Troubled in Translation

There is a memorable bar scene (Note: Potential Spoiler Alert!) in Quentin Tarantino’s  “Inglourious Basterds,” where a German SS major, seated at a table with some other soldiers, asks for three glasses of scotch; the fellow Nazi he’s sitting next to helpfully flashes three fingers to the bartender. But when the major sees the Nazi’s hand gesture, he is jarred: The soldier has just given himself away. “You,” the major says through his teeth, “are no more German than the scotch” --
 
The tip off? The way the soldier made the number “3” with his fingers – the pointer, middle, and ring fingers standing tall, which is the American way; while a German or any European would have held up thumb, pointer, and middle fingers, ring and pinky folded down.
 
The English version of the current Swedish bestseller, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” (the first book of the 3-book Millenium series) had many such jarring moments for me. “This sentence is not English,” I would think, as I read a random paragraph in the 600-plus page novel. The word choice or word order were either slightly off or waaay off, forcing me to reach for a pencil and wonder why the publishers had apparently hired a non-native speaker of English to translate.
 
The mystery-thriller’s sloppy punctuation and awkward phrasing started on Page 1, but I did not take that to mean the translator was foreign – just bad. It was not until Page 189 (of the small paperback edition) that the unintended mystery of the translator’s nationality became a leit-motif for me as I read:
 
“Did other people live at that time on the farm?” the text says.
 
Can you hear the mistake? Perhaps it’s subtle but the mistake is nonetheless non-English. It’s like saying, “He walked on Friday to work,” which is perfectly understandable and yet the natural way to say that is, “He walked to work on Friday.” English syntax, that is, basic English word order, puts “Place” before “Time.” (I discuss word order in my blog from January 2007, “Your Word Order, Please: http://thelanguagelady.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_archive.html)
 
As I continued, I started finding more “clues” that the translator was probably, (my assumption based on the book’s origin) Swedish. I flipped to the cover page and found that it was translated by Reg Keeland – a name that could be foreign, or not; and which could belong to a male or female, though I pictured a man.  Here are some more examples that seem to give away Mr. Keeland’s nationality:
 
Page 208: “I’m just so damn sick of the whole story. It’s poisoned our lives for decades, and it doesn’t stop doing so.”
 
“… it doesn’t stop doing so” should be “it HASN’T stopped doing so.” Explaining how to use the present perfect tense – as in, “I have written -- is one of the most difficult aspects of teaching English to non-native speakers; basically, the present perfect tense is used to express an action that started in the past that still relates to now. In the above case, a native English speaker/translator would have used this tense instinctively; however, other Western languages don’t have this tense at all (at least to the extent we use it in English) and generally use the present tense to express time passage:  “I am here four years,” instead of “I have been here for four years.”
 
Then there was the word “judgement,” sprinkled throughout the book and spelled with an “e” each time. This is the British way of spelling the word – Noah Webster dropped the “e” for Americans when he took the “u” out of “color,” around 1828 (from “Common Errors in English Usage” by Paul Brian); and since many Europeans learn British English in school, no doubt our Swedish translator was among them.
 
Page 248: “She had a rudimentary knowledge of the law – it was a subject she had never had occasion to explore – and her faith in the police was generally exiguous.”
 
Exiguous? Any translator who knows the vocabulary limits of his/her English-speaking readership, would never have put that word in that sentence. Exiguous? I’ve never heard of it -- never come across it, not even in old SAT practice sheets. But no doubt Herr Keeland found the word in his Swedish-English dictionary, and with the word’s Latin-sounding pomposity, it must have seemed an intelligent choice. But one blissfully nice thing about English is how it generally avoids Latin-sounding pomposity – and a better translation would have been, “and her faith in the police was meager, at best.”
 
Pages 319-320 have so many mistakes, I can almost see the poor Swede’s head bowed down on his computer keyboard in exasperation. There are problems with word order, word usage, and verb tense; and the passage in general has an awkwardness that just does not sound English. See if you agree:
 
“Gottfriend’s cabin … was the place to which Harriet and Martin’s father had retreated when his marriage to Isabella was going to the dogs in the late fifties … And here was also the place that Harriet had been to so often that it was one of the first in which they looked for her. Vanger had told him that during her last year, Harriet had gone often to the cabin, apparently to be in peace on weekends or holidays.”
 
First, “to which” and “in which” sound formal and strange – we just don’t use that construction unless absolutely necessary, and it wasn’t necessary. Secondly, the phrases, “here was also the place” and “Harriet had gone often” sound so distinctly foreign (adverb choice and placement, suffice it to say); the phrase “in peace” is not quite right, and then there is the strange, “… going to the dogs in the late fifties.” Here’s how I would have phrased it:
 
“Gottfriend’s cabin was … where Harriet and Martin’s father had retreated in the late fifties when his marriage to Isabella was going to the dogs … The cabin was also the place Harriet had been to so often, it was one of the first places they had looked for her. Vanger told him that during Harriet’s last year, she had often gone there on weekends or holidays to find some peace and quiet.”
 
But Mr. Keeland’s true “3-Finger” moment came with this, on Page 389:
 
“Norsjö was a small town with one main street, appropriately enough called Storgatan …”
 
Appropriately enough? Why was the main street, “Storgatan,” so “appropriately” named? Well, if you’re a Swedish translator and you forget for a moment that your English audience does not automatically know that “Storgatan” means “Main Street,” then yes – the name was perfectly appropriate.
 
The big surprise for me came on Page 644, the book’s final page, when I googled “Reg Keeland” and discovered that he is, in fact, an American man named Steven T. Murray, apparently the go-to guy for Scandinavian translations. He used a pseudonym for all three of the Millenium series books due to a “miscommunication” with the English publisher, who demanded the manuscripts before Murray had had a chance to edit his translation. So that may excuse, or at least explain, the muddled text, still mired somewhere between the original Swedish and unpolished English.
 
Slack editing aside, the book has taken the publishers (and translator too, no doubt) all the way to the bank. To be fair, though, I found the second book much improved. Appropriately enough.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Translations: Faithful or Fluent?

 

Anyone who has graced the inside of a bookstore in the past few months will no doubt have seen the display of the international, smash-hit trilogy from Sweden, “Men Who Hate Women,” “Flicken Som Lekte Med Eldren,” and “The Air Castle that Blew Up,” also called The Milliennium Series. You guessed it -- these are not the titles you’ll find at Barnes and Noble. You may recognize them as “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” “The Girl Who Played with Fire,” and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.”

 

Translating books from one language into another is not an exact science, as shown by the differences between the above titles. And when a book is gobbled up by 30 million people in 40 countries, as this has been, there are bound to be differences between what makes sense – and more importantly, what sells – in one country, versus another. So, though translators can take credit for being an indirect part of the publishing phenomenon, so can book marketers. The author of the series, the late Swedish journalist, Stieg Larssen (who died of a heart attack at age 50, in 2004, just months before seeing any of this amazing success) gave his first book the title, “Men Who Hate Women,” which underscores one of the series’ core themes; however, I can just hear the book’s American marketer at the meeting:

 

Marketer: The title has to go -- stores will probably stick it in Psychology next to ‘Men are From Mars, Women are from Venus.”

 

Larssen’s agent: But Stieg wanted this title! It’s what he wanted to say about --

 

Marketer:  But that title won’t sell. We need something with …  with mystery, and something “now,” something hip -- body piercings or tattoos or -- anything. Men hating women is so Seventies.  No, it’s gotta be something about The Girl.

 

And the rest is history (well, recent history). But the result was that though some countries chose to be faithful to the original, “Men Who Hate Women,” plenty of others sided with “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

 

So, having read “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” myself, I checked out a few of the translated titles from around the world (thank you, Google Translator), and here’s what I found:

 

 “MEN WHO HATE WOMEN” VS. “THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO”

 

The French title, “Les hommes qui n’aimaient pas les femmes,” or “Men who didn’t like women,” followed the Swedish in spirit, differing only in verb choice and tense. What struck me about the French title, though, was how it showed what many of my French students do – which is to say what something is NOT, rather than what it is. For example, a French person seems often more inclined to say, “It is not sunny today,” rather than, “It’s cloudy today.” So it follows that French would “not like” women over “hating” them – never mind the qualitative difference between the two emotions.

 

And yet the Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese followed the French, though choosing the more amorous “did not LOVE,” over “did not LIKE”, as in “Los hombres que no amaban a las mujeres,” and “Os Homens Que Não Amavam as Mulheres.” or “Men who did not love women.” I wondered if the “didn’t like/didn’t love* construction were particular to Latin-based languages, but the Italians (“Uomini che odiano le donne”) and the Portuguese from Portugal (“Os Homens que Odeiam as Mulheres”) went with “Men Who Hate Women.”

 

Another curious thing about the “did not like/did not love” construction is why the verb tense is in the past (imperfect) tense in these three Latin-root languages. The Swedish title is in the present tense – indicating a regular, routine activity, as in Men Who (always) Hate Women. Perhaps by putting the verb tense in the imperfect (which gives a sense of continuity in the past – more like, “Men who never liked/loved women; or men who used to never like/love women), the French, Spanish, and Portuguese reader can better sense that these are certain men and certain women in a certain time, as in a novel – as opposed to men in everyday life who routinely hate women.

 

And while the Finnish are reading “Men Who Hate Women” -- “Miehet jotka vihaavat naisia,” the Russians are trying a unique marketing strategy, with the first three words of the “Dragon” title in English, followed by the Cyrillic “Tattoowirovki Drakon-na,” as in "The Girl With The татуировки дракона". The Icelandic and Greek titles also did a little mix-and-match with: "The Girl með The Dragon Tattoo" and "Το Κορίτσι Με Το Dragon Tattoo."

 

Interrupting this neat little divide between “Men” and “Dragon” are the German titles (for Germany, Austria, Switzerland, etc.), which dispensed with “The Girl” theme entirely and went with, “Verblendung,” “Verdamnis,” and “Vergebung” for the three books: “The Blinding (or ‘Blending-in’),” “The Damnation,” and “Forgiveness (or “Redemption”).” Though Stieg Larsson may be rolling in his grave with these titles (they seem to suggest the outcome to each book), the alliteration of the titles is probably a book marketer’s dream.

 

Translations have always wreaked verbal havoc, or prompted many a laugh or cringe. Anyone who’s every sat through a movie with subtitles can relate. I mean, how do you translate Humphrey Bogart saying, “Here’s looking at you, kid,” to his long-lost love, Ingrid Bergman in “Casablanca”? The French went with “à votre santé,” or “to your health,” even using the formal “your” – which not only seems stiff but so very un-Bogart. Maybe French audiences swoon when they read this line, as Bogart lifts his champagne glass, that certain look in his eye. A literal – and impossible -- rendering might conjure up: “Voici te regarde, cherie,” which would leave Parisians howling either in laughter or in pain at such mangling. (Maybe it does not even matter what Bogie says – his look may say it all.)

