Webster introduced what linguists call "false friends," for instance implying that a pedophile is someone with an illicit passion for bicycle pedals. American English was cut off from its roots, and therefore developed freely American English cannot explain itself in the same way as the other Englishes (and they include the English of India, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa). Noah Webster intended his dictionary to sever American English from the Old World, and his assault on etymology worked. In America, this struggle took on a patriotic dimension, so I doubt anything can be done about it now. Native English-speakers everywhere struggle with foreign words, because if you speak English, you can always refuse to learn anyone else’s language. Rather than educating users in the use of the cedilla and the tilde, Merriam-Webster encourages confusion by allowing "facade" for "façade," and "pinata" for "piñata," even though "façade" with a hard "c" may give offense ("fuckade") and "piñata" without a tilde will make you look stupid. Nor does our most popular dictionary help users as they struggle with foreign words. Merriam-Webster doesn’t care much for the further/farther distinction, either. She lay there, and she lied to me as I laid her. Past: When she lay down, Jo laid the book down. Present: I lay Jo and she lays the book down. Hal, a businessman in Decatur, Ala., confuses "accept" and "except." Tara in Venice Beach confuses "affect" and "effect." No one seems to know the difference between "further" and "farther." And then there is the morass of confusion and rage that is the lie/lay distinction. Jovin’s fieldwork confirms that teachers, by failing to teach the basics, are making millions of us look foolish. Instead, they leave it to the spellchecker. Teachers no longer pay such close attention to errors in grammar and spelling. Meanwhile, Gale from Red Cloud, Neb., reminisces with delight about the Friday afternoon grammar games her eighth-grade teacher set for the class, and chats about "linking verbs" ("I feel hungry") and prepositional phrases (" of the people," " across the street"). In West Virginia, Gary is 45 years out of high school, doesn’t know what an adjective, a conjunction, or a pronoun is, and doesn’t much care. In Boulder, Colo., she soothes a traumatized survivor of sixth-grade sentence diagramming. A resolved query, Jovin noticed, produces a "therapeutic calm," and also greater social confidence. Fixing the net repairs the torn fabric of reality and allows us to cast it wider. When the net is torn or gaping, words and things come apart like Hamlet, we find our sense of ourselves is heightened yet dissatisfactory. Wittgenstein wrote that "the limits of my language mean the limits of my world." To be limited in language is to be limited in the world, for language is an invisible net, cast between us and the world. Most of her clients struggle with the basic stuff and are often embarrassed by their uncertainty. Never mind heavy-duty stuff like direct objects, appositives, and the best way to use a semicolon. She also noticed that they have an awful lot of questions. Jovin noticed that, despite the divisions of politics, questions of language bring people together in civil and enjoyable exchanges. Rebel with a Clause is a useful primer in the parameters of correct usage, but it is also a state-of-the-nation report on the use of American English. By now, they may have sparked spousal apostrophe disputes in Hawaii, Alaska, and Connecticut, too. Her first query, she writes in Rebel with a Clause, was a nasty "spousal apostrophe dispute." Most people would have folded up their table and headed indoors after that, but Jovin and her husband Brandt took the show on the road. In September 2018, the linguist Ellen Jovin set up a table near an exit to the 72nd Street and Broadway subway station in New York City and invited passersby to ask her questions about grammar.
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