I used to be a real freak about grammar (I enjoyed the approval I got from my GCSE English teacher), but since doing a lot of specialising in Linguistics, I’ve realised how made up it all is. Mostly I still do stick to the “correct” version, especially in essays and formal writing, if only to avoid the scorn of supervisors/potential employers. But I no longer believe that pedantry should have some kind of privileged status.

I was reminded of all this by Language Hat discussing an article on National Grammar Day, and replies to that article by both him and Z.D. Smith. Language Hat refers to a great bit of Smith’s reply that I just have to reproduce here:

“Sometimes it makes a body really want to rap these critics on the head; don’t you see that people are speaking here? Do you really imagine that people who say ‘between you and I’ don’t have anything better to do with their words than see that they conform to some superficial notion of grammar? Can you allow in your worldview the possibility that the greengrocer or urban youth has his own sense of language, and is actively wielding it, rather than simply trying and failing to follow all the rules?”

Very true.

One of the greatest things I have learned at university is that language change is almost always bottom-up: all the Romance languages would still be Latin if it wasn’t for the “incorrect” speech variations of the lower classes.

A great example from English is a change in the passive voice system around the 17th century. Instead of saying “I saw a body being carried,” Samuel Pepys writes in his diary “I saw a body carrying.” Similarly, one would say “my house is painting” rather than “my house is being painted.” Seems madly unclear to us - but this was the standard construction. When the new (”being”) construction came into use by the lower classes, grammarians were up in arms. They said it was unclear, incorrect, degenerate… any number of things. But changes happen, and they are neither good nor bad - they are just change.