 

Being both faithful and fluent to the original text is an ideal not often achieved, except through luck, if both languages happen to have similar constructions or at least similar ways of conveying the same idiom or expression. The 17th-century French philosopher and writer, Gilles Menage, known in his time as a cultivator of wit and elegant conversation, thought the combination of faithful and fluent was “like women – either beautiful or faithful, but not both.” (Ah, zose French!)

 

The Language Lady’s next blog will look inside the pages of the English translation of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” to see just how faithful and fluent – or not – the translator was. As I read “Dragon,” I found quite a few oddly worded passages, which had me guessing as to the translator’s nationality the whole way through, with the answer (googled as I hit the final page) almost as much a surprise as the actual ending.   A votre santé, kids.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finding Out About Phrasal Verbs

(When you see an * in the text, it means the two or three words next to it make up a “phrasal verb.”)

One of the most difficult aspects of English for foreign students to master is something we native speakers of English rarely even think about* or hear of*: phrasal verbs. On my shelf of books about English is a hefty volume entitled, “NTC’s Dictionary of Phrasal Verbs and Other Idiomatic Verbal Phrases.” There are more than 12,000 such entries in this tome. True, some entries are idioms (colorful expressions). But what ARE these phrasal verbs? Read on* and find out*!

Phrasal verbs – among the most basic phrases and expressions in our language -- take one base verb then add a word ‘particle’ (looks like a preposition but doesn’t operate like one grammatically) to express a certain meaning. A two-year-old can use phrasal verbs: “Pick me up” or “Go out now?” Even my cat understands “Get down!” or “Come in.” (That is, he seems to, though he’s better at “come in” than “get down.”)

The base verb alone, however, does not do the job; it’s the little particle that makes all the difference. Use the wrong particle – like “put OFF” instead of “put ON” and you either make no sense, or have said the opposite of what you meant to say. Such a small slip explains why most foreign languages use completely different verbs – like the French “chercher” for “look for,” and “regarder” for “look at” -- whereas English speakers just switch a little word.

Some phrasal verb particles are directional: sit down; stand up; go out; look up. But others create a meaning larger than the word’s regular use: take “off” for instance. If I take something “off” a shelf, I remove it. But if I walk, storm, run, or drive “off,” then I remove myself far into the distance and out of sight.

Think of* “turn” “turn around,” “turn in” “turn into” “turn in on,” etc. -- each one requiring a separate definition. This could make you turn against* English!

Think about* the difference between “cleaning” your room and “cleaning out” your room. Or “writing” a message and “writing down” a message.

And try explaining why “wind up” and “wind down” can mean the same thing.

Yet despite these intricacies, native speakers of English – even the most illiterate or grammar-phobic – rarely (if ever) make mistakes with phrasal verbs (or the phrasal nouns and adjectives derived from them).

There is so much to say about phrasal verbs, it makes me realize how concise that 12,000-entry phrasal verb dictionary actually is. But rather than risk losing readers with my enthusiasm for the subject, I will instead cut to* the inspiration for this blog - a recent letter to the Language Lady from Renee, an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher in New York, who writes:

“Dear Language Lady,

One of my colleagues is teaching phrasal verbs and ran across* "find out" vs "find out about." Our whole troupe of teachers is stumped: We can't figure out* why it's “find out” the rules, but “find out about” volunteering. Both rules and volunteering are nouns so why do we need the preposition for one but not the other? (the two **added by The Language Lady)

Can you help?”


Thanks for asking, Renee.

The key here is the word, “about,” which means “concerning; in regard to;” “referring to different sides or aspects of something.”

The phrasal verb, “to find out” means to search and confirm or discover (“discover” is too big a word for the act, really, but it’s the closest either the dictionary or I could get) the answer to something fairly straightforward or already written down: We “find out,” for example, what the homework is; what time a movie starts; a person’s last name; and, as Renee asked, “the rules,” which given the context, are presumably ones already ones set down and recorded.

“To find out ABOUT” something changes the meaning; “about” implies that there is something bigger than a simple answer to confirm or discover. If someone asked you to “find out about” someone’s last name, you might look into* the name’s ethnic origin, meaning, change or spelling, etc. to uncover various elements “concerning,” “in regard to,” or “about” the name. So to “find out about” volunteering would involve several calls or queries to see how to go about* it, what choices there are, whom to contact, etc. In other words, finding out about something entails more than a pre-determined fact or answers, but a larger scope of different things to think about* or consider.

Just one more thing: why Renee is right when she says that both “rules” and “volunteering” are nouns. “Volunteering,” in the context of finding out about it, is a “gerund” – that is, a noun formed from a verb. And when a verb form follows a preposition (or phrasal verb particle), it almost always takes a gerund. This is why we say “to look forward to _______ing” (seeing, doing, meeting, etc.) or “from _______ing (listening, talking, running, etc.). To find out “about” something requires a gerund as well – hence, “volunteering.”

So keep on* coming up with* excellent questions and The Language Lady will happily follow up* and get back to* you.

St. Jude’s Gives No Thanks to Parallel Structure

While out Christmas shopping last month I noticed a small, green card at my local Ann Taylor store. It was from the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and it featured a beaming but bald child as part of its admirable outreach to raise money for children with cancer. I picked it up and read, “Give thanks for the healthy kids in your life, and give to those who are not.”

Hmmmm. Another case of some institution verbally mangling an ad campaign (see Language Lady’s “Citibank,” 12/31/09).

Of course, I knew what the card was TRYING to say, but there was something about the wording that was not quite natural – something amiss; speaking of which, a few days later I saw a youthful- if not exactly natural-looking, 72-year-old Marlo Thomas, deliver this same message on TV: “Give thanks for the healthy children in your life,” the St. Jude spokesperson said, adding in her vaguely croaky, “That Girl”-ish voice, “and give to those who are not.”

Oh, Marlo – can’t you hear that awkward syntax?

Apparently not. This was the sixth year of the research hospital’s “Thanks and Giving” campaign – big posters, small cards, TV ads, all asking us holiday shoppers to give, in effect, to ‘the HEALTHY kids who are NOT in our lives.’

I realize that is not what Marlo Thomas meant, and that most people understand the message: that we should be grateful for the healthy kids in our life, and to give money (via St. Jude) to sick kids.

Given that St. Jude’s foremost goal is to find a cure for childhood cancer, this is an understandable, and well-intentioned request. But the message is a mess.

The copywriter attempted to use a parallel construction, like Julius Caesar’s, “I came; I saw; I conquered.” See how each part repeats the structure of the one before? Julius is clear, strong, and concise – nice!

Twenty-year-old songstress Taylor Swift uses parallel construction in her current hit, “You Belong to Me,” when she sings: “She wears short shorts -- I wear T-shirts … She wears high heels – I wear sneakers.” Such parallel construction provides clear contrast between two statements.

St. Jude’s attempted contrasting statements, loosely interpreted, are: “Give thanks for healthy kids; give money to sick kids.” The trouble is, actually writing that sounds too crass. So the copywriter softened it up – but in doing so, he came up with two statements that have different grammatical structures – thus misaligning the key contrast between “healthy” and “sick”.

Tweaking for parallel structure (not meaning) would render the phrase as:

“Give thanks for the healthy kids in your life, and give to those unhealthy kids who are not in your life.” This makes no sense – but it’s at least parallel.

When taken apart bit by bit, the slogan’s flaws become clear:

• “Give thanks for the healthy kids in your life,”

The structure is Subject (an understood “you,” who should be giving), Verb (Give), Direct Object (thanks), Indirect Object (Kids – technically, object of the preposition “for” but in the bigger scheme, “kids” are the indirect object of someone’s giving), and the adjective phrase, “in your life,” modifying kids.

• “… and give to those who are not.”

Subject (understood “you”), Verb (“give”) --- and there the symmetry stops.

There is no direct object, and the indirect object, ”those,” refers to the “healthy kids” mentioned in the first part; and “who are not” corresponds to “in your life.”

But given that this campaign has been going since 2004 and I seem to be the only one whining in the syntactical wilderness, St Jude’s should give thanks to grammatically forgiving (or unaware) donors.

Still – why not try to say it right:

“Give thanks to the children in your life who are healthy, and give to those who are not.”

Citibank "Commits to Improve"

 
It’s the last day of 2009 – a strange year, one that started with all kinds of banks collapsing, merging, converging, and coming back from the brink. It seems like the worst is over – phew! So it’s not surprising that one of the bigger banks, Citibank (and my bank, it so happens), has recently launched a new campaign to re-gain or re-affirm customer confidence. Yet I’m stuck with this thought:
 
Is it possible to trust a bank that can’t even get a makeover-style marketing effort grammatically correct? Here’s Citibank’s new slogan:
 
“We commit to improve.”  Pardon me? The Language Lady’s pen froze on her deposit slip when she caught sight of that one.
 
The big promotion – printed in bold blue letters against a white background – from wallet-sized cards to big posters hanging in branch windows makes a list of various worthy but vague promises like, “We promise to be there when you need us” and is summed up at the end with, “We Commit To Improve.”

Perhaps some of you readers are thinking, “So …?” But say it out loud: doesn’t it sound odd? You wouldn’t say, “We’re committing to improve,” would you? Or “We have committed to improve.” Of course not. Saying “We commit to improve” (IMPROVE, of all things!) is the verbal equivalent of trying to gain someone’s trust by holding out a filthy hand.
 
The slogan is wrong on so many grammatical levels:
 
• First, “improve” should be “improving” – that is, “We commit to improving.” Whenever we commit, we commit to some THING, and a THING falls into the “noun” category. There is a type of noun formed from the root of a verb + ing, and this is called a gerund. You can say, “We commit to better health” (better health = a thing) and thus, “We commit to improving (also a thing), though still not a great sentence. Here’s why:
 
• Look at that verb tense in “We commit” Anyone who read my “You Lie! (No, You’re Lying)” blog of October 5, 2009, will recall that using the present simple tense (“I speak,” “you lie,” etc.) is for facts or repeated actions. When we are in the act or process of doing something (and Citibank is in the process of improving) we use the continuous tense (“I’m speaking,” “you’re lying,” etc.) So Citibank’s saying “We commit” should contain a suggestion that they do this on a regular basis, like: “We always commit to improving;” or “We commit to improving on every Wednesday.” A “We commit” all by itself sounds as unnatural as South Carolina’s Senator Joe Wilson shouting out, “You lie!” to President Obama,; however, Language Lady readers have pointed out that Senator Wilson’s outburst was in acceptable Southern dialect -- but Citibank cannot claim the same.
 
• “Commit” can take the active voice when what is being committed is some external thing: “We are committing funds to this project.” But when describing a personal commitment, we use the passive voice: “I am committed to this relationship;” “she is committed to her job.” Citibank’s use of “commit” is wrong: although they are trying to convey personal commitment, they are using the wrong voice:
 
What Citibank meant to say was, “We are committed to improving.”
 
I know this year has been one of cutbacks and lay-offs. So is what happened here a case of Ed from Accounting being yanked from his cubicle to replace the recently laid-off Anne in Communications? How did this slogan fall through the editorial cracks like that? And is my money going to fall through similar financial cracks? Well??
 
