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Words Come and Go in English |
For VOA Learning English, this is Everyday Grammar. This
week’s Everyday Grammar is by a guest author, David
Sullivan. He is Assistant Managing Editor at The
Philadelphia Inquirer, and Vice President of the
American Copy Editors Society.
Part of the reason that English has grown as a world
language is that it adjusts easily to change. Unlike
some other languages, there is no "official" English
that must be used generation after generation, and there
never has been.
However, this means that what one was taught as a child
in school may be out of fashion a couple of decades
later. Slang is meant to come and go, but when common
phrases change, it can make speakers feel "wrong"
because they were taught that something else is "right."
One example of this is a term linked to school itself.
Today, it is common for people to say that they
"graduated high school" or college. The word "graduated"
has two common meanings. One is to mark off a series.
The easiest way to think of this is to go back to high
school chemistry class and remember the tubes used for
experiments. They are called "graduated cylinders"
because they have lines to show how much liquid to add:
10 milliliters, 20 mL, and so on. The lines make up a
series.
The other meaning is closely related. As you move
through school, you cross off a series of achievements:
grade school, middle school, high school, and college.
So, in a way, school itself is "graduated."
So, when people used to speak of getting a diploma, they
said they "graduated from college." "To graduate
college" would have meant, literally, to mark it off by
year – freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior.
Similarly, "to graduate to college" would have meant to
complete high school and move up to the next level. The
use of the preposition was important.
But as happens often in English, when people understand
your meaning, smaller words, verb forms, and other parts
of speech can disappear. "I graduated college today" is
easy to say. Sometimes written language reflects the
spoken one, sometimes it does not. In this case, usage
has moved rapidly toward "graduated college" as
acceptable, if not correct.
This may upset people who were taught that you had to
use "from" to be correct. But this is not the first time
this phrase has been simplified. It used to be that you
said, "I was graduated from college," instead of, "I
graduated from college." The change may reflect how we
think about the student and the university. Before, the
emphasis was on the college: It graduated you. Now, the
emphasis is on the student: I graduated.
A search in Google's NGram Viewer shows a sharp fall in
the number of times people used "was graduated from"
between 1920 and 2000. The phrase "graduate college"
increased from 1930 to 2000.
You can’t predict what English will keep and what it
will lose. Who could imagine that we would still say we
"dial" a phone number when we now push buttons on our
cell? Yet we know what it means. And, of course, "dial,"
like "text," at one time was only a noun, not a verb.
You looked at a sundial or the dial of a compass.
People complain that English uses too many odd
spellings, like "through" or "doughnut." Many want to
change them to simpler spellings. When it comes to
speaking, though, modern English speakers get to the
point quickly. The question is, why are we complaining?
I’m Pete Musto.
And I'm Jill Robbins.
David Sullivan, Assistant Managing Editor at The
Philadelphia Inquirer and Vice President of the American
Copy Editors Society, wrote this story for Learning
English. Dr. Jill Robbins was the editor. |
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