English
“We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”
― James D. Nicoll
English is rich and complicated, perhaps because its thousands-year-old history is one of voracious assimilation. It has grown from the clashes of cultures: as very different people have fought and conquered each other and struggled to communicate, the language has adopted the influence of those various dialects into a mishmosh, hodgepodge, hurley-burley crazy stew, borrowing words from here and grammar from there. Other languages are distinct because of their history of geographic or cultural isolation. English, by contrast, developed from the conflict of Germanic and Romance languages from the end of Roman Britannia through the Middle Ages: one European tribe after another contested England and its islands. And then, from the Renaissance forward, the rich, polyglot dialect that had emerged from these linguistic marriages, the language of Shakespeare, steadily conquered the world, first through trade, then through colonialism and empire, and more recently through capitalism. And was conquered by it: English integrates words and structures from every language it encounters.
This history explains both the glorious richness and the maddening complexity of the language. There are few absolutes in a language with such diverse roots. We have nothing akin to the French Academy, which controls the grammar and vocabulary of the language to decide what is acceptable. All we have is what we call CONVENTIONS: the present day cultural agreement of what comprises the Standard dialect of English. And those conventions are always changing, as our cultural agreements shift.
The good news is that the conventions of Standard English, especially Standard American English, become more direct, more informal all the time. The bad news is that we can only learn them piecemeal and provisionally. Grandma's advice on these pages is designed to help you find your way through the language's complexities, towards more clarity in your communication.
But I talk good, you say. Fine. Of course. Awesome, dude. You don't have to talk like an English teacher all the time. You don't even have to be able to identify a grammatical case, name a predicate nominative. Can't explain why one sentence is right, another wrong, why you used a semi-colon here and a colon there? No problem. But Standard English is power. Using the language correctly gives you credibility in any academic or professional context. Like it or not, people will judge you by your grammar and spelling and usage and punctuation. Not your friends. Your friends love you. But they don't pay you. Do they?
More importantly, you will be able to communicate your thoughts, in all their subtlety and brilliance, more effectively and with less distraction, to the extent you master the conventions of Standard English.
So. Pay attention to Grandma.
English versus French
“The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane. Each sentence we produce, whether we know it or not, is a mongrel mouthful of Chaucerian, Shakespearean, Miltonic, Johnsonian, Dickensian and American. Military, naval, legal, corporate, criminal, jazz, rap and ghetto discourses are mingled at every turn. The French language, like Paris, has attempted, through its Academy, to retain its purity, to fight the advancing tides of Franglais and international prefabrication. English, by comparison, is a shameless whore.”
― Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within