Amglish In, Like, Ten Easy Lessons_ A Celebration of the New World Lingo - Arthur E. Rowse [11]
Almost all the long-standing rules about sentence structure are losing favor. One is the increasingly mysterious relationship between subject and object, especially when pesky things like pronouns are involved. For example, many people simply dis the old rules about when to use the subjective I and the objective me.
There is a growing suspicion that the key to this is more a matter of dignity or politeness of the pronoun I than the grammar. Possibly for that reason, the sentence “He told Bob and me” may often come out, “He told Bob and I.” However, if the same two people decide to do something together, the dignity factor may disappear, resulting in “Me and Bob will be going,” possibly because “Bob and I” sounds stuffy.
This type of flexibility is being preferred at the highest levels. In a 2007 radio interview about the problems facing Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, Vice President Dick Cheney referred to “the debate between he and the Senate.” Cheney may have been trying to grab some of the linguistic fame of his boss, George W.
According to a survey of nearly 3,000 high school compositions in 1985, verb problems showed up nearly 6,000 times, or twice per paper, and pronoun problems occurred 3,000 times, or once per paper.17 When problems become that big, they become issues, a term vaguely defined as two or more problems.
Suddenly, the idea that simple requests or even sincere chancrous can cause problems seems to have run rampant. (The previous word in italics was typed as the plural of thank you as one word but was automatically and irreversibly changed by my version of Microsoft Word.)
Since the composition study was done, the pronoun problem has been resolved by President Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, by example. Obama is frequently shown on television at rallies saying, “You people were very kind [or gracious] to Michelle and I.” In a televised discussion with Charlie Rose, Duncan obviously bowed to presidential precedence when he said, “The schools don’t belong to you or I.”18
These grammar patterns from on high should make it clear that the switch to less formal English is no longer confined to those with little education or station in life. They are rapidly becoming the pattern for all Americans. Grammar is coming down to a matter of personal choice.
2B OR NOT 2B?
Another dilemma that many older people believe is not a dilemma at all involves the most common verb, to be, along with its irregular and illogical forms, am, is, and are. Even Shakespeare recognized the problem when he had Hamlet say, “To be or not to be; that is the question.” He was obviously asking why the simple word be cannot be used instead of all the irregular forms that complicate the verb so completely.
E. D. Hirsch Jr. is one noted author and educator who takes a realistic view of the issue. He has suggested that it would have been simpler to use be for all present-tense forms, such as I be, you be, he be, and so on. He says, “We don’t need am, is and are. With English verbs, as with its pronouns, a single form can very well do the work of all, without ambiguity.”19 As for the chances of getting the language establishment to go along with that idea anytime soon, they be extremely small.
Meanwhile, slurred verbs like wanna, gonna, and gotta have long been on a tear, especially in newspaper headlines, often without quotation marks. My probes on Google in December 2010 showed the three verbal elisions catching up to their formal linguistic parents, want to, going to, and got to.
The most popular of the three was gonna, with 129 million hits. In comparison, the hits for going to, its formal equivalent, were 170 million. Wanna, the next most popular of the three, came in at 104 million, compared to 2.88 billion for want to. Gotta came in third with 65 million hits compared to 2 billion