The speck in your own eye

I see a certain arrogance from time to time from people who consider themselves better than most in the use of grammar, spelling, and punctuation.  These people usually memorize rules governing the three areas and then expect all people everywhere to do the same.  At least one website is dedicated to these rules so people can memorize them.  And, those who memorize the rules condescend or browbeat others who choose not to.  It's and its are the two spellings that I encounter the most as being misspelled, but according to a list put out by Dictionary.com, the words your and you're are misspelled more often.  Ever feel judged for using it's in place of its or your in place of you're?

When I was twenty-something, I played this arrogance game with language rules when it came to holding others to the notion of standard English, but then I found that people could challenge my own notions of language that I had no answer to.  So, I quit playing language games with others.  Making people feel inferior is far from the acceptance I desire to have for others.  Far beyond the games people play with spelling and punctuation, some syntactic constructions defy memorization and require a deeper knowledge of when something appears in language, and I was unprepared for that requirement.  Who was I to hold someone accountable when I couldn't do the same in the same language game just a different area?

Why would someone say, for instance, We were given tickets for the concert, rather than (Name of party) gave me the tickets for the concert?  I didn't know at that time.  Or, why would someone who had influence on teachers of English in schools want to perpetuate the idea that action verbs, such as A key lay on the table, make a "stronger" sentence construction than a verb form of BE with a "dummy" subject, like There was a key on the table?  I didn't know at the time how to discount this self glorified "writing guru's" arrogance.  Is there a definition for "strength" in sentence construction?  Does a graduated continuum exist for a "weak to strong" verb or sentence construction?  I understand "style" and "sentence variation," but "strength?" Never. Strength is a nebulous, immeasurable term in syntax.

Then there's my favorite, the "phrasal verb."  Coined by Quaker religious essayist Logan Smith in 1925, the term didn't catch on with linguists after Chomsky in the 1950s.  Grammarians who taught ESL used a variation of the phrase beginning in the 1960s, but the base term fell into disfavor because of its ambiguity.  However, some teachers of foreign languages still like to use this old term in verb phrases such as If you will put out the money for the venture, I will run the operation.  Not many people feel the need to analyze the phrase put out because of its complexity.  They just use it, as did I when I was twenty-something and arrogant.

Working with ideas in syntax and semantics, discourse and conversation analysis, and phonology have changed every smidgen of arrogance away from memorizing a few rules.  Memorizing rules is really, really easy comparatively.  Imposing a few rules on others who can outstrip my knowledge in many other areas of life, like writing software programs, negotiating business deals, and making money in the stock market seems ludicrous.  What is the real point to an education?  To make it work for you in your endeavors in life, or show how you memorized something important to yourself and not to most other people?

English grammarians need to get over feeling smug and superior for learning well one tiny speck of knowledge in the much more encompassing field of language use.  Someone might ask them to explain the literary term synecdoche or the phonological principle of obligatory countour principle someday and their arrogance will disappear with the embarrassment they should feel for only knowing one small corner of rules in a very broad, well established academic domain.

Caught in the middle

Last Friday I lived in a time warp.  I was alive, of course, in the present.  But, I went in the early afternoon to the show "Passengers."  It was a well done, well written movie, redeeming hope in people.  The whole movie was set in the future and both settings and characters' actions were appropriate for future happenings.  For 2 hours I soaked in the time many years beyond my present.

In the early evening, I sat down to watch another movie on television from 19 years ago, "Seven Years in Tibet."  It was set in the three-year period 1947-1950.  All the action and other props corresponded to that time period.  People wrote in longhand, for instance, in leather-bound journals.  Clothes were not made from lighter fabrics, but coarser, heavier ones.  Although motorized vehicles were present in the world, the setting of Tibet showed a world of walking everywhere across harsh terrain, giving a sense of 100 years earlier in time.

The day marked, I think, the microcosm of the brain.  We have hopes and dreams, so some of our actions are ones that are carried out in hopes of future outcomes and what they will yield for us.  We also realize we are trapped in the present moment.  We get to the future by steps, but the future is really just imagination and desire.  And then there's the memory track we reflect on from time to time.  It helps us see retroactively with 20/20 vision, or at least vision with more perspicuity.

Closing out the year, I hope for a clear and plausible glimpse of the future with the right steps in line to achieve it, satisfying moments of the present, and a lucid interpretation of past events with full enjoyment of the sacred moments that flash across our minds from time to time.

Transformative

On June 29, 2007, the world was transformed.  Onto a stage in California Steve Jobs walked out to introduce the world to a way to communicate not only with people, telephone-style, but with websites all over the planet.  Also a person could choose from an array of games to play.  A person would no longer have to use separate devices to talk, listen to music, or surf the net.

