The Sin of Wrath II

If you’d like to, take a look at some Old English. It’s a mess of grammar rules, as are most Germanic languages. Complete with three genders (yes, three. Old English was hermaphroditic), four noun cases, Strong and Weak nouns and verbs, and a whole mess of conjugations. In case you don’t give a rat’s ass about these words, that means that Old English was a swirling vortex of grammatical death-fire. Believe me, I'm trying to learn it.

Now, what happened, was the speakers of this language came from, say, Denmark many centuries ago. They more or less came into Britain, killed oh, we’ll say most of the Celts, and made themselves at home. Which worked for maybe 800 years, until the Normans, and Nords, and the What-have-you’s came in and decided to take over.

This cycle of invading, murdering, raping, pillaging, and generally hitting people until they are in dire pain is, among other sins, known as The Sin of Wrath. It is evil and should only be left to Vikings who are no longer alive.

Now, for those of you who are adults and have tried as grown-ups to learn a new language, it should be well-known that when you adopt a new tongue, you tend to eff it up. Royally. Kids are another story, because their gooey little brains are amazing language-sponges, but grown foreigners just don’t do that well with other tongues. We are set in our ways.

When you have one ruling culture replacing another one, then you have a wave of people adopting a language and giving it the worst make-over of its life.

FOR INSTANCE.

Imagine if Mexico took over the U.S.

Don’t laugh, it could happen, and given what we’re doing to their gulf, we’d deserve it. They would have to learn English to communicate with their new slaves; not an easy task, but definitely doable. Spanish has 6 conjugations per verb in the present tense. English has two. A step down in difficulty, I would say. We’ve got

I walk.

You walk.

He/She walks.

We walk.

They walk.

In trying to learn our language, the Mexican overlords might make a mistake. Someone might write down the rules as:

I walk.

You walks.

He/She walk.

We walks.

They walks.

Boom. Language changed. They are the ruling class, now, what they say goes. We the Americans know better, but we don’t matter now, because we are the underclass. Yeah?

Now imagine the same thing happening, without the existence of writing. History lesson: ain’t no internet in the 11th century. Everything had to be learned by word-of-mouth. Our Mexican masters would have their work cut out for them, if they wanted us poor unilingual bastards to be able to trim their hedges for them. Or prepare their fast food.

It sounds funny (if by funny you mean "really alarming"), but it’s apparently precisely what happened on the island of Britain. We had waves and waves of these “Mexican” (if by Mexican you mean Scandinavian) invaders, and each time they came and took over, we lost a little Germanic purity, and gained a little taint. A little bit of French thrown in.

Our contemporary language was invented by some Europeans who's only clue as to how to speak "English" was a smattering of pleading that they heard from the bloodstained Anglo-Saxons they were busy slaughtering. Grammar is of course important, but getting worked up about grammar in English is a little bit like getting worked up about the humidity when you're being swallowed by a boa constrictor: you're probably just whining about it because the real problem is pretty much beyond your control.

So Grammar Nazis, give it a rest. Especially on the God damned internet. If you hate someone’s post on some website, you can’t blame the missing apostrophes or the run-on sentences for the hatred that lies festering inside your own black hearts. It’s all a matter of evolution, and the English language is a creature born to evolve (yes, Biology Nazis, I know that didn’t make sense).

To the victims of the Grammar Nazis (Grammar Jews, we might say) I suggest that you refer your tormenters to this blog, or to John McWhorter’s Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue). I know it's tempting to take wrathful vengeance on these people, but honestly?

Honestly?

Isn't it fun to show people what you know, especially at their expense?