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I’m not sure if you can read the text in the picture below, but it’s from a novel I’m presently writing. The sentence I’d like to bring to your attention is the one that reads: The person he was referring to was an acquaintance of mine… etc.
For fun, I had MS Word go through the document and underline what it thought were mistakes. For those of you familiar with this feature, you already know that a green squiggly under a word or phrase means the application has taken issue with your grammar. Clicking on the squiggly opens a window with suggestions on how to fix the problem.
So, in the sentence above, Word suggested, as you see in the box, the word be for was, which would have given me this sentence had I accepted it: The person he was referring to be an acquaintance of mine…
I smiled, as hopefully you just did, but then got to thinking about proper uses of the verb to be that sound all wrong to my ears, but actually aren’t.
Two came immediately to mind:
1. Though grammarians are still clinging to the proper antiquated use of the subjunctive mode in the was/were debate (what I call “the mode of doubt”) (correct: If I were you/incorrect: If I was you), they don’t seem to fret much over the loss of the following use of the subjunctive, which I’ve plucked from Shakespeare’s play Cymbeline:
Act I, Scene 6: Iachimo: If she be furnish’d with a mind so rare, she is alone the Arabian bird…
Act II, Scene 3:Cloten: If she be up, I’ll speak with her…
2. African American Vernacular English (AAVE), better known as Ebonics, a dialect defined by its own coherent grammar and pronunciation rules, is big on making a distinction between habitual action and currently occurring action. For example, She is blogging and She usually blogs are two different concepts, one expressed by omitting the verb to be and one expressed by including the verb to be, though not in a way the majority of us are accustomed to (at least not yet).
She bloggin’ = She is blogging
She be bloggin’ = She is usually blogging
It’s an important distinction, and one most people who aren’t familiar with Ebonics generally don’t understand because they simply assume She bloggin’ and She be bloggin’ mean the exact same thing, when in truth, they really don’t.
So there you have two interesting and completely correct uses of the verb “to be,” that don’t sound correct to many of us, all thanks to the brilliant suggestion of Microsoft Word. Care to share any other funky MS Word suggestions you’ve come across? Go ahead, make us smile. The interactive part of the Wrap starts now!
Check out all past Weekend Word Wraps>>
Comments (17)
Comment
Shouldn’t that be “the person to whom he was referring…”? Interesting that your sentence was grammatically poor, but that MS word correct a word that didn’t need correcting. Your ‘mode of doubt’ is of course the conditional, and its use is not antiquted, merely correct in certain contexts.
posted by Kerry on 1-4-2008 at 5:25 am
Well, isn’t that interesting? Except it is an incorrect sentence, gramatically speaking. “The person he was referring to was an acquaintance of mine” This sentence should read “The person to whom he was referring was ….” It is the fact that you have a hanging preposition that confuses the MS word. So the grammar check caught your error it just gave the wrong answer.
posted by Rob Atkins on 1-4-2008 at 7:12 am
this is very intersting…
posted by easytookeepinmind on 1-4-2008 at 7:17 am
i have not thought or heard the word ebonics in at least 3 years. why today?
posted by mimi on 1-4-2008 at 7:50 am
I be flossin’ just because of articles like this!
posted by Kim F. on 1-4-2008 at 7:56 am
Are you actually suggesting that “She be bloggin’” is proper grammar? I hope not.
posted by Craig on 1-4-2008 at 8:25 am
But you still haven’t told us what the definition of is is.
posted by WizardBoy on 1-4-2008 at 8:32 am
Drop the clause altogether to hear if it sounds correct:
“The person….was an acquaintance…” is grammatically correct.
I do this with my children when the say “Me and Katie want some ice cream”. Drop the “and Katie” and say the sentence again.
posted by KJ on 1-4-2008 at 9:01 am
My sentiments were exactly what Kerry and Rob Atkins- there was no object for the preposition to, which is what prompted the grammar squiggly.
Also, I find it interesting that the subjunctive is so rarely used in English, but is one of the most used forms of conjugation in the Spanish, French and Italian languages. I think the subjunctive just doesn’t sound right in germanic languages, but translates beautifully in the romantics.
posted by Valerie on 1-4-2008 at 9:26 am
You could correct the sentence to be grammatically correct (is that a word?) but is that the style you are writing in? The way the sentence reads, it sounds like it is being written more to flow more like how people talk - Think about it - how often do you talk grammatically correct?
and the word “ain’t” needs to be erased from everyone’s vocabulary - it is not a word and really makes people who use it sound uneducated (try listen to someone who uses it while negotiating a business contract)
posted by Beth on 1-4-2008 at 12:18 pm
Seriously?
“…two interesting and completely correct uses of the verb “to be…”
Ebonics is not proper and correct grammar. It can be considered a colloquial language, but let’s not try to replace it with standard English.
posted by Lindsey on 1-4-2008 at 12:46 pm
Beth: Exactly. My narrator reveals pantloads of information about himself by speaking in a vernacular he feels comfortable with. However, “The person to whom he was referring,” fits well in another book I’ve written, because the narrator is a strict grammarian. (n.b. it’s a satire)
Oh, and Lindsey: are you thus suggesting Shakespeare’s use of the subjunctive in Cymbaline is correct grammar today according to “standard English”?
posted by David on 1-4-2008 at 1:17 pm
David, wouldn’t Shakespeare’s English be considered Elizabethan English or Early Modern English, not standard English?
posted by Lindsey on 1-4-2008 at 1:43 pm
Ending a sentence with a preposition is no longer considered gramatically incorrect. If you click on my name, it should hopefully take you to a Chicago Manual of Style FAQ about that topic. Whether or not this is the narrator’s vernacular makes no difference in this case as the sentence is correct.
This is the most grammar-nerdy comment I’ve ever made anywhere.
posted by Julia on 1-4-2008 at 5:12 pm
Julia: thanks for the comment. Grammarians still prefer object pronouns after prepositions, so I understand the debate, which is lively and VERY healthy. Language evolves, which is largely the point of this post.
Lindsey: Standard English has no set rules. Many linguists agree that it’s impossible to regulate, especially as English is spoken all over the world, in hundreds of different dialects. Ebonics is absolutely legit and within that dialect, my examples serve as correct usage. It is completely possible that one day we’ll all be using the habitual form of the verb to be, as the language evolves. Don’t rule it out.
posted by David on 1-4-2008 at 5:36 pm
I’m kind of a grammar monomaniac, but in Spanish. While I concur with Rob Atkins about what I guess Word did, I’d like to ask the bright commenters about the effect of a comma after “to.”
“The person he was referring to, was an acquaintance of mine”
I’m not very familiar with the exact use of punctuation marks in English. In Spanish, the equivalent phrase would be correct.
posted by Andres B on 1-5-2008 at 12:14 am
I feel like someone needs to stand up for Shakespeare here. In those lines, he uses “be” instead of “is”, but “is” would in fact be proper grammar. The subjunctive is used when something is clearly not true, as opposed to just uncertain. For example, “If she is up, I’ll talk to her” has a completely different meaning from “If she were up, I’d talk to her” (proper subjunctive). The latter implies that the speaker knows she’s asleep (assuming that’s the meaning of “up” we’re using).
posted by Iris on 1-5-2008 at 3:50 pm