Grammatical competence is a form of competence – and if a bank can’t be outwardly competent, then what?  It’s possible to see what’s at risk here for 2010:
 
Citibank’s shoddy slogan wreaks havoc with consumer confidence, and the subsequent run on the bank spurs a domino effect in the entire banking system and it’s …. 2009 all over again.

Happy New Year!!
 
 

A Question of “Of”

The Language Lady is always eager to answer readers’ questions. Today, I am printing a recent question from a reader, “Danny,” in California, who wants to know about that potentially tricky word, “of”:

Danny: It's widely agreed among linguists that "of" is superfluous in phrases such as "that long OF a game" or "not that handsome OF an actor" or "too big OF a task."

The rule I derive from this is that when "of" follows an adjective in such situations, it's superfluous.

But how about when "of" follows "much," as in "it wasn't much of a game" or "too much of a challenge"? If "much" in those phrases is an adjective, does it "violate" the rule? Or is it an idiomatic exception to the rule? Or in those cases is it not an adjective at all, but a noun?

The Language Lady: The short answer to your question, Danny, is: Yes!

That is, “much,” as in “It wasn’t much of a game,” is a pronoun; more specifically, a pronoun complement, which means that “It” and “much” refer to each other. (That’s why saying, “This is she,” is correct when you answer the phone (unless you’re a guy and you say, “This is HE.”) And in the sentence, “That was not much of a game,” the prepositional phrase, “of a game,” modifies “much.”

The other sentence, “He is not that good of an actor,” is – as suspected – wrong. It should be, “He is not that good an actor.” (OR: He is not much of an actor.)

The reason is, the prepositional phrase, “of an actor” is trying unsuccessfully to modify the adjective, “good.” But prepositional phrases cannot modify adjectives – only nouns or pronouns: a street IN London; the building ON the corner, a friend OF mine, etc.

In the above sentence, “good” describes both “He” AND “actor.” (These are all subject “complements,” since they all refer to each other.) Any “of” – as you said -- would be superfluous, tacked onto the wrong part of speech.

Which is why saying, “Not that big OF a deal” is so cringe-worthy. It should either be “Not that big a deal” or “No big deal.”

If I Were in the (Subjunctive) Mood

Dear Language Lady, I’m not a language guy per se and certainly not a grammar guru, but since I do write, I am mindful of usage – past and present. I am thus curious about your take on “If I was you” vs “If I were you”. As I understand it, this is the subjunctive mood (designating contingency rather than fact) and is thus correctly stated as, “If I were you”.

The sentence “I was acting as if I were you” uses both the regular past tense and the subjunctive.

-- Gerry (Canada)

Dear Gerry –

You’re a language guy to me if you can spot your English subjunctive! I was given a thorough grounding in grammar in elementary and middle school, but I still did not learn about the English subjunctive until I took foreign languages in high school and college. Even then, “If I was you” and “If I were you” both sounded right to my ears.

The reason both are used is due to basic language change: that is, it seems that teachers stopped teaching the English subjunctive decades ago – even before they stopped teaching English grammar all together 30-plus years ago. So the older generation continued saying, “If I were you,” while the younger generation began saying, “If I was you,” since no one explained the subjunctive rules to them. And when enough people say something for a long enough period, then that too becomes standard, acceptable English – even if it still seems “wrong.” Language, as with all things, changes (alas).

The textbook, “Grammar In Use”/Intermediate by British linguist Raymond Murphy, Cambridge University Press, 2007, which I use -- and love – for my English as a Second Language students, accepts both forms. On a more grass roots level, googling “If I were you” elicits 356 million results, as opposed to “If I was you” -- and a whopping 2.6 billion! The people are clearly speaking.

For a good explanation of the English subjunctive, I recommend the site, EnglishClub.com. (Click on: englishclub.com/grammar/verbs-subjunctive.htm)
This site says that “If I were you” is correct in all situations, while “If I was you” is correct in informal, familiar situations. I’d like to think so too, but “if I was” and other forgotten-subjunctive occasions appear in writing (books, articles, etc) so often, the formal and informal situations are no longer clearly defined.

Historically, English has done a lot to get rid of the subjunctive, which is why it is so hard for us native speakers to learn how to use it in other languages. Meanwhile, Spanish, French, and Portuguese, for instance, use present and past subjunctive all the time – as in “What do you want me to say?” and “I hope you’ll be surprised;” or German, along with the others, jumps in on the subjunctive bandwagon with a sentence like, “If she had more time, she would write more grammar blogs.” Portuguese even uses the future subjunctive following “if” and “when” in instances like, “If you want, we can go,” and “When you arrive, we will eat,” etc. to express a future uncertainty.

English, meanwhile, just avoids all this language subtlety by mainly sticking with verbs that sound like our regular present and past tenses: “She hopes you will like the present” and “I wished you would open it now” would both take the subjunctive in Latin languages.

The English subjunctive still hanging on in two cases: one, is with what I call business-type, more formal verbs: insist, request, demand, recommend, suggest; even there it is only visible with the 3rd person singular, as in “My boss insists that everyone BRING a laptop (not: “that everyone brings”);” or “They requested that she SIT in the corner (not: that she sits).

The subjunctive is more clearly seen in such cases with the verb, “be”:

“I ask that you BE quiet (not: ”that you are”)”; “The president suggested that all be at the meeting on time.”

The other place the English subjunctive is still hanging on (albeit by the proverbial thread) is in the hypothetical case with “if” and “as if”: “If I had a million dollars …” “as If I knew the answer …” “If /as if she understood the problem,” etc. All of these hypothetical clauses take what sounds like past tense; however, it is really the past tense (“you” form) AS the subjunctive form.

This usage is more apparent with the verb “to be” – particularly, when used in phrases like, “If I were you;” and “He wishes she were here.”

For the moment, Gerry, you may proudly stick with your “If I were you” (I think it sounds more elegant) but simply refrain from correcting any friends or colleagues who say the other form – they’re correct, too – though I wish it weren’t/wasn’t so.

“YOU LIE!” (No, “You’re Lying!”)

Perhaps you were watching President Obama’s speech on the evening of September 9, 2009 and heard (R-SC) Rep. Joe Wilson’s by now notorious, “You lie!” outburst. And even if you were not watching, you have probably at least read the subsequent news articles about it or caught the moment on YouTube. There have been many, many responses to this outburst but not one of them has remarked on how strange it is that a native-English-speaking American would shout out, “You lie!” and not, “You’re lying!”

Rep. Wilson claims that his outburst was spontaneous – but “You lie!” is simply not a natural tense for native speakers of English. “You lie” is in the present simple tense – the one we use for expressing facts or things done regularly: “I cook badly;” “She walks to work everyday.” “He lies when he’s stressed.”

When speaking of what we or someone else is doing at a particular moment, we use a tense called the present progressive (or continuous). Say you’re at the stove with raw meats, vegetables, and sauces in various pots and skillets and your spouse walks in and says, “Hi, honey – what’s up?” you’re not going to say, “I cook.” You would say, “I’m cooking.”

In that same way, “You lie” is a totally unnatural thing to say to another person when that person is still speaking: “You’re lying!” is what most of us would have said. (Or, as Whitney Houston is quoted as saying to Oprah Winfrey in this week’s National Enquirer, “You’re a liar!” Grammatically speaking, that is absolutely perfect.)

The difference between the present simple tense and present progressive is, respectively, as clear as the difference between “What do you do?” (i.e. for a living?) and “What are you doing?” (actively, now).

In his book, “Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue,” linguist John McWhorter goes to great lengths to show how English is distinguished from its Western European language counterparts (French, Spanish, German, Dutch, etc.) by this progressive tense – a Celtic influence not found on the Continent: the Celts were living in England when the West Germanic Saxon tribes overtook the island in the 6th century; the Celts then set about learning the language of the new Saxon rulers – bringing some structures of their own language into their adopted one.

That is why a “What’s up?” to someone in the kitchen in, say, New York or London prompts an “I’m cooking” answer; but the answer in Amsterdam, Berlin, Barcelona, or Paris would mostly likely be, when translated, “I cook.”

So, getting back to Joe Wilson and his so-called spontaneous outburst during the president’s speech before Congress on health care and other reforms: That evening, Obama had just finished saying, ““The reforms I am proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally,” when from the audience a voice yells out what we now know to be Wilson’s “You lie!” exclamation, but which is a bit unintelligible even on repeated viewings.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw9lQT1Ark4&feature=related

In any case, there is no dispute that “You lie!” is what Wilson said. Still, my question remains: How could Wilson claim his “You lie!” outburst was spontaneous, when it is simply not a natural thing for any native speaker of English (and Wilson is) to say? Perhaps Wilson thought that “You lie” was better -- punchier, stronger-sounding -- than the more drawn out, “You’re lying.” If that is the case, then there would be at least a bit of premeditation there. And where there is premeditation, there is no spontaneity.

So from a purely grammatical point of view, Wilson’s excuse for his outburst rings, ironically, false.

Between You and I

Between you and me, I think “between you and I” is giving way to everyday acceptance at a faster rate than the melting of the polar ice cap – and if that doesn’t make you cringe, then consider yourself part of that change. The rest of us are mere grammatical polar bears on an ever-shrinking base, at least where prepositions and object pronouns are concerned.



Specifically, I am talking about how it will soon be – or already is (except in grammar books) – generally acceptable to put an “I” where it technically should be “me.” Our own Harvard-educated president, who is also a lawyer, best-selling author, and someone generally acknowledged to be wonderfully articulate, has been quoted as saying, “it was a very personal decision for Michelle and I” and “the main disagreement with John and I.” The day before President Obama gave his first speech on the stimulus plan, half of the New York Times Op-Ed page was an article – mainly a defense -- of just this aspect of our Chief of State’s grammar. (See: “The I’s Have It,” Feb. 24, 2009.)



Standard, traditional grammar requires the object pronoun “me” to follow a preposition (in, for, to, by, with, etc.). Think about it: We say, “with me” -- so why say, “with Michelle and I”? To those of us brought up to admire and follow the logic and structure of grammar, breaking that particular rule has always been the linguistic equivalent of fingernails across an old slate blackboard. But the mere fact that I now have to explain what kind of board – the blackboard fast becoming obsolete, being replaced by the non-chill-inducing interactive whiteboard – also says something, however metaphorically, about language change.



And though this particular I-me switch has been around for decades, it has not been recognized as standard English. Even so, I figured a time would come when this confusion would be accepted into standard English, but I did not think it would be so soon. True, it is not in any grammar book now, but I am sensing An Inconvenient Grammatical Truth that I’m not sure even Al Gore can stop – because I’m not even sure if Al Gore knows the grammatical rule himself. Which is the whole point:



Knowing the standard form of English or any language is a practical thing -- a way to be understood by the majority of people, and along with that, a way to assimilate and move up the social ladder. Though some linguists have called the whole notion of standard English elitist and politically incorrect, this linguistic aspect of social mobility boils down to common sense: whether you’re a store manager or head of a global enterprise, you will probably hire the person you think will best be able to communicate with customers or clients.



