2
" Oh, those lapses, darling. So many of us walk around letting fly with “errors.” We could do better, but we’re so slovenly, so rushed amid the hurly-burly of modern life, so imprinted by the “let it all hang out” ethos of the sixties, that we don’t bother to observe the “rules” of “correct” grammar.
To a linguist, if I may share, these “rules” occupy the exact same place as the notion of astrology, alchemy, and medicine being based on the four humors. The “rules” make no logical sense in terms of the history of our language, or what languages around the world are like.
Nota bene: linguists savor articulateness in speech and fine composition in writing as much as anyone else. Our position is not—I repeat, not—that we should chuck standards of graceful composition. All of us are agreed that there is usefulness in a standard variety of a language, whose artful and effective usage requires tutelage. No argument there.
The argument is about what constitutes artful and effective usage. Quite a few notions that get around out there have nothing to do with grace or clarity, and are just based on misconceptions about how languages work.
Yet, in my experience, to try to get these things across to laymen often results in the person’s verging on anger. There is a sense that these “rules” just must be right, and that linguists’ purported expertise on language must be somehow flawed on this score. We are, it is said, permissive—perhaps along the lines of the notorious leftist tilt among academics, or maybe as an outgrowth of the roots of linguistics in anthropology, which teaches that all cultures are equal. In any case, we are wrong. Maybe we have a point here and there, but only that. "
― John McWhorter , Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English
11
" English, in this light, is the odd one out, and what distinguishes it from its relatives is that it underwent marauding hordes of Vikings who never went home, and proceeded to speak the language, as they did so much else, Their Way. They never wrote down that they were doing so—most of them couldn’t write anyway. But Icelandic stands as virtual confirmation that adult learners screwing things up was a key factor in how English came to be the way it is. The people who can still read ancient sagas live on a remote, undisturbed island. The people whose language became the most user-friendly member of the family live on an island nearer the Continent, that was, due to that proximity, lustily disturbed by invading migrants. "
― John McWhorter , Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English
14
" More interesting are cases where culture cannot possibly be the issue. In German, the word for key is masculine (der Schlüssel). If you give the key a personal name, Germans tend to have an easier time recalling it if the name is masculine; they more readily associate the key with a picture of a man than a woman, and describe it with words like hard, heavy, jagged, metal, serrated, and useful. In Spanish, the word for key is feminine (la llave), and Spanish speakers are more comfortable with keys’ having female names, associating them with pictures of women, and they tend to describe them as golden, intricate, little, lovely, shiny and tiny. "
― John McWhorter , Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English