Jack Lynch (1)

If you like words, or grammar, or language, you will love this book. How did English end up as the English we speak today? Where did all the grammar rules come from (such as not ending a sentence with a preposition)? Who decided these rules? How do dictionaries affect grammar and the choice of words that one uses?
Much of the book deals with the two types of grammarians – the prescriptivists and the descriptivists. One wants to set hard and fast rules to the language, the other wants to describe it. Grammatical rules are relatively new to English. In the 17th century, John Dryden was one of the first to prescribe what proper English is. The 18th century prescriptivists along with Dryden imposed Latin grammar rules on the English language. They are why we all have been taught to not split infinitives or end sentences with prepositions and when to use who vs. whom. English is not Latin so in reality these rules make no sense.
Reading this book, I recognized myself as a prescriptivist, always correcting grammar and spelling and word usage. The misuse of words could drive me crazy. One in particular is the word “decimate”. He shows how meanings change with time and there is nothing that can be done to change that and “decimate” is an example that he gives. Guess I will have to learn to take deep breaths from now on when I hear or read it ‘misused’.
And if you are still a prescriptivist and want some type of government group or edict to set proper English, remember that in 1975 Gerald Ford signed a bill to convert the US to the metric system. How has that worked?
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