Regular readers of this space know I have a…complicated…history with my high school English teachers. As my college degrees are technical and business (and I was a non-traditional student), I can’t say the same for my college-level profs. One was a young, tatted-up lady who prompted me to rewrite Poe’s “A Cask of Amatillado” from the point-of-view of whoever the crazy old man was ranting to. I miss her.
What don’t I miss? Latin rules imposed on English. If you follow the YouTube channel RobWords, you know host Rob Watts is annoyed by Latin scholars in the late Renaissance and the Enlightenment showing off and trying to impose their rules on this Germanic language called English. There are two rules that really grate, not just on Mr. Watts, but your humble narrator, too.
Never end a sentence in a preposition.
Never split an infinitive.
Let’s take the first. There is an old joke about a student of humble origins attending Harvard and needing to find the library. He stops a fellow student, probably with three last names like Thatcher Baxter Hatcher, and asks in all earnestness, “Where’s the library at?” Thatcher Baxter Hatcher, all offended and Thurston Howell III accent in place, sniffs, “This is Harvard, young man, and we do not end sentences in a preposition!” Undeterred, our hero rephrases his question as, “Where’s the library at, motherf–?”
The truth is Shakespeare ended sentences in prepositions. So did Mark Twain, and not just when he wrote from Huck Finn’s point-of-view. So did Hemingway. And… Stephen King? That last one’s a bad example. King famously derides adverbs, then uses them like Frank’s Red Hot, putting that sh– on everything! So why is this taught in schools?
Because… Latin. Having taken a few years of high school Spanish, most of which I’ve forgotten, I’ve seen the Latin rules in action. Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and related languages are continuations of Latin, so the rules apply seamlessly. And in Spanish, you can’t end a sentence in a preposition. Structurally, it won’t work. It wouldn’t make sense. English?
A friend from Germany said when he learned English, he was stunned to learn you could “verb” a noun, or even noun a verb. In fact, our most potent obscenity (Rendered here as “eff”) is so versatile that the sentence, “This effing effer’s effed!” makes absolutely perfect sense. English, for all its inconsistencies and contradictions, is structured so any word can mean anything, and the listener can easily catch the meaning. Putting a preposition at the end of a sentence? The main objection is there’s no object following the word, but if I ask you if you know where the library’s at, unless you’re Thatcher Baxter Hatcher, your first response is likely to be, “Up on Galbraith Road, near the Walgreen’s.”
That said, I had it flagged in a manuscript once. The editor said she hates that rule, too, but it’s so ingrained into our psyches that readers might stumble over a dangling preposition.
Split infinitives. To boldly impose Latin rules that make absolutely no sense in English. And you may thank Gene Roddenberry and William Shatner for debunking this one. “To boldly go where no one has gone before.” To go boldly sounds awful. But why is this a rule? It’s not. Once again, Latin scholars had an annoying tendency to impose their rules on a Germanic language. Again, let’s look at the Latin-based Spanish. Infinitives, the base version (allegedly) of any verb, are always one word in Latin-based languages. You can’t split a Latin or Latin-based infinitives. They are always one world. English?
“To boldly go…” Right there, the myth is busted.
And yet, I’ve actually seen someone put this linguistic myth, up with which I will not put, to productive use. General Colin Powell talked about how he barred his staff from using split infinitives in all memos. Powell said he was well aware that was a stupid rule and even quoted Star Trek in explanation. His point was making his staff focus on details. In looking for the banned split infinitives, they found other errors. So it was about seeing details.
But understand something. Anglo-Saxon, which does have a handful of Latin constructions in its earliest forms, is not Latin. Most of the structure–good, bad, and ugly–came from that. There are Latin-based words in English. From Middle English onward, it’s lousy with French words and had already absorbed a fair amount of Viking and Celtic words. But it is not Latin.
Today, we’re going to have a little bit of fun. We’re going to talk about English. What is it?