Spoken standard English is also an unconscious preference, as witnessed most recently in the youtube sensation, Susan Boyle, who surprised over a 100 million viewers with her electrifying performance, singing “I Dreamed A Dream” on an American Idol-style British reality TV show audition. The most obvious part of the surprise was visual: this dowdy, middle-aged woman revealed a voice of startling youth and beauty. The other, more subtle surprise element was aural – in interviews before and after her singing, Ms. Boyle spoke in a plain, regional Scottish accent – nothing fancy, and sounding like a simple, middle-class woman. But her singing brought forth polished-sounding words flowing effortlessly out of her mouth in elegantly neutral-accented perfection; the live audience and panel erupted into cheers and standing ovations; youtube watchers worldwide got lumps in their throats and reached for tissues.



Foreigners who “do not speak well zee English” are usually given a little slack for grammatical errors; and many accents can be positively charming. But when you can’t understand a foreigner’s non-standard English, it is not so charming. Native speakers of English, who, let’s say, have heavy regional accents (like New Yawwk, Bahstn, or Southuhn) and who dot their sentences with “ain’t” or “youse” or double negatives like “He didn’t say nuttin’” are considered less educated and less socially refined. All else being equal among, say, job candidates, the person speaking standard English would be hired in a heartbeat over the other two.



But if President Obama thinks “with Michelle and I” sounds fine, what incentive does our fairly grammar-phobic population have to say, “with Michelle and me”? Because teaching English grammar in public school went out of fashion in the 1970s, most of today’s public school teachers never formally learned the subject themselves, nor are they required to teach it today. So at this point, confusing “me” and “I” is clearly not going to keep someone from being promoted at work, much less from holding the highest office in the land – just ask Bill Clinton, who was also heard to utter the occasional “with Hillary and I.”



Before too long I imagine that English grammar books will give readers an option – the traditional usage, and the new standard. In the English as a second language textbook, “Intermediate Grammar In Use” (University of Cambridge Press, 2008), author Raymond Murphy handles the rule regarding, “If I was you” vs. “If I were you” this way: both are fine. In this case, the original grammar rule was probably gradually over-ridden by so many people who did not know the original correct way to say it (“If I WERE you”), that the incorrect way gradually became standard as well. And so – sooner rather than later – I am betting that “I” will be okay, when following a preposition and another noun or pronoun before it.



Looking at how this works in other languages, it’s interesting to see that Spanish uses “me” directly after a preposition with no other people or pronouns, but changes to “I” when said with another person:

English Spanish

Come with me Ven conmigo (“migo” being the “me” suffix)

Come with Juan and I Ven con Juan y yo



French, meanwhile, keeps “me” as an object pronoun whether with just one person, or more; but the subject pronoun “I” becomes “me” when used with more than one person:



English French

He goes to school with me. Il va a l’ecole avec moi.

He goes to school with Jean and me. Il va a l’ecole avec Jean et moi.

(No change in “me” pronoun following preposition “avec”)



BUT



I go to school. Je vais a l’ecole.

Jean and me go to school. Jean et moi allons a l’ecole.

(Change occurs in the subject pronoun: “Je” – alone; “moi” when preceded by one or more names.)



In my lifetime, the linguistic changes I’ve noticed are mostly in vocabulary and expressions – from “groovy” to “in your face” to the “ough” being taken out of our “donuts.” But the seemingly imminent change of status with “with he and I” will be a first for pure grammatical change. So why do I compare this change to the melting of the polar ice cap? As if there’s something WRONG with this verbal change? Other readers may be cheering, or wondering what all the fuss is about.



Well, to be honest, I’m traditional and sentimental. After all, I am the daughter of a man who once called up my high school principal on reading in the school newspaper that “An Evening With Burt and I” would soon be coming to our stage. “You must be joking!” Dad said to the principal, who replied that the comic duo’s name was “Burt and I.” But it was nearly a heart-stopping moment for my father.



Language Lady reader Daniel White recently wrote (concerning the “if I was/If I were” rule), and commented that language people tended to be averse to change, because we like order and tidiness (well, not if you saw my desk). Yet there is something to that, grammar-wise: Grammar gives us a starting point, a guideline, and provides speakers and writers with a sense of linguistic security. Total grammatical liberation would not bring freedom, but chaos – imagine a highway with no traffic lanes.



Still, both Danny and I agree with William Safire, who says, "In the long run, usage calls the shots." So between you and I, Grammatical Polar Bears: start swimming.

Yes We Can… Split Auxiliaries

As the sun rose on a new presidential administration a few weeks ago, two small grammar terms -- ones rarely talked about, thought about, or even understood – briefly shared the limelight with President Barack Obama. These terms were “split infinitive” and the more obscure, “split auxiliary.”

The two terms’ 15 minutes of fame came on Inauguration Day, January 20, at the swearing-in ceremony; there, before two million people in Washington, D.C. and millions more watching on TV around the world, Supreme Court Justice John Roberts spoke aloud, and in segments, the Constitution’s 35-word oath of office, which the incoming chief executive, who stood facing him with his hand on the Bible, was to repeat as directed. The problem? His Honor changed the wording.

Instead of having Obama “solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States,” Chief Justice Roberts led the new president to “solemnly swear that I will execute the office of President of the United States faithfully.” That is, Roberts took the word “faithfully” (an adverb) out from between “will execute.” (Here, “will” is the auxiliary, or “helping” verb and “execute” is the main verb.) Roberts then placed “faithfully” at the end of the oath, where it sounded distinctly … odd.

After a brief pause of confusion, Obama repeated Justice Roberts’s words in the order they were delivered – but Roberts’s seemingly simple flub was so big, the two were obliged – to be on the safe side – to re-do the oath the next day.

This supreme snafu was written and talked about for at least a week afterward. Part of what emerged was that Roberts, in uniting a split auxiliary, had polarized writers, commentators, and the grammatically concerned. Also emerging from the debate was a discernible confusion between “split auxiliary” and “split infinitive.” Let me now explain the difference:
“Will faithfully execute” is an example of a split auxiliary: the auxiliary verb (“will”) is separated from the main verb (“execute”) by an adverb (“faithfully”). Infinitives, meanwhile, are verbs with the word, “to,” in front of them – like “to execute.” A “split infinitive” is when the “to” is separated from its main verb, such as: “to faithfully execute.” (More on split infinitives later.)

Few grammar books currently even address split auxiliaries (though early English usage expert H.W. Fowler discusses them in his book, “The King’s English,” 1930). One reason may be that standard English syntax, or word order, has us almost always placing adverbs before the verb they modify. For example, in “She usually walks to work,” the adverb “usually” modifies “walks.” There’s no problem there, because “walks” is a single verb, standing on its own.

Verbs with auxiliaries have two-parts: has/have + verb; will + verb; did + verb. For example: “She has seen that movie” and “She will see that movie.” In those sentences, “has seen” and “will see” are together. A “split auxiliary” occurs when an adverb is placed in between the two words: “She has already seen that movie;” and “She will never see that movie.” The adverb placement of “already” and “never” seems to “split” the verb – and some grammarians feel this is wrong.

However, most current grammar books – if they even address the question – support splitting auxiliaries, since it creates the least disruption in the flow of the sentence and is the way most people speak and write.

This view is backed by Patricia T. O’Connor, author of “Woe Is I” (2003), who clearly and wittily explains grammar to native English speakers; the view is also supported by the English-as-a-second-language authors, Raymond Murphy (British) and Kenneth Folse (American), who pointedly instruct non-native speakers to place the adverb after the helping verb. Holy split auxiliary!

Of course, native English speakers know when and how to vary the rules. In her blog “Pheta Beta Cons,” conservative writer and literary critic Carol Iannone says, “It has always been possible to say in English, I will gladly come, I will come gladly, I gladly will come, and even gladly will I come and gladly I will come. The difference lies in what emphasis the speaker wishes to give and what rhetorical effect one wishes to have” and the Language Lady quite strongly agrees. But for everyday purposes, it’s hard to improve on the original.

In that way, James Madison’s “will faithfully execute” seems indisputably correct – both for standard syntax, and even as a way that gives the all-important “faithfully” its due.

The split infinitive, meanwhile, is well known in grammar circles -- and its supporters and detractors are as fervent as devoted members of a political party. The reason has something to do with the linguistic divide between those who feel grammar should represent a kind of spoken and written ideal, and those who feel it should simply reflect the way most people speak.

Most people learn about the “infinitive” (“to” + main verb) through studying a foreign language, when verbs are presented in their infinitive form – as in, “venir” (Spanish) or “kommen” (German), both of which mean “to come.” An infinitive does not show a tense or agree with a singular or plural person. Infinitives in most languages are one word, but English has a two-part infinitive -- and somewhere in the 19th century some grammarian deemed it wrong to split the two parts up. (That is, “I want to quickly finish this blog,” should instead keep the infinitive together and say, “I want to finish this blog quickly.” To Language Lady, both are fine.)

In her book, “Painless Grammar,” (Barron’s 2006) Rebecca Elliot, Ph.D., gives examples of how writing is better served by NOT splitting infinitives:

WEAK: It is usually better to not split infinitives.
BETTER: It is usually better not to split infinitives.

Elliot cautions that if you do split an infinitive, you should be sure not to put too many words between “to” and the main verb, as in:

WEAK: “My mother told me to every day and without fail come right home after school.”
BETTER: My mother told me to come home right after school every day, without fail.

In the above sentence, keeping the infinitive together improved the whole structure and order of the sentence.

Still, when separated by just one or maybe two words, a split infinitive works just fine:
FINE: In winter, I like to sometimes walk through the snowy woods by myself.
EQUALLY FINE: In winter, I sometimes like to walk through the snowy woods …

The irony in Elliot’s advice regarding too many words in a split infinitive is that Roberts made a parallel faux pas in “correcting” the oath’s split auxiliary. When he says “…solemnly swear that I will execute the office of the President of the United States faithfully,” there are no fewer than NINE words between “execute” and “faithfully;” and in that location, “faithfully” almost seems like an afterthought -- instead of what should be a central idea.

And yet there are quite strong feelings in favor of Roberts’s changes out there:

A loyal Language Lady reader, a lawyer, wrote in an email regarding the Roberts mess that he had tweaked a colleague’s memos over the years to “fix” the split infinitives. The unappreciative colleague considered this tweaking obsessive, hyper-correct, and unnecessary. These two represent the two conflicting sides of the to split-or-not–to-split debate.

The Pro-splitters – those who feel that splitting infinitives is fine – are supported by most current grammar books and sites. But the Anti-splitters’ views are upheld by the modern bible of grammar usage, “Elements of Style” (1959 – revised in 2000). Authors William Strunk and E.B. White say that splitting infinitives "should be avoided unless the writer wishes to put unusual stress on the adverb.”

