Posts tagged language.
The entire point of this lesson was to teach relative clauses and pronouns so the students can RECOGNIZE, UNDERSTAND, and USE them.
So what the actual what is up with these stupid, contradictory instructions?! No wonder English education is so messed up in this country!
Japan, I’m so done with you. No one will ever learn English because of this backwards joke of an educational system.
This has burned the heart out of me.
That awkward moment when you don’t even understand your own language.
Wait.
That’s every moment in Japan.
Would you take a moment to give my cool little travel video a look and then share it with your friends? It will help better my chances to become a global intern, working to bring international education and language study to every part of the globe. I’m about 200 views shy of 5,000. Let’s push it as high as we can. Thank you!
As a kid, I used to think the word “oxymoron” was actually Nazi moron. Did anyone else ever make that mistake…? Anybody?
…yeah, that was probably just me.
Please be aware that size really does matter.
Vocabulary.
Sometimes I forget how to function because my heart is breaking from every single thing. I want to save the tigers and polar bears and whales. I want to cure every single disease and immediately rescue the victims in Syria and the Philippines. I want to end poverty and give friendship to the isolated and ostracized. I seriously can’t stand how much the world is hurting my heart today. I really miss being a part of social outreach and activism. I need an outlet in which to help with my own two hands.
Weltschmerz is a German word meaning world-weariness. It expresses the feelings of grief and pain one experiences when he/she understands that physical reality can never satisfy the demands caused by the inappropriateness and cruelty of the world.
I love reading.
But I’m finding that books are a dangerous dalliance. Did you see that, right there? Dalliance. That’s not an everyday word. That’s a book word. Dalliance is for readers and writers. Dalliance is for Mr. Darcy at a Pemberly ball. Where most people would say flirtation or love affair, I say dalliance. It’s a rich word. Language is beautiful. Language is strong and thick and deep. It feels good, forming in your mouth, profoundly coming off your tongue. Okay, language can be dirty. Just low-class and dirty. Let’s move on.
For avid readers, our familiarity with good diction tends to make us stand out when we speak. At best, it makes us seem intelligent, but out of touch. At worst, it makes us seem snobby or even condescending. People sort of back off or glaze over when you use a word they don’t understand. I don’t mean to sound heady or fanciful when I say dalliance. It’s commonplace for me, regularly used in literary vernacular. (Doing it again…crap.)
I’ve always had a critically discerning (read: snobby) view of literature. As an academic and a skeptic, I prefer to expend my time with scholarly material. So Twilight, for example… no.
If it isn’t true, don’t waste my time with it. If it isn’t artful, I’m uninterested.
So I cling to Twain, Plath, Vonnegut, Tolstoy. I was a lit major, what can I say? I’ve definitely seen more sonnets than sunsets. (I’m kind of an indoor girl.) While I love a good 500 page essay on Beowulf, lately I find myself going back to fiction. Good fiction. Fantastical fiction.
Give me magic and elves and dragons. I’ll take all of it. I’ll also have your lovely period pieces with gorgeous gowns and cathedrals and handsome suitors calling. What the hell, I’ll even read your adolescent fiction about existentially finding oneself and overcoming life’s breakdowns with a soulmate waiting at the end. To me, that seems just as otherworldly as a faun meeting a little girl by a woodland lamp post.
Despite my logical nature and pragmatism, I eat that stuff up. I think I’m in a bit of an isolated bubble and I’m starting to get worried. I’m not about to stop reading, but what if reading has inadvertently made me more unreasonable than I should be? I’m left waiting for a kindred spirit like Anne Shirley, but there’s no one around who gets it, or cares. In a society of cheap conversation and drunkenness, I feel like my brain is rotting out through my ears. I’ve found myself in groups by default rather than choice. Most people I’ve met find my pursuits and my personality annoying and aloof. When once I could wax poetic about history, politics, or theory, I find myself with nothing to say.
C.S. Lewis said “we read to know we’re not alone.” What if these stories have only deepened my disconnect with people? I’m stuck using words no one knows and quoting passages they haven’t read. It’s awkward and made socializing a lot harder. But as Polonious said in Hamlet, “This above all: to thine own self be true.” So I read and I write. I craft polysyllabic words unintentionally. I swoon over Enjolras and Faramir. It’s the best part of me, even if no one around me understands it or likes it. I can’t change that; I won’t change that. So while Polonious didn’t last very long, his words have echoed through time and struck a chord with me. Well played.
“Between you and I” is grammatically incorrect based on the rule that pronouns at the end of a prepositional phrase are always in the objective case. In the objective case, the first person singular pronoun is “me.” The correct form is “between you and me.” However, the former construction has been commonly used (by the likes of even Shakespeare and Mark Twain) since the mid 18th century and has become a part of the vernacular. Why have we been consistently breaking the established rule?
Some linguists, such as Chomsky, argue that “between you and I” can be correct. They state that the entire phrase “you and I” is the object of the preposition. Therefore, the individual components and case become arbitrary. Language grows. I’m aware of this and supportive of it. However, this doesn’t seem to be a recent change. The prescriptively erroneous phrase “between you and I” has been in regular use for centuries, so I wouldn’t call this an organic evolution. To me, it doesn’t matter if the entire phrase is the object of the preposition—that indicates that both pronouns should be in the objective case, not in the subjective.
Personally, I always use “between you and me.” Which do YOU typically say? Which feels more natural? Why?
Accepted! Official grad school acceptance letter just arrived!!! (Taken with instagram)
