English is a wild animal that evolved in the farms and fields and villages of England. It should be allowed to run free. If we keep it in a cage it will wither and die. Running free it will thrive and prosper.
I may understand “y’all”, but that’s no guarantee that every English speaker will. Imagine a foreigner whose English comes from textbooks. He’s on his first trip to the United States and you suddenly pop a “y’all” on him. He won’t have the slightest clue what that word means. By sticking with proper English, we can make sure that every English speaker achieves maximum possible understanding.
In addition, being sloppy with a word can have long-term effects that are not immediately obvious. Consider that we once had a common word, “omnibus” to mean the large vehicle that carried many persons. (Not people, persons!) Then some lazy bum decided that “bus” was good enough, and over time “omnibus” went the way of the dodo. Why is this bad? Because if you know that an omnibus is a vehicle that carries many persons, then you can easily surmise that an ominbus spending bill is a bill that wraps together many allocations. If you don’t know what an omnibus is, then you could read the phrase “omnibus spending bill” hundreds of times without ever knowing what it means.
Let’s take another example. If you frequently use the word “easy”, you’ll probably know that it’s the adjective form of “ease”, which helps you understand all the order words that arise from the same root. If you use “EZ” instead, you may never connect “easy” to “ease”. Suppose you heard the legal phrase “conservation easement”. If you understand “ease”, you could easily guess that a conservation easement is something which makes conservation easy. If all you have is “EZ”, the connection to “easement” may not be obvious. Similar problems arise for those who replace “for” with “4”, “you” with “u”, and so forth.
If a park belongs to the people, should that give them more or less incentive to take good care of it? If the language belongs to us, shouldn’t we work to preserve it?
I see things the opposite way around. Classism is when we assign value based on things that are only accessible, or at least mainly accessible, to the upper class. If you say that a fancy sports car, a Ph.D., or a vacation house in Jackson Hole makes you better than anyone else, you’re expressing classism. The opposite attitude is the democratic attitude, which attaches importance to things which everyone can acheive. Everyone can speak well, even those who live in gutters. Hence it’s democratic to encourage everyone to speak well. It could help knock down class barriers if we agreed to do it consistently.
This excellent article expresses my thoughts much more eloquently than I ever could.
I don’t know how important that effect is overall but I can say that I never could remember what an “omnibus” bill was because the word doesn’t have a common usage. Thanks for pointing that out. I had no idea.
Eloquent? I respectfully disagree. As a soft prescriptivist, I agree with many of his points. But, frankly, I don’t think it’s a well written essay. Which points, I think, to a larger and more important issue. It’s all very well to use the language correctly. More important is to use it effectively.
Me fail English? That’s unpossible!
-Ralph Wiggum
Yes, there is a right and a wrong way to speak and write English. It also happens to change depending on circumstances and your audience.
Write a job application form, or have an interview with the examiner in “non-proper” English and wait for the results…
It isn’t the only purpose of language to be understand. We also use language to hide truths, and use different kinds of language in different contexts to relate only to particular people groups. Not only do I mean, for example, a Welsh person switching to Welsh as soon as I walk into a shop, but various youth cultures have their own slang that other people cannot understand or relate to, effectively creating a cliqué.
Also, it’s not just the responsibility of the speaker to use language to be understood. If you are speaking on a specialist subject, it is the responsibility of the listener to learn the technical language that helps the speaker articulate the subject matter.
Various styles have various effects on the listener. If you speak about a subject in a formal manner you are going to be taken more seriously. Arguably then, using informal English certainly is improper in certain situations.
I make a distinction between ‘proper’ and ‘standard’ english. Proper English is using the language properly in a certain context. Talking to friends at a bar with the Queen’s English would be improper. Standard English is the agreed upon rules, which can be proper or improper depending on context.
I believe there is; for instance if you say “Me walked to the park.” instead of “I walked to the park.”.
I’d say that would depend on the kind of friends that you have.
Nitpick. English isn’t a romance language. I do agree though that “It is I” is artificial. It’s an attempt to force English into the straitjacket of Latin grammar, where the verb to be does indeed take the nominative rather than the accusative as an object.
Daily people are working with nuclear power,huge earth moving equipment on construction sites,in action with the military etc.where a seconds misunderstanding can cause death,environmental disaster and so on.
So there has to be a rigid standard of "proper"English as a base line if nothing else.
I myself am very much flawed here but I do try my best.
The people who are trying to promote the "Everyones English is as good as everyone elses"are usually the lazy who can’t even be bothered to try, or the unintelligent trying to get a “Get out of Jail free card”
Its then that we start falling into the pit of "we are all equal but differently gifted P.C. B.S.
The lecturer at Harvard with the Congressional Medal of Honor is no better then then the unqualified south London schoolkid with a police record for shop lifting because with all his abilities he can’t name the English soccer league champions for the last nine years or name the main characters in Eastenders(A British soap).
But I don’t wish to start a hijack here.
I think this is more a matter of Formal vs. Informal English.
Right: the same person might talk about “colorectal trauma” in one context and about “a pain in the butt” in another context. Both are perfectly correct English phrases, meaning roughly the same thing (at least literally).