On July 15th, 2008, the iphone was discontinued.  But, the iphone had not failed.  The second edition of the phone was put out.  Thus, was born a transformative way of talking, using the web, playing games, taking pictures, listening to songs, and much, much more.  Apps began with about 25,000 to use, but soon proliferated.  At present, who could really live a quality life without a "smart" phone as they are now called.

It's time again.  It won't be Steve Jobs walking out on a stage, but someone with just as much drive and vision.  It won't be a development of a device to integrate tools, but something much more powerful and forward thinking.  The world of the hololens was introduced in March of 2015.  Its applications are only now being explored.  The one above is for education.  NASA already uses it in exploring and understanding Mars virtually.  Applications exist for taking virtual, holographic expeditions in Macchu Picchu, and the Roman Colliseum.  Archaeology and history have truly come alive, not in name only.  These applications will proliferate until babies born in this year will grow up knowing two worlds - virtual and real.  They will be seamless.  One will travel between the two without thinking twice about it.  They will enter one, leaving the other, as easily as a person taps on an app today to leave the real world for a moment with a screen.

I hope to live to see it.  It will be so exciting!  I am ready to be transformed.

A little understanding goes a long way

"Sheesh UPS AND USPS I know your busy but you could have rang the doorbell so I knew my stuff was here."          
(Written by a doctor of pharmocology working as a pharmacist, graduate of Oklahoma University, age 31)

The above was a caption written to a picture of boxes delivered and stacked next to this person's front door.

I learned in school that any generation could change the language to fit their needs and preferences.  There is no amount of cajoling (or grade punishment in school) that will change what a generation decides to do with the language they speak. 

I went to school in the 20th century.  My English is different from the people who learned their English in the 21st century in certain usages for pronouns and verbs (and a few other items) as exhibited in the quotation above.  I don't lament the differences.  I know what is inevitable.  The principle of language change is continuous and constant.  After all, I really wouldn't want to read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in the English of that day.  (Line 1 - Whan that aprill with his shoures soote, 1387 C.E.).

If I live to see my great grandchildren, I know they will add some nuances of their generation to the language.  And, if I wake up in two hundred years from now, I would probably struggle to keep up with the conversation.

All of this is to say that we don't have to like or accept change in any facet of life.  But we do have to recognize differences and causes.  A lack of that makes us arrogant or bitter or both.  It seems a more satisfying principle to acknowledge or understand diversity.

Who's in the mirrror?

 I walked into a restaurant last week and looked up at the monitor near the table we were being seated at.  I couldn't hear the TV at all, but the deaf captioning was on, so I could follow what was being said.  The first thing I read was, "I knew the note was from him because there was grammatical mistakes in it."  I laughed out loud and couldn't help but comment on his statement.

I find this a real problem in the world I see everyday.  Not the grammatical error part, but the fact that someone wants to make an observation by criticizing the very thing they themselves are doing - sometimes in the very same way.  I am usually amazed at the blindness of the speaker.  I'm not perfect at doing this either, so I am criticizing myself.  I do, however, try to keep it to a minimum, and I try to rectify matters when I realize I did the very thing I don't like.

This Christmas season, my priority is to be a whole lot more accepting because when I talk about someone else's errors... there's grammatical mistakes in my own.

What does "time spent" give you?

Learning a language can be rather challenging at times.  When people learn English, for example, they, at some point in their intermediate path, encounter that words spelled the same have different grammatical categories in usage.  Program is one such example.  The word can be be used as a verb and a noun.  The question always arises, "How can you tell the difference?"  This allows for the discussion on whether an article or determiner precedes the word or whether it shows a verb suffix or verb auxiliary.  Of course, an article or determiner is not always present when used as a noun, and a suffix or auxiliary verb is not always used when used as a verb.  That, in turn allows for further discussion about the location in a sentence a noun can be placed or the location of a verb after a subject in a sentence.  Of course, counter-examples to that rule abound as well, such as the use of the verb as an imperative where no subject to the verb appears.

In my few years on Earth I have found living about the same as learning a language.  First we learn something like lying is bad, then we find that lying has degrees to it, like white lies and black ones.  Then we find ways not to state the truth exactly, but to "fudge" the truth or become silent about something so that the absence of the truth is evident, but it's not lying.  Then we find ways to say what happened in such a way as to hide the lie.  "Dancing around the truth" it's called.  Of course, there is the expression, "glossing the truth."

It takes time, but eventually, experience tells you both how to speak a language and how to filter out lies from truth.  Fluency in one gives fluency in the other,  I like being around people who have time both in language and living.  I trust them a little more.  They know how to tell the difference - in verbs and nouns and in living decently.  Viva "time spent."