English

If there's one thing I'm not, it's a stickler for grammar. Spelling, I'm anal about to some degree, but not grammar. In the classroom, I was taught that it's poor english to end a sentence in a preposition. Don't say:

"Who are you going to the dance with?"

Say:

"With whom are you going to the dance?"

I think that's complete bullshit, obviously.

I was brought up to believe that the use of improper grammar was a huge faux pas, a sure sign of intellectual deficiency. Correct english all the time, or you'll never get that awesome job. Everyone will think you're stupid.

As an adult, I feel I've adequately learned the rules and I have to say, I find them overly rigid, and unacceptable. I use non-standard phrasings and made-up words on an almost daily basis. I'm confident that I can easily prove to most people around me that I'm not their intellectual inferior; having done so, I believe I've bought myself a certain freedom to communicate in ways that are appropriate to me, if not the grammar police. Given a choice between:

"Where are you?"

and

"Where are you at?"

I'll probably take the latter if I know the listener well, because I feel the word "at" softens an otherwise abrupt-sounding sentence. I have no qualms about ending sentences with prepositions in most conversations, because doing so almost invariably improves the fluidity of the sentence. In essence, I feel that standard english is severely flawed, with my own alternatives being preferable in many, if not most situations.

I enjoy making up my own words. "But what if others don't understand the meaning?" They will, because they are intelligent enough to place the word in context (with the help of my tone of voice, facial expressions and gestures), and deduce the meaning accordingly. I trust them. When we move to a level of language that incorporates context, tone and gesture, we take communication to a higher level, not a lower one.

Today, I playfully used the word "endrunkened" in a conversation with N. To my knowledge, this word does not exist in the english language. Surely I did not originate the term, but I've never heard anyone else use it. N proposed a theory that I was subconsciously germanizing an english word by stacking on three suffixes/prefixes (this happens a lot in german, which is why there are many very long words in that language). At first this seemed far-fetched to me. My 91-year old grandmother recalls her grandparents speaking the language when she was 5, maybe 6 years old. On the other hand, three out of four of my grandparents have at least some german ancestry, all dating back to 18th century immigration to this area. Is it possible that this tendency to make up long words has been handed down to me without my knowledge? I don't know, I've never thought about it until now. If so, I think this is kind of neat. It made me feel a little less of an "assimilated Canadian", which was kind of cool in an odd way.

All this notwithstanding, I'm against judging people based on the use of non-standard english. I like regional accents and homemade slang. I'll do my part to contribute to the evolution of the english language when applicable.