence it began. Whence?
Historic Firsts in the Usage of Ent:May 21, 2002, a Tuesday morning E-mail Thomas Trevenen
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