Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Destruction of the English Language

Amid all our grammar naziin', it's easy to lose sight-- it's easy to lose sight of how fun it can be to participate in the destruction of the English language. No, I'm not talking about spelling errors and confusing "your" and "you're". As vital as the you're/your difference is to the infrastructure of English (that's why we have completely different spoken pronunciations for the two words), people might just think I did that on accident. No. There are better ways.

For instance. I derive particular enjoyment from putting periods and commas outside of the quotes, rather than inside, where they belong. Take that, high school English teacher! I think this is how the Brits do it anyways. I take pleasure in knowing that no one ever catches my "mistake".

Also! Sentence structure that is clearly or unclearly wrong. Splitting infinitives, if you're lucky enough to [hmmm, nothing fits here] get the opportunity. Prepositions at the end of sentences, though that's a bit of a dead horse, not causing any real damage. Misuse of capitalization, but that's not really my style, my pseudonym not with standing. Using "they" in place of "he or she"...

...Mispronouncing words? In writing? The blagotubes understand this.

On a higher level, logical fallacies are also quite fun to use. What, you disagree? Only a bitter-hearted killjoy could disagree with something that is obviously meant to be a joke. Next, will you deny that there is a grain of truth in every good joke? 'Cause there is. I, the ultimate authority on this here blag, said it, so it must be true, except when I say it's not. All truths here are spoken by me, therefore I speak truth. Er... write truth.

Now that we all agree, given my irrefutable arguments, it's time for some examples.

For instance. Did you know that big feet cause good spelling? Kids with bigger feet tend to have better spelling. This relationship is obviously causative; good spelling causes bigger feet bigger feet cause good spelling. It's like they say, "Post hoc ergo propter hoc", or, "after, therefore because of". [Take that! Two more scores against English!] If the Latin language said it, it must be true. The Latin language is pretty old, you know. If the Latin language were a dying grandmother, rather than an already dead language, would you tell her she was wrong to her face?

Okay, enough of that. I can only cram so many fallacies in a paragraph before it starts to appear unnatural.

But I'll concede that it's fun to play the devil's advocate, to play the grammar nazi. Correcting every confusion of "your" and "you're". Flaming folks who say "could of". Mocking the overuse of quotation marks. Innocently interpreting there/their/they're mistakes as if they were intentional. Placing people into your "good" and "bad" books based on how grammatical they are. Yep, grammar naziin' can be fun times. The merciless skeptic, too, is a fun role to play.

[Disclaimer: this post is satire. Read it again if you did not realize that the first time, you bitter-hearted killjoy.]

[I considered adding the above disclaimer to the bottom of each of my posts, but I decided that to maintain some facade of seriousness, I should only add it to this one.]

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I admit, I have at times taken the grammar nazi position almost too far, at least as far as apostrophe abuse is concerned.