Things that irk
There are several things lately that indicate I am probably getting old. One of them is my reaction to people who pronounce my name carelessly and make a hash of it, who obviously don't give a damn about getting somebody's name right. For example, this one woman, even while she looked at my name written out clearly for her, pronounced my name "Yale-ee" (instead of "Ya-El" [think of Superman's kid sister: "Kal-El" and "Ya-El"]), and I went ballistic over it. What bothered me wasn't that she got my name wrong, but that she cared so little about her own native tongue, the ability to pronounce or write English words properly, and being courteous enough to pronounce people's names, one of the most archetypal signatures of their nature, correctly, that she didn't even bother to ask me to pronounce it for her so she could get the sense of it.
Another thing is being called a "grammar Nazi" because I love the English language, care very much about how it's pronounced and written, and can't stand careless use of it by people who should know better. For one thing, I'm a writer. So making the best use of the language is a core part of my professional toolkit. For another, the ability to communicate clearly by fluent use of one's language is a core part of what it is to be fully human. This is one of the most powerful aspects of our species nature, and a major reason why we have become dominant lifeforms on our world. The spoken word came first, and it was used to organize people into groups that could get far more done than the members of those groups could ever have achieved otherwise. It gave us all our cultures, it gave us the beginnings of science, it gave us more and more powerful and useful technology, and it gave us works of art whose beauty has shone down the ages. Doubt it? Check out human history and cultural anthropology -- there's a ton of works on those subjects, and all of them make it very clear that without our language capabilities, we could never have produced the greatest and best of our works.
That's what the spoken word has done for us. The written word has compounded the power of the spoken word by countless orders of magnitude. Ultimately it has given us today's sciences and the computer revolution, the power of which is open-ended, virtually infinite, and if we are lucky, someday it will give us the stars and, perhaps, doorways into other universes. But that has happened only because of people who have known how to use our human languages fluently, with great care for the ability to communicate precisely and elegantly. Take away that care, take away that love of the beauty of our human languages, and what is left is comparable to the things chalked up on bridge abutments and walls by naughty little boys and girls: good for showing what adolescents and preadolescents are most obsessed with, and little more.
The use of the epithet "grammar Nazi" is a clear indication that the user doesn't give a damn about anything more than the immediate concerns of the moment. The fact that so many people use it, so carelessly, to mean, "I don't give a shit about the language, and anyone who does is The Enemy" is terrifying. Read H. G. Wells' The Time Machine -- his Morlocks are what people become when they don't care about such things any more.
Another thing is being called a "grammar Nazi" because I love the English language, care very much about how it's pronounced and written, and can't stand careless use of it by people who should know better. For one thing, I'm a writer. So making the best use of the language is a core part of my professional toolkit. For another, the ability to communicate clearly by fluent use of one's language is a core part of what it is to be fully human. This is one of the most powerful aspects of our species nature, and a major reason why we have become dominant lifeforms on our world. The spoken word came first, and it was used to organize people into groups that could get far more done than the members of those groups could ever have achieved otherwise. It gave us all our cultures, it gave us the beginnings of science, it gave us more and more powerful and useful technology, and it gave us works of art whose beauty has shone down the ages. Doubt it? Check out human history and cultural anthropology -- there's a ton of works on those subjects, and all of them make it very clear that without our language capabilities, we could never have produced the greatest and best of our works.
That's what the spoken word has done for us. The written word has compounded the power of the spoken word by countless orders of magnitude. Ultimately it has given us today's sciences and the computer revolution, the power of which is open-ended, virtually infinite, and if we are lucky, someday it will give us the stars and, perhaps, doorways into other universes. But that has happened only because of people who have known how to use our human languages fluently, with great care for the ability to communicate precisely and elegantly. Take away that care, take away that love of the beauty of our human languages, and what is left is comparable to the things chalked up on bridge abutments and walls by naughty little boys and girls: good for showing what adolescents and preadolescents are most obsessed with, and little more.
The use of the epithet "grammar Nazi" is a clear indication that the user doesn't give a damn about anything more than the immediate concerns of the moment. The fact that so many people use it, so carelessly, to mean, "I don't give a shit about the language, and anyone who does is The Enemy" is terrifying. Read H. G. Wells' The Time Machine -- his Morlocks are what people become when they don't care about such things any more.