Language - forever changing

It is undeniable that language changes, otherwise we would be speaking as people did in Shakespeare's or Chaucer's time. The trouble is that people get very het up about language changing, even though they themselves will certainly be using the result of changing language.

What really upsets people is when they hear usage with which they do not agree. Perhaps what they don't realise is that some rules are not really rules at all. People bleat about the use of 'different to' or 'different than' because they were taught that 'different to' is the correct version and horror of horrors Americans say 'different than.' BUT, what people don't realise is that in the 1700s, various individuals of note, Bishop Lowth and Dr. Samuel Johnson to name but two, decided that they, along with other noteworthy influential characters,would make English resemble Latin, in order to give English higher status.

People get angry about split infinitives. In Latin you cannot split an infinitive, because in Latin, an infinitive is just one word- for example 'amare'- to love and 'credere' to think or believe. But in English you CAN split an infinitive because an English infinitive is made up of  two words. This gives you the opportunity to say things like, 'To boldly go' which is probably the most famous split infinitive ever.

Another upsetting 'rule' is that a sentence must not end in a preposition. Ridiculous and made up - so much so that Winston Churchill created a sentence to illustrate how ridiculous it would sound in this particular sentence, 'This is something up with which I will not put.' It is these made up rules that cause people so much anguish.

Real rules  are much more serious in that they affect meaning. Clearly, the subject and object have to be in the right order. 'Emma kicked the dog' is not the same as, 'The dog kicked Emma.' Similarly,
'Help me' is much clearer than 'me help' ( though if you are two years old that's fine).

A further thought is what will happen to the f. word? Young people use it with great frequency when talking to each other, irrespective of social class. Maybe in in 20-25 years it will have no more power than the word 'crap. But what will replace the F word? Do we need a replacement - a word to carry some potency and guts, which would replace the 'f' word. I believe so.

Wimbledon grunters and screechers

I quite enjoy Wimbledon but have little tolerance for those players who shriek, scream and grunt; usually the women. In one match recently Maria Sharapova was shrieking so loudly that the whole of SW19 would have been able to hear her.

What I ask is why on earth doesn't somebody stop her? Don't her opponents find it irritating and off-putting? They must do unless they themselves are screechers. Perhaps the reason people don't complain is that they fear the consequences of complaining about someone as massive in the game a Sharapova. You can't denounce her! Nor can you criticise the racket from Serena Williams, as she hits the ball with her racquet. (You see what I did there!)

Seriously though, what does the new generation of tennis players think? I hope that  both parents and coaches train the young players not to grunt and squeal. It is unsportsmanlike (there's no gender neutral term to use here) and even for the spectators it can be deeply annoying.

At the weekend Sharapova was interviewed in one of the Sunday magazines. The interviewer asked her why she screeched and shrieked. Sharapova's reply was illuminating as to the sort of person she is. So I shriek, she said, it's what I do and people will just have to get over it. Why didn't she just keep it simple and say that people can  f*** off?