English As Spoken

New Zealand Tablet, 8 June 1911, Page 1039

English As Spoken

A correspondent (says the Bombay Examiner) calls attention to the following sentence: ‘Every crow for half-a-mile around ’ congregated round that stuffed corpse,’ and asked ‘ How did they manage that he queries. ‘Can a single crow congregate? How, for ' instance, do you congregate?’ , .... , , ■ ■ . ; ' Answer. —I congregate by focussing myself with, others on a common local objective. Each single crow does the same. Similarly every stone in a heap has been gathered into the heap, and, as the proverb goes, ‘ Every mickle makes a rauckle ’ —which proverb, being interpreted, is: ‘ Every little makes a much.’ Our correspondent is suffering from the incubus of the grammar and the dictionary, and does not realise that language is a living thing possessing all the elasticity of limbs and muscles, and not a dead machine worked by levers and cranks. ‘ Every crow for half-a-mile round congregated round that , stuffed : corpse ’ is perfectly idiomatic English; and if it does not fit in with the elementary rules of grammar, it should be remembered that rules ,of grammar, were made after language and not before it, and that these are simple endeavors to draw out of a more or less uniform usage of words certain laws, to which, however, the living language is not a slave. In this connection ‘ every crow ’is exactly equivalent in thought-yalue to ‘all the crows.’ But without appealing to this equivalency it is perfectly correct as it stands. Although congregating is a conjoint process, it. is achieved by single individuals acting in unison. Hence it is just as right to say • ‘ every crow congregated’ as to say all the crows congregated.’ If our correspondent knows the rudiments of Latin he will remember the rule which allows the collective noun to be used as a singula*or as a plural; and here he will find, an analogous rule that a distributive pronominal adjective can be used collectively. Whether he will discover this-principle in his text-books of grammar I cannot say, and do not feel disposed to inquire. The native acquires his language by tradition, and does not consult either dictionaries or grammars—except, of course, in case of a dispute, as missiles to brain hir. adversary with. • ■ . / T/U/.-iu? Our correspondent is a good old friend of ours. He will probably retaliate by finding out at least six more grammatical mistakes in what we have just written, and will re-enforce his criticism by quoting standard authorities ..in the bargain. He said to us recently: ‘I always look forward to The. Examiner, and as soon as it arrives it is the first thing I open.’ This sounded flattering. Then he asked: ‘And what do you think I make for first?’ ‘The Editorial Notes,’ I ventured to suggest. ‘No, not it all. It is the jokes at the bottom of the pages. I always read them through every week.’ (Total collapse of the Editor.) , - ' ■