Today’s lesson will be both educational and enlightening for most of you. For some of you it will be a little like having a tooth drilled. For an unfortunate number of you, it will be like looking at the old test pattern TV stations used to use to indicate they were not broadcasting. In other words, boring.
It’s time we had a discussion about an epidemic of ginormous proportions, a disease that is insidious, painful and highly contagious, yet so subtle that even high school teachers may not see it coming. It is “the creeping marauder” of illnesses. But first, I need your undivided attention.
To begin with, what exactly is “undivided attention?” Does that mean that it is possible to have your “divided attention,” whatever that is? Maybe it means that some of you readers out there might be inclined to doze off, much like me after a big meal, grammatically speaking of course, right in the middle of my serious discussion of a really serious subject.
As opposed to the entire reading audience, who should be devoting their rapt attention to my silliness here in this valuable newspaper space, the same space that the newspaper guys could just as easily sell to an advertiser for many more greenbacks than they’re paying me, versus me using it for my diatribe?
OK, some of you might not be lexicographers or logophiles like me, so here’s the skinny on my use of strange, obscure words. DIATRIBE — a prolonged discourse; a long winded speech. LEXICOGRAPHER — a person who writes, edits or otherwise causes words to be in a dictionary. LOGOPHILE — any strange dude who loves words. MALINGERER — a writer who tries to make his word count (in my case, 750) by wasting words, time and energy just because he’s too lazy to write something urbane, witty or profound. URBANE — an act or expression suited to a person of refined, elegant manners. (bet you didn’t see that one coming, did ja bucko!)
So, getting back to the theme of this treatise (TREATISE — a formal, usually lengthy, systematic discourse on a subject), why do people say “of” instead of “have?” Like in the sentence, “I could of had a V8,” versus “I could have had a V8.”
Now I’m sure the speakers in this case are referring to the tomato juice drink, versus the slanted model eight-cylinder car engine, but I’m sure you get my point, right? Which is that it’s wrong, right? Of course, if I tried to make the point that three-fourths of all Americans have trouble cobbling words together to make marginally-intelligent sentences today, most of you would probably shrug your shoulders and say, “So what?”
Of course my emphatic answer would be that our language, the one most of us stole from our ancestors in Merry Old England about 533 years ago, is in serious danger of becoming obsolete. Yeah, like in “knarly dude, that’s the bomb, for sure!” Excuse me while I gargle and replace the wax in my ears.
Anyway, the point of all of this silliness is that I, along with about 7,586 English professors in our nation’s colleges and universities, are hitting the panic button, raising the red flag and battening down the hatches in anticipation of something stranger than even Donald J. Trump walking the hallowed halls of our government, or parading up and down our heavily fortified streets: Illiteracy.
I can see a day in our future when the 48th or 49th president of the United States might need a full-time interpreter at his/her side 24/7/365, to interpret the language spoken by other people, but also to interpret the words spewing from the Chief Honcho’s vocal cords.
REPORTER: Isn’t it true that doing away with the NEA, PBS, NPR and the entire Department of Education has had a deleterious effect on our nation and its citizens?
PRESIDENT: Huh? Can’t you speak like, normal, man?
INTERPRETER: What I think the chief executive is trying to articulate is we should just be thankful that we still have a democratic process of electing leaders, without regard to whether they can speak English and use good grammar.
PRESIDENT: Yeah, what he said … I think. Is it time for “Beavis and Butt-Head” yet?
So anyway, in closing I’d just like to say that roses are still red, violets are still blue, but this whole column is smelling like a shoe. Or something like that. Ask my interpreter what I meant.