Notes & Asides

notes & asides

Dear Mr. Buckley: The English language is not well. Our English has a sickness, caught not just overnight. It has taken many years; it now is an awful fright! Our mother tongue, most elegant, with meaning and melody both, is battered and twisted to pieces and degenerates in sloth. Discrimination, now forbidden, has disappeared in speech. Distinctions that were once quite clear are now quite out of reach. A sharp distinction marks two words: one word is well, the other, good. I’m feeling well and that is good. Too bad that’s seldom understood. We disavow what’s healthful, and say that it is healthy. Thus sloppy thought beguiles, insidious and stealthy. While no one looked upon it, it snuck with cautious stride, another insidious action that sneaked unseen inside. Twas once we strived with hope our work to expedite, but now we do a job to hopefully make it right. Personal pronouns give much grief; old rules are now unknown. ‘Tis lost that myself is reflexive, where me is the proper pronoun. And there is common confusion whether to say me or I, as in give it “to him and me rather than “to him and I.” Between (betwain) the two of us, perhaps among a few. Mark Twain sure had it right when he measured fathoms two. Then there’s the cause of only, quite commonly placed astray, the lonely only sitting far from where it’s meant to stay. We didn’t tell our teacher we missed what she had said, and we never, ever, told her we felt we’d been misled. We felt like we couldn’t do it, ignoring the fact that we could, as if to tell all around us our grammar was really not good.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

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notes & asides

Dear Mr. Buckley: The English language is not well. Our English has a sickness, caught not just overnight. It has taken many years; it now is an awful fright! Our mother tongue, most elegant, with meaning and melody both, is battered and twisted to pieces and degenerates in sloth. Discrimination, now forbidden, has disappeared in speech. Distinctions that were once quite clear are now quite out of reach. A sharp distinction marks two words: one word is well, the other, good. I’m feeling well and that is good. Too bad that’s seldom understood. We disavow what’s healthful, and say that it is healthy. Thus sloppy thought beguiles, insidious and stealthy. While no one looked upon it, it snuck with cautious stride, another insidious action that sneaked unseen inside. Twas once we strived with hope our work to expedite, but now we do a job to hopefully make it right. Personal pronouns give much grief; old rules are now unknown. ‘Tis lost that myself is reflexive, where me is the proper pronoun. And there is common confusion whether to say me or I, as in give it “to him and me rather than “to him and I.” Between (betwain) the two of us, perhaps among a few. Mark Twain sure had it right when he measured fathoms two. Then there’s the cause of only, quite commonly placed astray, the lonely only sitting far from where it’s meant to stay. We didn’t tell our teacher we missed what she had said, and we never, ever, told her we felt we’d been misled. We felt like we couldn’t do it, ignoring the fact that we could, as if to tell all around us our grammar was really not good.