Those people who do understand them have a greater range of expression than those who don’t. For example, Cecil shows in this column that people who differentiate meaning between “got” and “gotten” can shade their meanings more effectively than those who use “got” for both meanings. Not exactly the same thing, but I always like to quote the Master when possible.
People who don’t follow grammatical rules end up writing things like “Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas.” As we all know (hello, RTFirefly), the sentence is ambiguous because the person (assuming he wasn’t attempting humor) did not follow the rule that a modifier goes next to the thing it modifies (While in my pajamas last night, I shot an elephant.) OK, another not-great example, but I’m sure you get the point.
Do you remember ads for Zena jeans? The line in every commercial was, “Because Zena knows the difference between Todd and I.” It killed me. Sure, the meaning got across, but so did the message that either the ad people were a bunch of morons or Zena was marketing to morons. (I’m still bitter about those ads.)
In short (I know, too late), rules of grammar help to expand the potential for communication.
It has to do with the placement of stress. For similar reasons, the adjectival form of pueblo is poblano. The plain vowels e and o changed into the diphthongs ie and ue only when stressed. Unstressed syllables retained the plain e and o.
In the single word nueves the first syllable is stressed and therefor diphthongized. The stress in the two-word phrase nova ciento goes on the third syllable, cien. The two words together form a single unit as far as stress.
So, it looks like “nova” is the rule, and “neuve” is the exception! Thanks for the explanation. Uh, aside from my misspelling “nueve” at times, did I write the words correctly? How does one write out “mil nova cientos noventa nueve”? Just like that? Hyphens? Like the Germans (one HUGE word)?
True enough. But it’s only useful when communicating with people who also understand those rules, which is apparently a fairly small figure. Of course, as long as there is no downside to their existance (i.e. that using them in conversation with people who don’t understand them is not more confusing than not using them would be) then that is probably enough to justify their continued existance, but I don’t see that they help to establish effective communication in general. But that’s not exactly what DSYoungEsq wrote, and possibly not what he meant, so I’ll leave it at that.
No, still incorrect. If I use proper grammar, I am better able to communicate my actual meaning to someone who doesn’t use proper grammar, because proper grammar usage allows one to better understand my meaning. That is, by using proper grammar, I can make things more clear because grammar rules help us distinguish one type of construction from another. YOU may not understand pluperfect subjunctive construction, but if I do, and I use it when that is the mood and tense I wish to convey, I will be more successful in communicating to you my actual meaning.
Of course, if the general population drifts away from certain usages, then you can eventually reach a point where the ‘proper’ grammar is incomprehensible. Most people who hear ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ and ‘thine’ do not comprehend that these are second person singluar pronouns in English; they simply think of them as quaint ancient ways of saying ‘you’. Were I to use ‘thee’ in talking to you, it is highly doubtful thou wouldst understand the high compliment being paid to you (in feeling close enough to you to use the intimate singular form of the second person pronoun).
All of which reminds me of the old joke. An old matron returns to Boston after an absence of many years. As she gets into the cab at the airport, the cabbie asks her where she wishes to go. She replies, “Please take me somewhere I can get scrod.” To which the cabbie replies: “Lady, I’ve been asked that by many people over the years, but that is the first time I’ve heard it stated in the pluperfect subjunctive!”
