I Agree With Churchill

As everyone knows, the general purpose of language is communication, even if it’s nothing more than singing to the trees, hoping they’ll hear. Reading a book is communication between author and reader, unless perhaps it’s a book on the quantum theory, when the author may lose most of us.

Everyone knows too, language changes with use. But we are living in an age when laxity in speech and writing seems to be at an all-time high. It may be true most of us associate with people who speak as we do, with good grammar or not, slang or not, swearing or not, good taste in subject matter or not, and any other area of language you can think of. If I’m surfing the movie channels, I sometimes come across a film which sounds almost like a foreign language but I can’t tell which foreign language. It’s often the speech of Brooklyn or Mobile or Chicago or East St. Louis. This is not all reference to regional accents, but to bad grammar and profanity spewing out over the airwaves.

The point I want to make is we must do some changing with the language. The two extremes must give a little, with, naturally, the ones who don’t speak like us, giving more. That ain’t gonna happen. Much, anyway. At one extreme, where I place myself, we have to make sure we are not stuck in the mire of former generations. High school English teachers were excellent in the old days, but are today getting a bad name from news reporters, who else? I cannot help thinking those very journalists didn’t do well in high school or college English classes (and it shows), and they must, therefore, attack and destroy. Some of the best speakers have been breaking the old rules for some time. For example, if you are one of those who still think we should not end a sentence with a preposition, just remember what Sir Winston Churchill said to his wife Clementine who chided him on breaking this very rule. He said obeying that rule was something “up with which I shall not put.” I love it. And I agree with him.

The issue here is not to be extreme in any aspect of language. It may give you a heart attack. Also, don’t take any guidance from the modern-day journalists.

By the way, the use of “ain’t” is coming from highly educated people, and not from the bottom up. Those bigwigs on television (not reporters) sometimes use it in the ordinary sense, but increasingly more often when just being cute. You can do that too. I like the word “ain’t” in certain usages.

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