The language

I've never met a single soul who's strong on grammar. I include myself, of course, in that generalisation. And here's a tip............ beware of anyone who says they are.   All of this may sound strange coming from a cranky old ex-teacher but, fortunately or unfortunately, it's on the money.   A lot of our 'grammar' is based on half-truths and romantic semi-digested memories of when we were 'taught' and/or 'learnt' it. A deference to 'rules' often leads one up the wrong street and this can cause problems in communication.   When I was a teacher, I found it far easier to tag 'bad' grammar in students' and colleagues' work than pontificating on what was 'good' grammar. You see, that's the problem with grammar. Like the language itself, grammar is constantly evolving and often changing its form.   P.S. Don't get me started on spelling. Thats a hole diffarent bawlgame. Posted ...

One of the great features of any language is that its form constantly changes. Words, expressions and even spelling are obedient subjects to time. Of course, English is by no means immune from regularly updating the wardrobe. Just as importantly, the meanings of words and expressions can alter over the years and decades especially when ‘value-adding’ (itself an example of this tendency) and ‘emotion’ come into play. The evolution of passion is one such instance. When I was a nipper, passion only really had two meanings. One was something to do with Jesus Christ and his personal fretting over the impending doom. I have a vague recollection of him sweating blood and I always considered it a bugger of a way to spend his Easter holidays. The other meaning required the user to either add the suffix ‘ate’ to the root word (no pun intended) or truncate the former to forge ‘pash’ which was more in the vernacular mode. For the younger viewers, both variants described two individuals i...