The most famous split infinitive and one referred to in almost every article on the subject is found in the opening to the 60’s TV show, “Star Trek”: there, narrator Captain Kirk explains that the starship’s goal is “to boldly go where no man has gone before.” Even the anti-splitter lawyer above, a Strunk & White adherent, felt “boldy” usage was justified – but that “faithfully” was not. He wrote:

Most split infinitives do not call for that sort of adverbial stress, so the rule should be to avoid it in most cases. Thus, I'd say that Captain Kirk was right in saying "to boldly go"; James Madison (or whoever) was wrong in writing "to faithfully execute".


My questions to the anti-splitter lawyer are, Why doesn’t “faithfully” deserve emphasis? And where else would you put it?

After the Inauguration Day debacle, The New York Times tried to get to the bottom of Roberts’s mistake. The editors called in Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, who wrote a strongly opinionated op-ed piece on January 22 called, “Oaf of Office.” You can guess what Pinker thought of Chief Justice Roberts’s presumed Constitutional tweaking: Pinker claimed that Roberts was one of those weird grammar people who are insecure about their writing, so meekly obey some ancient, illogical, and ridiculous rule to never split two-part verbs.

Pinker’s opinion infuriated right-wing commentator Laurence Auster. In his blog, “View from the Right,” Auster said:

“Thus Pinker, the supposed rational man of science, reveals himself as a pseudo-intellectual twit operating under the sway of the stupidest and meanest liberal prejudices about conservatives, to the point where he makes up a grammatical rule (about split auxiliaries, which Auster wrote that he had never heard of) and a conservative belief about that rule that don't exist. And The New York Times published this worthless drivel.”

Auster said that not splitting infinitives was a rule “that good writers generally follow even today,” and added parenthetically: “(I myself follow it unswervingly, but don't require others to be that strict).”

Again, none of these anti-splitters has shown or even remotely suggested where “faithfully” could go that would improve upon the natural order, the one that Madison used. Saying, “I faithfully will execute” is understandable but not normal English syntax, and the same goes for, “I will execute faithfully.” And what Roberts said sounded even worse.

In fact, grammar aside, “What WAS Roberts thinking?” As a lifetime lawyer, did Roberts really think that he could change the words on a 220-year-old contract (as the oath technically is) without it mattering?

Most newspaper columnists called what Roberts did “a flub,” or an “accident,” but those would be more like mispronouncing a word, or tripping over his tongue. What Roberts actually did was tamper with the wording – which seems like sheer delusional chutzpah (akin to presidential cabinet members and nominees not paying their taxes). The question remains, was it premeditated or not:

If Roberts had rehearsed the oath– and with an estimated crowd of two million, and a televised and online audience of many more millions --- you’d think he might have gone over the oath once or twice beforehand. And say that in rehearsing, Roberts found the placement of “faithfully” to be personally annoying or, in his mind, “wrong,” you’d think he would have practiced saying it otherwise – if only for the private satisfaction of besting a founding father. And let’s say that in doing that, the grammarian side of Roberts decided that, awkward or not, and legal or not, split auxiliaries should be united, and that maybe no one would notice. This would explain why, during the inauguration, Roberts did not try to correct himself – and why Obama repeated Roberts’s words as the chief justice spoke them. We may never know for sure what ran through Roberts’s head.

As for President Obama, generally acknowledged to be an eloquent speaker, the “Yes We Can” man is firmly in favor of split auxiliaries: on the night he won the Iowa primary, he said, “You know, they said this day would never come (as opposed to “never would come”);” he later said that he would win by building a coalition for change; that that would be “how we’ll finally meet the challenges that we face as a nation (as opposed to “how we finally will meet).”

But whatever your political or split-or-not-to-split persuasion, the point is this:
Grammar was invented to enhance clarity first, eloquence second. If adhering to a rule for tradition’s sake actually takes away from the meaning, then it is
self-defeating.

However, if you feel the desire to strongly, insightfully, thoroughly, and with ample precision, respectfully disagree – then go right ahead. Except … just not with the Presidential Oath.

I’m Good, Thanks

Language Lady enjoys hearing from readers, and this topic came from one of them.

Dear Language Lady,
Help! Lately, when I bump into friends and ask how they’re doing, they tend to reply, “I’m well, thanks!” Well? Doesn’t “well” mean how they’re feeling after being sick? (And that is not what they mean.) Or is saying, “I’m good, thanks” – meaning things are going okay, I’m basically happy, etc.” ungrammatical? And if so, should I feel “bad” or “badly” about this faux pas?!
-- Desperately Seeking Clarification, Leyden, MA

Dear Clarification,

With 2009 now so close, it would not be good to start another year with continued confusion – and widespread confusion too – over “well” and “good.” The correct reply is, “I’m good, thanks” – and in saying that, I am sure to have readers who are already foaming at the mouth, pointer finger raised, grammatical explanation at the ready. And Language Lady welcomes all challenges!

It seems that people who say, “I’m good,” say it because that’s what is most common, and they either think it’s grammatically correct, or don’t care either way. But people who say, “I’m well, thanks” are being what is known in linguistic circles as “hyper-correct,” thinking that “good” is ungrammatical. (Of course, you can always say, “I’m FINE, thanks” and avoid the controversy all together.)

One staunchly pro-“I’m well, thanks” blogger, is a New Zealand preacher and Toastmaster writing as The District Grammarian; there he is, down at the opposite end of the world, bemoaning what he feels is the wretched growth in popularity of “I’m good, thanks” – and blaming it all on – of all people – Elvis Presley, whose 1956 song, “Love Me Tender,” (and not, alas, “Love Me Tenderly) is, according to him, the starting point of the whole improper use of the English adverb. Here’s a snippet from his column (http://baptism.co.nz/gram09.html):

To the question “How are you”? I am sorry that the answer is increasingly “I'm good” even though no question has been made of your moral or ethical standards. The response you should be giving is “I'm well” (assuming you are). I'm just walking quick. Perhaps you mean quickly?




The well-intentioned grammarian is mixing apples with oranges here, and the difference is in the verbs. There are two types of verbs – action verbs, and non-action verbs – and each type comes with separate rules:

Let’s look at the District Grammarian’s sentence, “I’m just walking quick. Perhaps you mean quickly?” DG is right – the sentence should be, “I’m just walking quickly.” “Quickly” describes the verb, “walking;” any word that describes a verb is an adverb, and the adverb form of the adjective, “quick,” is “quickly.”

But the verb in “How are you?” is not an action verb; technically speaking, the verb “to be” (and forms, am/are/is/were etc.) is a “copulative” verb, meaning that it joins or links the subject with its “complement,” which is the word that comes after the verb that refers to the subject. For example: “She is my mother.” In that sentence, “She” and “mother” are the same thing; “she” is the subject, and “mother” is the noun complement. Now let’s take, “She is smart”; in that one, “she” and “smart” refer to the same person, so “smart” is the adjective complement.

Other copulative verbs are: act, appear, seem, become, remain, look, sound, feel, smell, taste, and grow. That is why we say, “Mmmm – that smells (or tastes) good!” or “He remained calm;” or “Your idea sounds good;” or “They seem angry.” All of those sentences are copulative (as funny as that may sound). Thus, the reply, “I’m good,” with the definition of “good” being, say, “cheerful; optimistic; amiable”, or even “free of distress or pain,” is that of the complementary adjective. (BTW, the definition that DG gives as being morally or ethically good is only one of the 41 uses of “good” listed in Dictionary.com.)
This same question, from a blogger named Lisa, in Boston, who generally writes about everyday sorts of thing and not grammar, prompted a long thread of responses. She writes (http://lisahadley.blogspot.com/2008/01/im-well-thank-you.html):

Oh grammar.
Yesterday a girl I work with tried to tell me that it's proper grammar to say "I'm good" when someone asks how I'm doing and that I'm wrong when I say "I'm well" because "well" is an adverb and "good" is an adjective. It seems that "well" functions as an adjective here, describing a state of well-being. Am I right? Spencer? Jenny? Somebody? I feel like my grammar is under attack.

Now, Language Lady readers, knowing what you have just read, what do you think? How would you reply? Here are some of the responses:

Maggie said...
ok, as an english major, and especially after being lectured on this numerous times by my department chair my entire 4 years of college, it's never ok to say "i'm good" when asked how you are. in fact, when i'm lax and it slips out in rare instances, I still look around, waiting for my dept chair to come beat me over the head with a copy of her little brown handbook (grammar) or strunk and white. don't ask.

Maggie said...
and by the way, it works the same in portuguese, you might point out. bad grammar to say "to boa" (i'm good) when someone asks you "como esta?" (how are you). you have to say "estou bem" (i'm well). so she loses in two languages, not just one.
Lisa said...
I actually pointed that out to her (she speaks Spanish). You would not say "Estoy bueno."

Anonymous said...
I hate to say it, but you were wrong. It's ok to say "I'm good." Good in this case functions as a predicate adjective. Furthermore - this is important - the "am" works as a linking verb, not an action verb as people often assume. "Grammar snobs are great big meanies"


Serge Levykin said...
The question "How?" should be answered with an adverb because it relates to a verb. "How does he swim?" - "He swims perfectly." "How do they talk?" - "They talk slowly." "How ARE you?" - "I AM well." The question refers to a manner of doing something. Questions relating to a quality pertaining to a noun should be answered with an adjective. "What colour is the sky?" - "The sky is blue." "What kind of a father is he?" - "He is good".


For a moment, Serge’s comment (and Serge is from Australia) came dangerously close to ruining my argument, and yet it goes back to the old copulative/action verb distinction: If you ask, “How does he swim?” Then “perfectly” or some other adverb – well, terribly, slowly – would be a correct reply.
But if you ask, “How does this taste?” you don’t say, “It tastes terribly,” but rather, “It tastes terrible (or good, bad, or awful)” because of the whole complementary adjective thing. In the question, “How are you?” the word “how” (technically an adverb, but not in this case) refers to “you” (a pronoun) and NOT to the verb “are,” which is merely there to link the “how” to “you.” Serge’s point about “how” being the manner of doing something applies well to swimming but not to a non-active state of being.

As for other languages, it’s like explaining to your kids why they can’t do something that their friend can: Other families--other rules. In Spanish, it’s true that the standard reply to “Como estas?” (How are you?”) is, “Estoy bien” (I’m well); in Portuguese, the question is usually phrased, “Como vai?” (How are you going?) and the response is “bem” (well) – but also, typically – “tudo bom,” i.e. “Everything’s good.” And since English is a West Germanic dialect, let’s look at German: “Wie geht es Ihnen?” means literally, “How goes it to you?” to which the standard positive response is, “Es geht mir gut,” or, “It goes to me good.”
So using other languages to justify English usage is no good (“good” as a noun).

Finally, then, which is correct: “I feel bad” or “I feel badly”? If Language Lady has made herself at all clear on this point, then you should be able to know. (Pause here to think, or hum “Jeopardy” tune.) Okay, time’s up:

If you chose “badly,” I’m sorry – you’re wrong. The “feel” in that kind of sentence is not an action verb, not the same as in, “He quickly felt the old dog’s matted fur.” In the “I feel (something emotional)” case, the subject, “I,” is followed by the linking-verb sense of “feel,” so a complement should follow that describes the subject; and since subjects are nouns or pronouns, the complement must be an adjective. So …

If you chose, “I feel bad,” you’re right! And I hope you feel good about that.

