# Is this sentence grammatical?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-sentence-grammatical/754303>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [May 8, 2016, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-sentence-grammatical/754303 "2016-05-08T16:40:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\
**Post date:** [May 10, 2016, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-sentence-grammatical/754303/41 "2016-05-10T04:00:02Z")

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> [@Mr\_Shine](#):
>
> It doesn’t matter how many people start to use “myself” as a non-reflexive pronoun; it will still be wrong and people who do it will be stupid, even if in 70 years time I’m the very last old man who sees the difference. Cheers to **panache45** , I think that was well summed up.

By this standard, absolutely nothing we say is grammatically correct, because our language is so modified from what the Post-Roman Germanic tribes who invaded the British Isles spoke that it’s no longer the same language, except maybe in a political sense.

That’s what gets me about peevers like you: You make an arbitrary mark in the imagined past and claim “_this_ is correct language”, and nothing which happened before or since counts. The fact you lot get it wrong, and speak such transparent falsehoods when you attempt to discuss the history of any language living or dead, is secondary to the utter arbitrariness of the underlying concept.

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**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\
**Post date:** [May 10, 2016, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-sentence-grammatical/754303/42 "2016-05-10T14:43:19Z")

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> [@lance\_strongarm](#):
>
> > [@psychonaut](#):
> >
> > If you’d taken your own advice and consulted Oxford, you’d see that “grammatical” can be defined as “conforming to the rules of grammar”.
> 
> Well they should stop doing that too!

Let’s imagine, for a moment, that you’re learning a new language. You hear native speakers of this language using a certain word over and over. Judging from the contexts, you suspect these people are using the word in the same sense, but you aren’t completely sure about the exact meaning. So naturally you consult a dictionary. Now, wouldn’t you prefer that the dictionary provide a definition for that sense of the word, so you can finally understand how people typically use it? Would it not frustrate you to find that the dictionary didn’t list any meanings for the word that seemed appropriate for those countless contexts in which you heard it? Or perhaps even to find that the dictionary didn’t list the word at all?

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**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\
**Post date:** [May 10, 2016, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-sentence-grammatical/754303/43 "2016-05-10T15:16:12Z")

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> [@lance\_strongarm](#):
>
> “Myself” is not just another way of saying “I.”
> 
> It’s only for when you are referring to yourself in an action, for instance, “I cut myself.” You wouldn’t say “Myself went downtown.” Just as you wouldn’t say to someone else, “Yourself go first.” You would just say “You go first.” (You could say “Go f\*\*k yourself,” because that involves the person acting upon himself, if such an act is even possible.)

I phrased what I said the way I did for a reason. Perhaps you should reread and try to gather my meaning.

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