[Magdalen] Creeping UK-ism?

[Grace Cangialosi]

Well, Jim, that's the first time I've seen a "y" inserted in the word "February"!  I would just leave out the first "r."  But then, it's only said that way, not written...

> On Jul 26, 2015, at 6:31 PM, James Oppenheimer-Crawford <oppenheimerjw at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I'm going to assume you believe corporations are people too ? ? ?
> 
> 1. The team has arrived.  All of it has arrived. [nah. I don't think so.]
> 
> 2. The team have arrived. All of them have arrived. [sounds better]
> 
> You think the team is an entity and I think of them as a collection of
> people.
> 
> I would not say someone ought to use one form or the other.  I dare say
> we'll understand both forms, so it really is drivial. To say we ought to
> speak a certain way cannot be argued, "Just because." It has to be backed
> up with a reason why one use is actually unclear. If it's not unclear, then
> it's silly nonsense to bother oneself and others.  Do what you will and
> leave the rest be.
> 
> By the way, your mom's wrong. The word "ain't" most definitely IS a word,
> and has been in popular use even among British upper class since the
> eighteen-hundreds. It's very clear.  It fills a real niche by making
> certain constructions easier to say.  It is no way going away (as long as
> there is an English language anyways).
> 
> I'm not a linguistic psychologist, but I am guessing that the pluraling of
> the word Team stems from complex sentences in which a pronoun was later
> substituted for Team, perhaps multiple times.  The obvious grammatical
> choice would have to be "it", and as you observe in your own experience,
> that just sounds very wrong.
> 
> I'd say the people have spokened.
> 
> However, I have yet to see a single post here (except from me) regarding
> Febyuary and libarian.  (Perhaps we need a new thread for that?  Nah.
> Nobody ever, ever cares about Febyuary and libarian.)
> 
> 
> James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
> *“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
> except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy
> 
>> On Sun, Jul 26, 2015 at 4:38 PM, Sibyl Smirl <polycarpa3 at ckt.net> wrote:
>> 
>>> On 7/26/15 3:06 PM, James Oppenheimer-Crawford wrote:
>>> 
>>> If it makes better sense, I think that's it.  And it certainly does make
>>> better sense.
>>> Grammar only is an effort to explain what we're doing.  We drive grammar;
>>> it doesn't drive us.
>> 
>> I'm not sure that it makes "better" sense: a team, after all, _is_ just
>> _one_ "thing".  So is an army, for another instance.  If the team wins, the
>> whole thing wins, not just one or several of them.  Even the bench-warmers
>> are part of the team, and part of the win.  There are lines of reasoning
>> that go both ways: America and England chose different lines for the
>> grammar.  But _everybody_ around me used it when I was a child, and we
>> didn't get BBC radio here, then, and saw/heard damn few British movies.
>> What jars on the ear is what does not sound "right" to you, not what you
>> learned in school.
>> 
>> I remember what effort my mom put in trying to get me to say "Am I not..."
>> which just felt wrong to me, excruciatingly formal, even though she was of
>> course correct.  "Aren't I.." seemed to feel all correct to a lot of people
>> around me, but I knew the reasoning why _that_ was wrong.  I was told
>> enough times that "Ain't I..." was wrong (Mom always said, "There ain't so
>> such word as 'ain't'") that that always jarred my ear, too.  So I didn't
>> really know _what_ to say.
>> 
>> But that itchy ear of mine does American English, not the Queen's.  I am
>> an American.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> Sibyl Smirl
>> I will take no bull from your house!  Psalms 50:9a
>> mailto:polycarpa3 at ckt.net
>>