A jot about grammar

Even though we made the Daylight Saving* time switch yesterday, I was early to work this morning. That hardly ever happens, and it was nice being only the second one to claim my desk this morning just before 8AM. *When I was younger - well, until about two years ago - I thought it was Daylight Saving(s) time. Even when I found out, I never really knew what difference it really made in the end.

Which brings me to an interesting thing: grammar. Grammar and correctness. Having been an English Lit. snob even before I entered college, I was very concerned that people do not use what I thought of and had been taught as "correct" English when they spoke. I felt it my moral (if you like) duty as a grammar-ly enlightened person to show the way to those who proved themselves ignorant to the structural rules of the language. It makes me warm in the cheeks to remember now how pretentious I probably came off back then. Then gradually, after I'd had a few Linguistics courses the college had just started offering, I realized a few things.

First, I lean towards a linguist's view of language now instead of a grammarian's. The real difference is that linguistics takes a more pragmatic approach to communication. You could say, a "git 'r done" approach. Also, I began to comprehend more how speech and language is inextricably connected to psychology and biology, and that every human being, regardless if he lives in South Carolina or Zimbabwe, is born with the same linguistic potential (unless barred by some disorder) to create a gigantic list of sounds. But as he learns his mother tongue, he will begin to keep only the necessary set of sounds and throw out those that his mother language does not require.

On my first day of my Intro to Linguistics class when I was, I think, a sophomore in college, my professor was explaining these things. He spoke of how, in our early teens, we stop being able to learn to make new sounds with our vocal organs. After he finished talking, I raised my hand to tell him something that, with this new knowlegde, I thought very strange: During high school I took Spanish classes and (due to my dark hair, eyes and skin) hung out with the Hispanic kids in my underclassman years. I was frustrated in Spanish class a lot because I could not "roll my r's" to make the sounds in words like "carre" and "roja". So I practiced. It became almost a habit to put my toungue on the roof of my mouth and push air over it. One day, I was doing my homework alone in the kitchen, got up to get a snack, and had been practicing those motions in my mouth. All of a sudden, it happened. My toungue vibrated softly under my hard palate, and I was rolling my r's.

My professor was astounded when I told him. He thought it was strange but he was very interested. I don't think he'd ever heard of someone actually learning a new sound after puberty, which is generally the cutoff time. Still, I could tell he was seriously passionate about the study of language because he acted like he had just unearthed a new discovery. (Dr. Prieto, if you ever read this - thanks for the inspiration you are to students like me.)

Language is a beautiful thing. I enjoy the creativity that can be expressed through it, and I appreciate its many, many forms, even within one tongue. Now, I appreciate different dialects, especially my native southern dialect. Even though we make a mistake to believe there is only one correct way to speak English, it is an equal, if not more transgressive mistake to base people's intelligence upon their dialects.

I know quite a few brilliant Southerners and I've come across about the same amount of Yankee rednecks. And vice versa.

The complexity and beauty of language continues to amaze and intrique me. I'm sure now, having eased back into a bit of my southern roots with speech, I've pulled up grammatical lids for the sake of both practicality and ease. And I appreciate culture itself, of which language is a part.

Call me lazy, call me apathetic, but know that if my pronoun doesn't agree with it's antecendent, it's because I've come to realize I don't give a damn if it does.