A Response to the Grammar Nazi

To my cousin-in-law --I begin my nitpicky post with a relationship that I’m not even sure exists—who just posted concerning grammar Nazism. I probably belong to this family. It’s getting to be less so as people learn, but I am known as the comma Nazi when peer editing. I must say that I agree with you to a certain extent. However, I will have to be the first person to admit that my blog is far from perfect. It just seems pointless to proofread a blog. I mostly always have some number of typos in my posts. Why? Because I proofread all day. I proofread my essays. I proofread my writing (creative writing that is). I even have to proofread letters when I mail them to other doctors from our office to a certain extent--that is, I'm suppose to give them a quick look over to make sure that the medical transcription didn't do anything extremely messy. I'm not going to spend time making sure I don't have typos in my blog.

I would also be the first to say that people do not understand the parts of speech and what goes where in spoken English. My two biggest pet peeves in spoken English:

1) "These are them." Grammatically, it's in fact, when properly used, "these are they." It's because of predicative nominative, but you'll rarely find someone who knows what that means anyways.

2) Correcting someone else to “and I” when it SHOULD be “and me”. I know that people have been yelled at for saying “and me” for so long that they have become sticklers when they shouldn’t be. The sentence “Sally and me went to the store,” is incorrect. It should be, “Sally and I went to the store.” However, if you said, “Would you like to go to the store with Sally and I?” that’s WRONG. That sentence should be, “Would you like to go to the store with Sally and me?” Once again, it’s a case of predicative nominative versus subjective nominative, but once again, no one understands that. If you’re unsure, take out the other person. Do you sound like a politically-incorrectly stereotyped Indian? If so, use the other one. It’s obvious to most every English speaker that “Me went to the store,” and “Would you like to go to the store with I?” have something grammatically wrong with them.

My biggest pet peeve in written English:

SEMI-COLONS. If you do not know beyond a doubt how to use a semi-colon, do not use them. No, it’s not an exception if Microsoft Word told you to use it.

I now offer a thank-you to my mother. Thank-you for making me diagram sentences and learn the parts of speech in junior high when you homeschooled me. I whined then, but I thank you now. Also, thank-you to my sixth grade teacher who said, “We are learning grammar.” We all said, “I know about grammar,” but she proved us wrong. Because of you, mother, I knew the difference between an indirect object and a direct object. Yesterday, my French teacher said that I was the first student in her history of teaching French who knew the difference. And she’s been teaching French for her entire out-of-college life. I don’t know exactly how long that is, but she has two grown sons. I only knew because of my mother.

It’s actually quite a prayer that people will know what an object is at all, as I’ve come to learn. In American Sign Language, the hardest thing to learn, quite possibly, is sentence structure. Sign Language does not speak in the same order as English. For example, in a simple sentence, such as “I ate a sandwich,” ASL would structure the signs as follows, “(ESTABLISH PAST TENSE) SANDWICH ME EAT.” Why so pidgin sounding? American Sign Language is an extremely young language. The 1930-1940s kind of young, so it hasn’t grammatically developed yet. Anyways, where English would structure that sentence in, “Subject+Verb+Object,” ASL would structure the sentence in “Object+Subject+Verb.” Several times, other students in my ASL class have told me that they don’t understand. I’ll begin my explanation by asking if they know what an object is, because they will not understand if they don’t understand that piece. They scathingly tell me, “Of course I know what an object is.” As I go about my explanation, it becomes evident that they have no idea what an object is.

I have apparently now emboldened my mother. She says that she is going to make Caleb diagram sentences in homeschool. She hasn’t made him do that yet.

So, I end my epistle concerning grammar. I know that it isn’t so important in many settings; however, we can understand our own language, can’t we? Yes, that semi-colon is correct.