Humpty Dumpty and Wall Street: Nursery Rhymes and the News

The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article with the headline, “London’s Best is Falling Down” about the decline in sales of homes in fancy London neighborhoods; a full-page ad in the New York Times featured a clay piggy bank stuffed with dollar bills, with the catchy line, “Guess Where This Little Piggy Went …” – an Ameritel ad for wireless phone bill savings. And a New Yorker cartoon last month had two lambs talking in a field, with one saying, “My self-esteem was so low I just followed her around everywhere she would go.”

Most adults, and even most children, in the English-speaking world would recognize in the headline, ad, and cartoon that each was based on a simple nursery rhyme, respectively: London Bridge is Falling Down; This Little Piggy Went to Market; and Mary Had a Little Lamb.

But those single references are nothing compared to the year Humpty Dumpty has been having: the famously clumsy egg has not only become the poster boy for the economic crisis, he has become an adjective as well, as in “Humpty Dumpty Economics,” a reference that pulls up 62,000 sites on Google and which refers to the policies that have brought the world to its current financial crisis.

But aren’t nursery rhymes for babies? Just what are Humpty Dumpty and company doing in our newspapers and magazines, anyway?

On close inspection, it can be safely said that Americans and the English like their cultural references. These include puns, parodies, and other clever takes on famous lines from classic books (Aesop’s fables, the Bible and Shakespeare, on up to more modern classic novels); movies (from cult to current favorites); and sayings from famous people, contemporary or historical -- all of which run rampant in the headlines of the New York Times, the Economist, and other prominent publications in the United States and England.

The Economist used Aesop’s fable, Tortoise and the Hare, to draw readers to an article about Argentina and Brazil; the New Yorker last month used the same pair on the cover as a metaphor for the continued presidential race.

This past spring, when now ex-New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was caught cheating on his wife with a call girl from an agency called The Emperor’s Club, the reference to Hans Christian Anderson’s tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes inspired headlines for the New York Observer and Institutional Investor, as well as another New Yorker cover.

A recent full-page ad in Newsweek and elsewhere,from the company iShares, featured a simple acorn, with the tag line: “Maybe the Sky Isn’t Falling,” with the added message, “Don’t let all the hype and uncertainty distract you from your long-term investment goals.” The ad assumes readers remember the alarmist Chicken Little, who, when an acorn falls on his head in a forest one day, runs off to tell the king that the sky is falling.

Editors, headline writers, advertisers, and cartoonists of the English-speaking world use these references as a way of luring readers to their articles and illustrations. Americans like these cultural references (I’m generalizing broadly here) because they’re catchy, direct, and make a potentially complex subject seem easy; the English, meanwhile (and more generalizing), like cultural references because they appeal to their more literary, verbally playful side.

So, for example, an article about Australian river management in the Economist is titled, “Not so gently down the stream,” a reference to the preschool favorite, “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” Such a title might actually get a reader to peruse at least the first paragraph, whereas something like “Climate change and drought change boating habits in Australia” would ring up a “Next!” and a quick flick to the next page.

Nursery rhymes are an interesting pick for cultural references, though, because they go back to poems and ditties we learn as preverbal, or barely verbal, babies. The rhymes and characters found in these verses, most of which are between 150 and 400 years old, are silly and old fashioned at best, and then sometimes downright strange and bizarre choices for soothing or entertaining children: (see “Rockabye Baby”). Some rhymes were made up for children, while others are disguised as darker political statements whose meaning has been long forgotten. (Why else would parents continue to sing about a baby falling out of a tree, cradle and all?!) Even so, somehow these early poems stay with us – and explain in shorthand, and with simple humor, what is going on in our world.

But say you are a foreigner – even one quite fluent in English – but nonetheless unfamiliar with Mother Goose (the mythical figure who made up these rhymes). And say you see a New Yorker cover, such as the one from this past February:
There before you is a giant, vaguely grotesque egg dressed in bow tie and suit, a skinny arm raised in despair, while sitting on a wall marked “Stock Exchange.” You get that it is financially related, but why … an egg?

Meanwhile, the English-speaking audience knows the meaning at a glance from four simple lines learned long, long ago:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall;
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

Humpty Dumpty is an instant, visual metaphor for the recent failure of banks, government lending institutions, and private Wall Street companies -- and the inability of economists and policy-makers to put him back together again.

These days, financial crisis headlines using Humpty Dumpty shorthand range from established business publications to personal blog sites. There is Forbes magazine’s “The Humpty Dumpty Economy” and the Financial Times’ “Humpty-Dumpty legal interpretation by the UK government” (re frozen British assets in Icelandic banks); then there’s “The Coyote’s Byte: A Place for Me to Howl at the Moon” (from Phoenix, AZ): “Humpty Dumpty and Republicans That Make You Go Hmm…”

In any case, by the time we start kindergarten we have already started to forget them; by the time we’re teens and young adults, Humpty Dumpty, Little Bo Peep and the rest of the gang are faded, distant, barely memorable memories. But then – boom: once we become a newspaper-reading adult, the headlines and references to those lost rhymes and characters rise, somewhat hazily, to the surface; and once we become parents ourselves, and crack open the Mother Goose book received as a baby present, the verses are more fully revived, ready to be passed on from one generation to the next.

Just how much longer such rhymes remain a source of cultural and generational unity is something the British currently worry about: “Humpty Dumpty Falls From Favour” (The Times, July 2007), as new parents find these rhymes “irrelevant” and perhaps not as catchy as newer tunes. My own son -- now 17 years old but at one time a big Humpty Dumpty fan – sees little use in repeating these seemingly strange verses. But time has yet to tell if the sky is falling on nursery rhymes as cultural references, or not.

Part and Participled

“Parts of the city might be under-retailed, though I don’t think any part of the city is under-Dunkin’ Donuted.”
--Jonanthan Bowles, Center for an Urban Future,

“Under-Dunkin’ Donuted”?

The quote came from the free daily newspaper, Metro, in a recent article about the number of chain restaurants in New York City. I don’t think that the speaker, Jonathan Bowles, intended to coin any particularly new usage with his unique “under-Dunkin’ Donuted” – it was probably just the most efficient way for him to say that although some areas of the city might not have enough stores in general, nowhere is there a lack of Dunkin’ Donuts.

Now I know we American English speakers have taken certain brand names and turned them in nouns – like Kleenex , Band-aid, Post-it. And some of those brand names nouns are also verbs (scotch tape, Xerox, Wite-Out). Other languages have turned brand names into general nouns: Spanish, with Bic (for “pen”); French with Gillette (as “razors.”)

But I don’t know another language where you can take the name of a store, restaurant, or in this case, an international chain retailer that sells 35 varieties of donuts and other calorie-laden goodies, and turn it into a participle.

A participle is that verb form that ends in either “ing” (informing) or “ed” (informed) or some irregular ending (written, sold, brought, etc); it can act as a verb (I am informing; I have informed) or an adjective (I am informed). Participles are amazingly useful in everyday speech.

Participles that end in “ing” are present participles; they’re present because they show some action in progress (either now or in the past): I am working; I was working; I have been working, etc. Past participles are ones that go with helping verbs like “have” and “had”: I have written; you had worked. And it is this past participle form that is also used as an adjective – and the one that has become the most flexible:

When I moved to New York in the 1980’s a friend commented that people in Manhattan were totally “yupped” out, meaning that everyone looked very yuppy (do you remember the word created from “young urban professionals”?) in their work clothes – especially women in their shoulder-padded blazers and floppy ties.

Did you catch the word “shoulder-padded” just now? That is a participle, which, like under-Dunkin’ Donuted, you will not find in the dictionary, but which requires no explanation to understand that it means, blazers with shoulder pads. If I had said “… women in their blazers with shoulder pads and floppy ties” it would have sounded like the blazers had floppy ties. And if I had written “women in their floppy ties and blazers with shoulder pads,” it would have been clearer, but clumsy. Shoulder-padded is the way to go – and unofficial though the word may be, English does not need any grammatical permission to make those kinds of switcheroos. The structure of our language is set up to handle that kind of thing.

In German, there is a fanciful term for “jack of all trades” that translates as “the egg-laying, wool-and-milk pig” or eierlegende wollmilchsau (Iyer-LAY-guehn-duh-vole-milsh-zow). In a Latin language such a concept would have to be written out as “a pig that lays eggs and produces wool and milk” – which loses much in the translation. English can clearly handle the idea; we just happen not to have that particular expression in our book. But the fact that we can stack our participles-as-adjectives and turn nouns (wool, milk) into adjectives to describe a type of versatile pig shows the essence of our language’s West Germanic foundation—and the basis for its flexibility.

Such verbal elasticity shows up with Google, a trademark term (noun, and one derived from “googol,” a mathematical term) that is scarcely as old as a fifth grader, but which is now noted in the dictionary in lower case as a verb: I google, I googled, I have googled. And though it is not yet listed as an adjective, it certainly is used that way -- as in, “a much-googled site.” (I just googled “googled site” and there were over 2 million usages, though some of them were the past tense of google, and not the participle.)

Starbucks, that popular purveyor of caffeinated beverages, is not in the dictionary yet, nor has it even become an unofficial common noun or verb, despite its ubiquity. Still, as a participle, it clearly works: if you said that your neighborhood was totally over-Starbucked (or in lower case, starbucked), you would know just how easy it is to get a double soy latte where you live. In fact, there are over 30,000 Google usages listed for “Starbucked.”

But so far, "under-Dunkin' Donuted" has only a single reference on Google – the one in the August 1, 2008 New York Metro. It’s such a specific adjective that I can’t imagine much room for its growth, except maybe as another part of speech. As a noun, it might be used like, “The under-Dunkin’ Donutedness of the neighborhood ...” As a verb, it could go: “Homeowners have intentionally under-Dunkin’ Donuted the neighborhood.” Have fun with it!

However, perhaps we’ll start to see more chain retailers turn into participial adjectives – like, over-jamba juiced or thoroughly chipotleed (2 “e’s” for the final “e” sound). But “under-Dunkin’ Donuted” has a certain special sound: maybe it’s the recurring, alliterative “d” in its four out of seven syllables, and the way you have to say each syllable clearly — there’s no way you can rush that phrase, yet. Plus it’s a lot funnier-sounding than say, “Mac Attack” (a noun meaning a sudden craving for a MacDonald’s Big Mac hamburger).

It’s simply hard not to appreciate “under-Dunkin’ Donuted” as a prime example of everyday English adaptability, and a sort of delicious one at that.

Howya Doin? Contracted Speech

The Language Lady’s “No-Business-Like-Shoe-Business” Award for Linguistic License goes this summer to Kenneth Cole’s flagship Rockefeller store: The backdrop for the July window display had two wall-sized panels with July written in bold across the panels. On either side of July were gray-colored words that, on close inspection, were questions that used that word “July” in an unusual way:

July about your weight? July about how much you make? July about walking the dog? July about renting a house in the Hamptons? July about your age? July about what you did last night? July about the report? Why July to me?

