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Three Grammar Rules That Are
Dying |
For VOA Learning English, this is Everyday Grammar.
Today we have good news for English learners.
Just as words come and go in English, so do grammar
rules. Today we will show you three difficult grammar
rules that are disappearing from American English.
Don’t end a sentence with a
preposition
When I was in school, my English teacher told me that it
is wrong to end a sentence with a preposition. For
example, “Who are you talking to?” The last word of the
sentence, to, is a preposition. In traditional grammar,
you would have to move the preposition before the
subject.
“To whom are you talking?”
The rule applies to statements as well as questions.
“I know where you’re from,” would be, “I know from where
you come.” Today, it sounds very old-fashioned to speak
this way.
The rule against ending a sentence with a preposition
goes back to the 18th century, when it was fashionable
to borrow grammar rules from Latin. British grammarians
celebrated Latin as a pure and logical language. They
thought they could improve English by importing Latin
grammar rules.
One of the Latin rules that survives in English is the
ban on ending a sentence with a preposition. But some of
the most common phrases in everyday English ignore the
rule.
Who are you talking to?
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Who are you waiting for?
Did you notice how all of these sentences end in
prepositions? If you followed the Latin grammar rule,
they would sound like this:
To whom are you talking?
I don’t know about what you are talking.
For whom are you waiting?
As you might hear, these sentences sound overly formal,
even a bit snobbish. The word order, borrowed from
Latin, does not feel natural in English.
Fortunately, the prohibition against ending a sentence
with a preposition is disappearing. A large number of
writers and editors say it is acceptable to end a
sentence with a preposition. The Economist, a
150-year-old British news magazine, called the rule “an
invented bit of silliness rightly ignored by many
excellent publications.”
Whom
Another rule that is disappearing is the requirement of
using whom when referring to an object pronoun.
Whom is the object form of who. Grammatically speaking,
whom has the same function as other object pronouns,
such as me, him, her, and them. For example, “There’s
the man about whom I was speaking.”
If you put a preposition before whom, you can easily
avoid ending a sentence with a preposition. For example,
“Who did you go with?” becomes very the formal “With
whom did you go?”
Does all this sound unnecessary and confusing? It is.
Fortunately, whom is rarely used in spoken American
English today. More and more publications have stopped
using it. In fact, whom has been dying for the past 200
years.
But it still has a place in formal writing. And test
makers often make questions with whom to confuse
students. A few pronouns have died completely, including
ye, thee, thy, and thine. They do, however, still appear
in religious texts and classic literature.
The singular their, they, them
A third dying rule involves third-person pronouns.
English does not have a single word to say both he and
she. In other words, there is no gender-neutral singular
third-person pronoun. So what do you say when you do
not know if someone is male or female?
In the past, people used the male pronoun he to refer to
all people. “Every student has his own opinion.” In
later years, his or her came into use. “Everybody has
his or her own opinion.” The change from his to his or
her reflected the power of the women’s movement in the
1970s.
But many speakers found that his or her sounded a little
strange, especially in conversation.
Today more people say, “Every student has their own
opinion.” This example uses the plural their with the
singular student. Their means the subject could be male
or female. But it breaks a very old and very basic
grammar rule: pronouns and their antecedents are
supposed to agree in number.
But when you say, “Every student has their own opinion”,
the singular student does not match the plural their. So
is it wrong to say, “Every student has their own
opinion”? Well, it depends on who (or whom!) you ask.
More and more mainstream media organizations are
allowing they, them, and their as a gender-neutral
pronoun. But disagreement remains. Like fashion and
etiquette, grammar changes over time.
Why not invent a gender-neutral pronoun for English?
After all, languages like Swedish and Indonesian have
one. Plenty of people have tried. However, more than 100
attempts to create a gender- neutral pronoun in English
have failed.
I’m Jill Robbins.
And I'm John Russell.
Adam Brock wrote this story for VOA Learning English.
Jill Robbins and Kathleen Struck were the editors. |
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