Weird Grammar

a personal favorite!                                                                       screen shot

How heartening it is to know that there are others who, like me, are a bit obsessive about vocabulary, spelling, and grammar and what seems to be their devaluation these days. It is, IMHO, just another example of our lower standards in almost every facet of life ~ but I don't want to get too political here. Suffice it to say (and I've said this before) that, as George Orwell illustrated in his seminal Nineteen Eighty-Four, if you don't have the words, you can't think the thoughts. The corollary to that, of course, is that if we can't communicate our thoughts in a coherent way ~ if, for example, we don't understand the difference between "I was," "I have been," and "I had been" or "he could be" and "he could have been" ~ debates will be meaningless and fraught with misunderstanding. So, for those who might not have had the satisfaction of hearing "Weird Al" Yankovic's Word Crimes, voilà ~ enjoy! (video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gv0H-vPoDc&feature=kp