Whoever dreamed that up deserves some major props (Didn’t know I knew rap slang popularized in the 1990’s, did you? “Props” is short for “proper respect.”) for using linguistic contraction in such a timely and seasonal manner. English is full of such contraction, or reduction, in our everyday speech: Whadja do daday? Didja hafta say that? I’m gonna letcha have it. Wanna go? Even the most articulate speakers, if they want to sound natural, use this type of reduction in their speech – or risk sounding too formal and stilted. But until the Kenneth Cole window display, I had never seen “did you lie” rendered as “July.” And in July! Nice.

Of course, we have Woody Allen to thank for this: his “Annie Hall” (1977) brought this type of speech into mass awareness. In the movie, Woody, playing the insecure, neurotic character Alvy Singer, who feels painfully aware of his “outsider” status because he is Jewish, complains to his friend about what he perceives as an anti-Semitic remark. Alvy says:
“You know, I was having lunch with some guys from NBC, so I said, 'Did you eat yet or what?' And Tom Christie said, 'No, JEW?' Not 'Did you?'...JEW eat? JEW? You get it? JEW eat?”
(www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaPBhxXhprg&feature=related)

It just so happens that in English, it’s easier to say words or syllables with “d” followed by “u” as a “j” sound. Try saying these out loud: graduation; “how bad you are;” “could you/would you …”

(Likewise, “t” + “u” creates a “tcha” sound, as in “nature,” or “congratulations,” when we say, “get you” and it sounds like “getchu.” That’s why when some people pronounce “mature” as “ma-toor” instead of “ma-tchoor” it sounds pretentious. But Dictionary.com says both pronunciations are correct.)

This kind of informal speech no doubt exists in other languages but, not being at native level in any, I can only give a few examples. Languages like Spanish and Japanese pronounce every syllable with more or less equal stress, making reduction less likely. However, in some Spanish-speaking countries, the “s” in words gets dropped before a “p” or “t” : i.e., “espantoso” will sound like “eh-pantoso” and “estado” will sound like “eh-tado;” for example, I believe Puerto Ricans do this all the time, whereas such pronunciation in Argentina will have people laughing at your baby-talk. In French, the “ne” often gets dropped in a spoken negative sentence: “Je ne sais pas” is typically heard as “je sais pas;” “je n’ai pas d’argent” is said, “J’ai pas d’argent” -- though never in writing.

The other day I overheard a very proper-French receptionist speaking on the phone, and she was apologizing to the person on the other end; but instead of saying, “Je suis desolee,” (zhe swee desolay) or “I’m sorry,” she was saying (repeatedly, with some insistence) what sounded like, “Shwee desolee.” That sound is just the sort of speech captured in a linguistically groundbreaking French book called "Zazie dans le metro" (1959) by Raymond Queneau:

“Doukipudonktan” is the first word of this antic novel (Louis Malle directed the 1960 movie), which is peppered throughout with many such strange-looking phonetic renderings of colloquial speech. Even French readers do not immediately recognize all these renderings. “Doukipudonktan” is actually “D'où qu'ils puent donc tant,” or “Why do they stink so much?” Other such compressions include: “Skeutadittaleur” = “Qu’est-ce qu’il t’a dit, alors?” or, “So what did he tell you?”; “Izont des bloudjinnzes”= “Ils sont des bluejeans,” or “They’re bluejeans;” “Kouavouar” = “Quoi a voir?” or “What’s there to see?” “Lagosamiebou” or “La gosse a mis la boue” or “The girl has flown the coop.” All this is meant to convey the very working class-ordinary joe sort of people these characters are. Same as when we write that way in English. The difference is, we do it in English all the time – in novels, ads, comic books, and in our own shorthand-style of writing (I’m gonna, do you wanna, see ya,” etc.) In French and Spanish (and no doubt other languages) this type of speech is spoken, but rarely conveyed in writing – even in comics like Asterix or Tin Tin.

So, we’re lucky: instead of my having to write, “I’ve got to go,” all I hafta write is, “Gotta go!” or, text message-style, “G2G.”

Flip Flops

It’s almost too hot to write, much less read, a blog; but if you’ve got time and air conditioning, maybe a short one, sort of seasonal, would be okay. It’s now midsummer – and it’s midsummer in an election year, so have you noticed how “flip flops” are working overtime as both noun (sandal) and verb (to reverse one’s position on an issue)?

Once upon a time -- back when McDonald’s had just one franchise, when Bill Haley and the Comets were singing “Rock Around the Clock” on the radio -- there was no word for a cheap, thin-soled rubber sandal with a sort of curved, upside down Y separating the big toe from the rest of the toes. There wasn’t a word for it, because the “flip flop” had not yet been invented. Until then, people wore thin, canvas sneakers to the beach; and the words “flip” and “flop” were like two siblings – alike in many ways, but intrinsically totally opposite.

“Flip” is generally positive: A guy flips for a girl (and vice-versa); we flip coins and pancakes; and mastering flips from a diving board or trampoline is considered a praiseworthy talent – while belly flopping (ouch!) is not. “Flop” is generally bad: a comedian gets flop sweat when the audience doesn’t laugh; when a movie flops, heads roll in Hollywood. You don’t want hair flopping in your face, nor do you want to sleep in a flophouse. Flopping onto a couch is good but often associated with sheer fatigue, boredom, or depression.

Cut to 1957, when the “flip-flop” summer sandal was invented: The name was probably derived from the sound the backless shoe makes as you walk -- fffflp-flllllop, fffflip-fffflop. (These are also called thongs and beach shoes). Flip-flops have morphed over the years from the still available cheap and plain to the more popular snazzy, sporty, patterned – even diamond-studded. Flip flops have become such a fashion statement that in 2005 the Northwestern champion women’s lacrosse team wore flip-flops to meet President Bush at the White House, apparently not perceiving what a fashion faux pas this was – some dubbed it “The Flip-Flop Flap “ -- until they ended up in the national news. (As I had to explain to my own teenagers – their toes should have been covered; yes, even for George Bush).

But flip-flop, the verb, only recently came into everyday use: in the 2004 presidential election, presidential nominee John Kerry was seen as switching his stance on the war in Iraq, and that became known as “flip-flopping.” According to salon.com, the Republicans used Kerry’s changing positions to make him look weak and waffling, compared to what Republicans called Bush’s “firm” (as opposed to “stubborn” or “intransigent”) stance. Kerry’s flip-flopping was used against him with deadly precision -- we know who was elected.

Flip-flopping, the verb, then lay fairly dormant for the next three years until the 2008 presidential contenders hit the campaign trail last year. Early on in their runs for the nomination, Democratic contender John Edwards flip-flopped on issues, as did Republican contender Mitt Romney – as reported in multiple news articles. And not long after their flip-flops both of those “coulda-been-a-contender” contenders were has-been contenders. Flip-flopping is not good if you want to run for president. That was presumably why Hillary Clinton never voiced the slightest remorse for having voted for invading Iraq – despite the war’s unpopularity with her voter base, she did not want to be brought down by the flip-flop curse. (It was other things that brought her down instead).

These days, as both presumptive presidential nominees Barak Obama and John McCain modify, hone, or outright reverse their positions, the “flip-flop” verb has appeared attached to their names in news articles everywhere. To the press, no matter how slight or subtle a politician’s change of position may be (granted, with politicians, it’s rarely either) when a politician changes his mind for what seems to be political expedience, it’s all flip-flopping.

However, since both Obama and McCain have flip-flopped on certain issues, the curse of the flip-flop curse has been canceled out – one of the flip-floppers has to win. So you could say that whoever wins will have flipped (reversed) the flip-flop flop this time.

Being and Not Being a Gerund

A cartoon in a recent New Yorker magazine shows a Buddhist monk leading a yoga class with several middle-aged men and women. One woman has her hand raised and is asking the instructor, “You say that life is suffering, but isn’t it also complaining?”

Agreeing or disagreeing with the question is not the point here; rather, today’s subject is our friend, “the gerund,” which is a type of noun formed from a verb and which ends in “ing.” Suffering and complaining, in the sentence above, are gerunds, each one serving as a complement to “life.”

The inspiration for this topic is a letter from Language Lady reader Danny White, whose enquiring mind had him recently pondering gerunds and non-gerunds:

Hi Louise,

Here's one for you: What's the proper term for a non-gerund? That is, when you're trying to distinguish between a verb in the gerund form and a verb in the non-gerund form, what do you call the latter?
A person who's not a Jew is a gentile. Food that isn't kosher is traif. A verb that's not a gerund is ... what?
This comes up in the context of my discussion of "as well as." If you view "as well as" as a preposition (examples to follow), then the verb that follows should be a gerund. But if you view "as well as" as a conjunction, then the verb that follows should be a ... what? Non-gerund? "Regular" verb?
Example:
• "Upon winning office, a member of the House of Representatives will campaign for the next two years, as well as drinking like a fish and hustling underage girls." (Here, "as well as" is treated like a preposition, with the verbs that follow being put in the gerund form.)
• "Upon winning office, a member of the House of Representatives will campaign for the next two years, as well as drink like a fish and hustle underage girls." (Here, "as well as" is treated like a conjunction, with the verbs that follow being put in the ... what form?)
See the question? Nobody in the world but a nerd like me would ever care about the answer, but I thought maybe someone like you would know the answer (even if you don't care about it).

How could Language Lady NOT care about this?! It’s the air I breathe, my lifeblood, and other clichés, parts of speech, and grammar terms that get me out of bed in the morning.

Before answering however, I thought a little trip down Gerund Lane might be useful for readers whose knowledge of such forms and functions may be a little rusty.

The gerund is one of a little family of grammatical things called “verbals,” or parts of speech formed from verbs. Like verbs, these words can express action, abstract action, or a state of being: Action verbs: run, jump, fall, etc.; Abstract verbs: have, love, feel, think, suffer, complain. Being verb: (you guessed it): be.

There are three members of the Verbal family, and the other two are the “infinitive” and the “participle.” The infinitive is the base part of a verb preceded by “to,” as in, “to suffer” and “to complain,” or, as Macbeth once asked, “to be, or not to be.” The participle is an adjective formed from a verb that ends in either “ing,” as in “crying” babies, or in “ed,” as in, “I'm shocked, shocked (to find that gambling is going on in here!” -- Capt. Renault, “Casablanca”). The participle is also the “ing” or “ed” (or irregular ending) of verbs that take helping verbs, as in
“I am writing” and “I have written;” or “talking/talked,” “jumping/jumped,” “emailing/emailed,” etc.



(For further insight into Verbals, I recommend the Owl writing and grammar site from Purdue University: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/627/02/)

Now then, let’s look again Danny’s question, “..when you're trying to distinguish between a verb in the gerund form and a verb in the non-gerund form, what do you call the latter?”

I’ll pause here to let you answer.

(Pause)

Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Yes, it’s a Participle!

