Farewell to Grammar

A BOY of my acquaintance, when I was a boy, was greatly aided in his grammar by the erection of the two union stations in Boston, because his teacher informed him the South Station was the largest in the world, but only the larger in Boston. No doubt to this day he attempts, at least, to speak and write correctly, as I do, and as you, dear Ancient, do also, according to the usages we were laboriously taught. No doubt he, even as you and I, smiles wanly at the sign, ‘School — Drive Slow,’ winces when his son says, ‘It’s me’ and his wife tells his daughter, ‘Invite whoever you wish’; and when he asks his secretary how many orders are coming in is made doubly sad by that young gentleman’s reply, ‘None are expected.’ (The secretary would say, of course, that he ‘felt badly about it,’ and then would tell the manager to ‘try and get’ some orders.) Back in the gay nineties, when grammar was grammar, we all were amused by George Ade’s story which began, “‘Whom are you?” asked Cyril, for he had been to night school.’ Alas, this is not amusing any more. It appears that everybody has been to day school, and therefore knows grammar to be not a necessity, nor even an adornment, but a superfluous and rapidly disappearing survival of the archaic past, a verbal vermiform appendix.

These sad reflections are inspired by Current English Usage, a monograph published by the National Council of Teachers of English. Taking scores upon scores of phrases embodying some — to them, at least — disputable point in grammatical usage, the compilers sent out these phrases to scores and scores of ‘linguists,’ English teachers, authors, publishers, newspaper editors, and business men, who listed each phrase according to their conception of its correctness, or the opposite. If 75 per cent voted against its use, it was then classified as still ‘illiterate’ (with a silent prayer, no doubt, that it may not long remain so, since most of the teachers’ dear little pupils use it all the time, and what a bother to stop ’em!). If 75 per cent voted for it, then it was classified as quite all right. No need ever again to try and correct the pupils using it. Three long cheers! A percentage of votes between 75 per cent and 25 per cent made the phrase ‘debatable.’ Will the teachers give it the benefit of the doubt, you ask? Don’t be silly.

Here are a few of the ‘established usages’: None of them are here. New York climate is the healthiest in fall. We cannot discover from whence this rumor emanates. You’d better go slow (on a curve). In hopes of seeing you, I asked . . . We only had one left. He moves mighty quick on a tennis court. It is me. Who are you looking for? I wish I was wonderful. (Like the new grammar, eh?) If it had been us, we would admit it. I will go providing you keep away.

All these, and others like the ones quoted in our opening paragraphs, are listed as acceptable or standard English. But a sufficient number of brave spirits among the jury (led by the authors, I am proud to say) voted against certain more painful usages, to shove them down into the ‘disputable’ column. If you are a little child to-day, fired with ambition to speak the tongue of Milton and Swift, Pater and Stevenson, Emerson and Poe, you cannot be quite certain that you are justified in saying of De Quincey, perhaps, ‘He could write as well or better than I.’ Nor would you feel quite at ease, in an argument with your teacher, if you declared, ‘Neither of your reasons are really valid.’ But cheer up. You are an exceptional child, anyway, unfamiliar with the radio or the movies, and your doubts will soon be resolved for you. Your dear teacher says, ‘Perhaps the present wave of grammatical simplification is obliterating fine distinctions we might well preserve. But we can no more arrest this process than King Canute could check the tide, and if it sweeps away the conjunctive, all our classroom instruction will not bring it back.’

Good-bye, dear old conjunctive, friend of our youth! (We don’t recall exactly what a conjunctive is, — or was, — but no matter.) There will be few mourners, and none of them will be school-teachers. Soon you — not I, for I’m set in the mould of my useless literacy — can say, ‘We have n’t but a few conjunctives left.’ Also you can say, ’I took it to be they’; ‘Either of these three roads is good’; ‘That was the reason for me leaving school’ (And a darn good reason, too!); ‘I’ll swear that was him’; ‘John did n’t do so bad this time ’; ‘ Don’t get these kind of gloves’; ‘It is liable to snow to-night’; ‘The child was weak, due to improper feeding’ (Should it read ‘schooling’?); ‘It’s real cold to-day. . .'

But why go on? The teachers of English tell us these are disputed usages — that is, more than 25 per cent of the learned judges approved them as right and proper English. It won’t be long now before 75 per cent will approve them, and then when you are taxied (already approved) to a train you can listen to your driver’s conversation with pleasure, and without hesitancy talk like he does. You can’t talk like he does quite yet and be entirely sure you are worthy to converse with the ghost of Lindley Murray should that grieved spectre haunt you. But have a little patience. By the time a few more Southern writers have erupted into our literature, we’ll all write like they do; and what’s more, we’ll like it, very likely.

Not me, though. I’m older than them, and was raised by an old-fashioned teacher, who moved slow — the poor simp!