GENWiki

From werner Wed Oct 26 14:06:34 1988 Flags: 000000000001 From: roller@hocpa.UUCP Subject: The Future of the English Language Keywords: smirk Date: 26 Oct 88 03:30:04 GMT

I'm sorry to report that I don't know who wrote the following discussion of the future of English. It given to me nearly ten years ago when I was a professor at Southern Methodist University. Although I had many excellent students at SMU, there is no denying that the style of this document resembles that of some term papers I received.

Paul Michaelis AT&T Bell Labs att!hocpa!roller

---

	This sentence demonstrates alot of the to frequent
errors that occur in my freshman composition classes, its
not just there willingness to gleefully split an infinitive
or end a sentence with a preposition which are the problems
kindly boarding school masters used to be concerned with.
Its true my students arent the good mannered middle class
bunch who I went to school with, there more often cops or
shoesalesmens or garbagemens (pardon me, sanitationmens)
sons and daughters, and yet there a sharp group, wary,
skeptical, bright.
	So when I knock myself out day after day class after
class explaining the genitive case in english, the proper
position of commas, the runon sentence, the distinction
between the three theres and still these mistakes appear
even in the work of the best of them I wonder.
	I wonder if just maybe they know something I dont about
the english language. Something intuitive about its history
and something instinctive about its future. After all, its
been the movement of the language to progress toward
simplicity. The case structure, with its confusing endings,
was an early victim. Why say "On his dagum hierde Gregorius
goda lara" when with a little reliance on word order and
common sense you can more simply say "In his time Gregorys
heard good lectures"?
	Besides the nagging whom the last vestige of the case
structure in english is the genitives use of the apostrophe.
But surely common sense and word order indicate the genetive
usage and my students perception is correct in eliminating
the troublesome superscript.
	Theres wisdom in doing away with punctuation that
doesnt contribute to clarity and when my classes
monolithically dispose of pointless spelling distinctions
where the sense is obvious there judgment may be sound.
	Then again, alot of my colleagues lose sleep over the
way some students slam two words or letters into one but
metathesis or the changing of the position of sounds or
letters is a venerable tradition, or else a newt might still
be an ewt.
	Words in english usually explain themselves by position
and context, though of course there exceptions to this rule
which my students in there foresight have not anticipated
but give them awhile and they will.
	I cant go into detail about every grammatical
innovation made by my students, theres alot to recommend
them though and if your an editor, the author of an english
grammar or the perpetrator of a work on footnote logic and
you can read this you should pay attention to my class
because one day they might take over and one day you might
wake up. And discover your fired.

– . If you MUST reply to a rejection, include a description of your joke because there is 0 chance I will remember which one it was.