Sunday, January 15, 2012

A Annoying Trend

What happened to the word an?  It feels like an old friend gone missing.  One day I woke up and no one was using it anymore.  


"I think there's a apple in the fridge."


"That's a old version."


I even heard someone say - no kidding - "I was a English major!"


Really?


Can a word fade into obscurity from disuse?  When did someone first decide it was okay to say a before a word beginning with a vowel?  Or did so many people lack an understanding of the rule that a critical mass was eventually reached, rendering the word an helpless to stop its being relegated to a dusty drawer as the newest companion to forsoothverily, and yoicks?


People butcher grammar all the time in conversation, but standards are higher for written English; "proper" English is what distinguishes civilization from - well, whatever you have without it (Terra Nova?).  Yet I have been more than dismayed to find that using a for an is now seen even in newspapers and magazines.  (Does this mean editing is more lax, or there is less editing?)


I accept that usage of words changes over time, and with it, meaning.  I use the word hopefully a lot.  Technically, it's an adverb, like angrily, quickly, or gracefully - a descriptive word modifying a verb.  At some point, however, it became accepted as an introductory word describing the attitude about whatever follows in the sentence: Hopefully, I would win both the Veg-o-Matic and the Thighmaster.  I didn't even realize until today that I'd been misusing the word.


Is this bad?  Should I be as inflamed about my own grammatical error as I am about an's disappearance?  They are both wrong, but they both appear to be acceptable.


The same goes for the word broke.  Who said we could lose the n?  Every time I hear it misused, I cringe and want to say, "Fie!  Whencesover didst that come?"  Broke is the past tense of the verb to break: break, broke, broken.  


I know he will break my heart, but I'm going to ask him out, anyway.
He broke my heart even though I waited until the third date to propose.
He has broken my heart, but soon I will join Match.com.  
Broken is also the state of disrepair:  My heart is broken, but it's nothing my friend Johnny Walker can't fix!


Broke as past tense is only fitting as dialect:  Dang nabbit!  Pappy's hooch machine in the holler down yonder's still broke!


Otherwise, as far as I'm aware, broken is still the correct word:  Damn - the nozzle that foams the milk for morning espresso is still broken!


From where I sit, using language as my art, it's hard not to feel sad about the decline of proper English, the gradual, apathetic casting off of grammatical rules.  Is it stuffy to want to construct sentences following long-accepted guidelines?  Should one relax and follow the masses in resignation to the tides of popular practice?


I'd hoped to draw some pithy conclusion warning against degenerating into a Lord of the Flies existence in which we only use the grade school communication exercise vocabulary of fa, pa, and ba, - but, faced with my own participation in changing the rules, I am left with only my belief in what I learned in school.


Comments welcome.

3 comments:

Andi Gregory Pearson said...

I, too, find that AN is being dropped from daily language usage and it is annoying to spot that error. But it is certainly not the only error I find irritating! A group of us were chatting the other night and we agreed that "Old English teachers never die - we just continue to correct other people's work for our entire lives." I personally (as opposed to professionally), find it irritating when I read or hear "different than" when the correct usage is "different from." I also appreciate singular/plural agreement as in "the couple is living in an igloo." A couple is singular - one couple - and should not be referred to with a plural verb as in "the couple are." Thanks, Mark, for providing the platform for me to gripe about this! I'd feel satisfied if I could offer some kind of path to correction but maybe it's more fun for me to wield that invisible red pen and fume quietly!

Julie Glass said...

Mark, words do indeed fade into obscurity through disuse--such an eloquent way to express such a sad occurrence--but as for the disappearance of "an" . . . dude, you need to hang with a new crowd PRONTO! Even with a Tom Brady acolyte and an (yes, an) Eminem wannabe under my roof, I have never once heard anyone of any age willfully substitute "a" for "an." I shudder at the thought; my revulsion is visceral. Like, ICK. Of course, now that you've suggested this alarming trend to me, I will probably hear it from the mouth of the CVS clerk later this morning when I head over to buy heat pads for my stiff back; I've been suffering from a awful ache this week.

My language-related peeves these days are more custom- than grammar-related. As my children hear all too often (e.g., every time we leave the CVS), the correct answer to "Thank you" is "You're welcome." It is not "Any time," and it is most certainly NOT "No problem," the answer one will hear from nine out of ten people under the age of thirty. Since when would the default assumption--as implied here--be that any courtesy whatsoever is a hindrance, an inconvenience, or a downright PROBLEM? The passive-aggressive nature of this response is sadly symptomatic of how self-involved and lazy our culture has become.

I will stop there--before I descend into a apoplectic fit!

Kevin Lynch said...

Great post Mark but I confess to not having encountered the "a" and "an" switcheroo very often. One exception was in a book on Italy that I was reading recently -- though I suspect this was a matter of bungled translation and hasty editing.

That said, there is a lot of linguistic sloppiness in written and in spoken English. Among the more ordinary blunders are words like probably sometimes written, but more often spoken as: probly; supposedly as supposably; realtor as re-la-tor. (Lets not forget that former President Bush had to be coached on the proper pronunciation of the word nuclear, his version being:"Nook-u-lar" Other issues/lapses, like the general acceptance of the double-negative irregardless as a word regardless of the fact that it isn't. (And what IS the rule, can you end a sentence with a preposition, or not?)

Mostly such gaffs make me laugh. And when I notice that someone has misspoken or misused the language, I, and I'm only moderately ashamed to say it, feel a little it better about myself -- though this may have more to do with a the myriad insecurities I suspect most of us battle daily than a genuine belief in my verbal aptitude or intellectual superiority.