(Unpause) (Danny’s letter continued:)

This comes up in the context of my discussion of "as well as." If you view "as well as" as a preposition (examples to follow), then the verb that follows should be a gerund.


(Pause again.)

Danny brings up a really cool point -- one that most native speakers of English probably just take for granted: that when we have phrases like “thank you for” or “looking forward to” or “he broke his arm by,” we always follow them with a gerund when expressing some kind of action. That is, “thank you for inviting me;” “looking forward to seeing you;” and “he broke his arm by falling out of a tree.” In each case, the gerund follows a preposition (words like in, on, at, by, from, to, on, through etc.)

Danny’s confusion is thinking that “as well as” is a prepositional phrase. Prepositions are, as the term implies, little words that show a “position” of something or someone (in the dark, through the forest, etc.) “As” is an adverb; and depending on the context, “as well as” is either an adverbial phrase (“He shoots pool as well as his mother does.”) or a type of conjunction, something that joins other words or phrases (like “and,” “but,” “or,” etc. As in, “We went shopping all day as well as dancing all night.”)

(Unpause – back to Danny):

Example:
• "Upon winning office, a member of the House of Representatives will campaign for the next two years, as well as drinking like a fish and hustling underage girls." (Here, "as well as" is treated like a preposition, with the verbs that follow being put in the gerund form.)
Thinking that “as well as” was a prepositional phrase forced Danny to turn “drink” and “hustle” into “drinking” and “hustling,” resulting in a type of grammatical faux pas known as “non-parallel structure.” Let’s break the sentence down into basic parts: the subject of the sentence is “member;” and what does that House member do? He “will campaign.” And what ELSE?
By treating “as well as” as a conjunction, which it is, and which Danny does in his second sentence, he arrives at the correct answer and good parallel structure: in its most basic, sentence-diagrammable form, the House member will campaign (and also) drink and hustle. Just as Danny says below:
But if you view "as well as" as a conjunction …
• "Upon winning office, a member of the House of Representatives will campaign for the next two years, as well as drink like a fish and hustle underage girls …"
•
• … then you get the perfect, parallel-structured and grammatically correct sentence.

Danny’s final question is:
• (Here – referring to the second example sentence -- "as well as" is treated like a conjunction, with the verbs that follow being put in the ... what form?)
Anyone like to try? (I mentioned this form briefly a little earlier.) When you have a helping, or auxiliary, verb – in this case, “will” (as in “will campaign”), the verb that follows is the non-conjugated base or stem form. And since “drink” and “hustle” are as much a main verb as “campaign,” they take the base form too.
Thanks for writing, Danny – and most of all, thanks for (gerund, please): caring!

Subprime Grammar

Tucked into the English Reference section at Barnes & Noble, next to titles like “Painless Grammar,” “Woe is I,” and “Grammar for Dummies,” are several copies of a new little work with the crude but catchy title, “Grammar Sucks.” That a writer and editor – presumably word-and-grammar people themselves – would choose that vulgar verb, and popular attitude, to hook potential buyers into improving their shaky grasp of grammar; and that a major national bookstore chain would bet that such a title would sell, shows you how just low the subject of grammar has sunk.

Meanwhile, speaking of sinking, there’s the economy: the credit market, the housing market, the job market, and – if you’re thinking “interest rates,” that would be “cut,” or “slash,” not “sink.” Gas and airline prices are on the rise, making our spirits sink. And then there’s that clump of words that appears almost daily on the front pages: “the subprime mortgage crisis,” usually followed by “troubled investment bank,” “bailout,” and, for those of us outside the financial industry, this year’s newest vocabulary word, “writedown” (n.) meaning the amount (these days, in billions of dollars – i.e. unimaginable amounts) that at least ten major international investment banks are writing off their books (at a loss to all the shareholders) mostly through subprime mortgage deals, which seem to have triggered the whole economic mess.

The public’s taste, or really, distaste, for learning grammar has been at an ebb for decades, while the economy’s drubbing is fairly new. Still, it’s no coincidence that the two have arrived at the same lousy point – not that the government is bailing banks out due to improper use of past participles or irregular verbs. Rather, where grammar and troubled banks are linked is at the core, with structure.


On the grammar side, the whole notion that “grammar is boring” is something that came out of the 60’s, when traditional ideas were tossed in favor of snazzier, more fun ways of learning. Take “Sesame Street,” for example: learning with Muppets was fun, and by now, generations of preschoolers have learned their ABC’s by watching bouncing, talking, or morphing letters on their TV screens.

Alas, Bert and Ernie did not go into nouns, verbs, objects, comma placement, or the subjunctive case. Maybe they thought it wouldn’t be fun, or age appropriate, or that it would turn away their core audience. (Though adult caregivers might have watched.) Apparently, progressive English teachers could not come up with a fun way to impart grammar either, and the pedagogical philosophy that emerged was, “No more grammar lessons -- let students learn by DOING!” So students wrote, and teachers corrected, mostly fitfully, per essay, and not in any orderly, formal manner.

And in the beginning, that attitude seemed refreshing, and even democratic: who was to say one person’s grammar was better than another’s, as long as we could all understand each other. “Have it your way,” went the famous 1974 Burger King ad, which was revived in 2004 and still, unwittingly, stands for so much in American culture, including speaking and grammar.

True, you can learn by doing. But even young, natural athletes need a coach to help them perfect their pitching, slap shots, or swings. Similarly, we also need teachers to help us sharpen our ability to communicate clearly -- and we need an understanding of grammar to do this.

Grammar is the system of rules that guides how words are put together to make sentences; those rules, developed over centuries of speaking, provide the underlying structure to a language. A three-year-old can grasp a language’s structure and speak fluently and fairly grammatically.

But around 3rd or 4th grade, it’s a good idea to start to teach children grammar rules, because if you understand the parts of speech (nouns, verbs, etc.) then you can go on to understand the parts of a sentence (subject, object, etc.); and if you understand those two components, which include punctuation, you’ll have the necessary tools and knowledge to shape your ideas in clear, solid, dangling-modifier-free, and even eloquent English.

Remember “Mad Libs”? They’re still around. The gap-filled pages provide the story structure, while you (without looking) provide the parts of speech; the results, when read aloud, are wacky, or plain nonsense, but it is all grammatically correct. That is the beauty of grammar – its structure holds even when word choice inhibits the meaning.

I recently experimented with a 16-year-old, extremely smart, native-English speaking student of mine, who has never been taught grammar in school. I had her fill in a Mad-Lib-style sentence that used the opening line to “Pride and Prejudice” for its structure. I asked her for certain parts of speech and the results were not exactly Jane Austen: “It is a tragedy not wanted that a mournful clown in possession of a stingy cat must be in wont of a mouse.” Nonsense, yes – but grammatical, absolutely.

Not providing knowledge of grammar prevents children, and many adults, from correctly and concisely constructing more complex thoughts. For example: Last month, in his first statement to the press about his affair with a prostitute, ex-governor of New York Eliot Spitzer said, “I am disappointed and failed to live up to the standard I expected of myself.”

True, Spitzer got the reflexive pronoun (“myself”) part right; but in addition to failing his own standards, the ex-gov failed to tell us what he was disappointed with (or by, or in), as in: “I am disappointed in my behavior,” for instance, or maybe just disappointed that he got caught. But he shouldn’t have just hung his disappointment there without some specific object. It sounds weak and muddled and only compounds his current image.

Commenting on Spitzer’s departure in his foreword to the March issue, the editor of “Institutional Investor” magazine, Michael Carroll, needed a teacher to wrap his knuckles for this unwieldy sentence: “Spitzer’s apology at least puts to rest any thought that he might try to argue that he had gone undercover, as it were, to see whether the ratings assigned by the Emperors Club to its employees were accurate in much the same way that he and his minions once investigated the accuracy of reports written by Wall Street’s research analysts – and found them wanting.”

President Bush, currently the Leader of the Mangled Word, is old enough to have been taught grammar before they took it out of the curriculum. But that doesn’t mean teaching grammar is a waste of time for everyone: just because I failed to dissect my frog properly doesn’t mean other biology students shouldn’t get to try.

At least thirty years have passed since our nation’s public schools required young minds to identify subjects and predicates or an object of a preposition (“A what?!” you shriek.) So now our teachers – those born in the 60’s, 70’s or early 80’s – do not have the foundation for grammar necessary to teach their students, our children. Yet grammar-challenged parents determined to somehow teach grammar to their offspring, or even to themselves, can always head to their nearest bookstore English reference section and find books like “Grammar Sucks” to explain it all to them in dumbed-down, ironic prose.

Which brings us to the whole subprime mortgage crisis/credit market mess – or a total lack of structure. Now, I can only explain this financial stuff in Language Lady terms, so don’t go running off to the head of Goldman Sachs to check on every point. But big picture:

Pick a “structure” metaphor – would you invest in a house without beams; a book without a spine; wine without a bottle? A while ago, as a way to make more money, banks (local and big ones) invented and started selling financial products, called (ironically) “structured investment vehicles;” they sold these products to millions of investors here and around the world, with many banks keeping some of the riskier/potentially more profitable products for themselves.

Imagine a cake box as your structured product. Your financial advisor tells you it’s AAA-rated and a solid investment that will yield a delicious yellow cake with fabulous chocolate frosting; so you hand over your money and wait for the cake to rise. But the ingredients inside are not what you think – in fact, the ingredients (which include loans with enticing initial interest rates – i.e., interest rates lower than the prime interest rate, or “subprime” -- to people with less-than-stellar credit) are completely incapable of producing a cake at all, and what you get instead is a runny, gooey mess. The structure – the box – was a sham.

But who’s to blame? The whole structured product business was put together, pre-fab chip-by-pre-fab chip, by loads of investors, banks, etc. – i.e. people – who had gotten used to following their own guidelines, whether financial or grammatical.

Which is not to say that had investors and bankers, as elementary and middle school students, been forced to learn the principles of solid sentence structure, they would not have created today’s economic mess. But you never know: an unconscious, innate respect for structure might have set off some kind of inner alarm bell in at least a few people.

Sherlock Holmes, the brilliant, fictional detective whose success was grounded in the structure of reason and deduction, would certainly never have bought a structured product without knowing to the molecule what it contained. And Sherlock’s talents might have led some structure-abiding financial authority to force Sherlock’s broker to break down the contents of the, ultimately, bad product.

Say some grammar-knowledgeable investors had read the finer points on their structured vehicle contracts and noticed some dangling modifiers or strangled syntax. Further investigation on their part might have revealed a similarly weak structural product – and ended the deal before any money was traded. The failure of that deal and others like it may have prompted the corollary that bad grammar is a smoke signal for weak structural thinking and therefore, possibly, a bad investment.

The good news is that the notorious college entrance exam, the S.A.T., has recently added a grammar component to the test. This will surely prompt a revival of grammar classes in schools and language institutes across the land – for teachers (to finally learn it) and students alike.

But improvement – on the economic and grammar fronts – will take time, effort, and patience. And with all that maybe, someday, (right -- in my dreams), I’ll come across a book with the title, Grammar’s Sweet!”













Likewise,