I don’t know what I hate worse, people with poor grammar or people with poor grammar. You run into them all the time, too. People who get the difference between “I” and “me” confused, say “good” when they mean “well,” who couldn’t identify a dangling modifier or a subjunctive clause, and who end sentences with prepositions because they have no class to speak of.
It’s worse online where you’ll find “u” for “you” and “2” for both “to” and “too.” Generally, it is safe to ignore anybody who spells like this because if they really cared about whatever they’re trying to convey they’d use proper grammar and a spell-checker.
This drives most grammar purists and pedants crazy. Every once and awhile somebody will talk about establishing a government office to decide what is proper English. The French already have such a body called the Académie française who regulate what words come into the language while trying to ignore the Québécoise who everyone agrees mangle the language daily.
But such a step only freezes a language. We need to get back to the basics. Year upon year the English language creeps into simpler and more uncouth forms. I say we take it back to our roots to eliminate all foreign influence as well as bad grammar.
The original Anglo-Saxon language, known as Old English, is still serviceable. Let’s stop this namby-pamby talk about how bad the language has gotten in our hands and return to its source.
It’s simple enough and we can start with the word “the.” In Old English there were about 17 or so different ways to say “the” based on what case and grammatical gender the noun they referred to was in. A few examples: þe, se, seo, þæt, þæs, þære, þy, þy.
With this simple restoration we gain much clarity in what we’re talking about and now we don’t have to guess whether something is in the dative case or not because we can use “þæm.” You see? It’s easier.
The character þ (thorn) should also be restored. The th we use now came from printers in Europe and is thus a foreign influence.
Another great thing about Old English is that there are no silent letters so pronunciation is easier. Try these examples out:
æhtspéd, æledléoma, and earfoþdæde.
Old English is also better than modern English with its conjugation and declination. That is how nouns and verbs are modified to convey grammatical meaning. We’ve become incredibly lazy when it comes to this, especially when it comes to possessives.
If I want to say something like “Here begins the poem of Eric” the only thing in that sentence that lets me know the poem belongs to Eric is the “of” before Eric. I could also say “Here beings Eric’s poem” if I wanted to using the apostrophe S, but it is fairly weak when compared to our Anglo-Saxon forbearers.
In Old English we have to conjugate all of “the poem of Eric.” It begins to look like this: “Here begins the’s poem’s Eric’s” or translated “Hércyme beginne þæs gieddes Erices.”
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Isn’t that so much clearer? Aren’t you ashamed that we’ve been so lazy all this time and have simplified the language to such an extent that we no longer even worry about such things as declination? All our nouns appear in their unmodified form and this is directly because over time the language has simplified.
The force the English purists criticize on the Internet and in everyday speech is exactly the same one that moved the English possessive from “es” to the apostrophe S form we use today.
Starting today, I am going to stand up for the English Language by only using the original unaltered Anglo-Saxon. So, dear Daily Lobo readers, I say goodbye with: Abéodan god Dægehwelc Wulf rædereas.
Or would it be “ræderum”? Is “dægehwelc” actually “daily?” Am I using the dative case here? Nominative? Hold on, I have a book that will tell me.
