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Many people these days don’t know whether they’re coming or going. Or, to put it more specifically, they don’t know the difference in usage between the verbs “come” and “go.” There is a simple memory trick: come here, go there. If you are already at the destination, use “come.” If you are not yet at the destination, employ “go.” Thus, it is never correct to say, “May I come with you?” A clever, in-the-know second person should retort, “You have already come, because you are obviously here. And no, you may not go with me.”
The same problem exists between the verbs “take” and “bring.” The simple mnemonic device is similar: bring it here, take it there. If you are already at the destination, say “bring.” If you are not yet at the destination, say “take.” Numerous people get it entirely backward. When I used to be a teacher, nearly every fire drill was an occasion for me to review this. A typical child would ask, “Should we bring our books?” I would reply, “You have already brought your books. But no, you may not take them with you on the fire drill.”
Picture yourself at the location of a party that will soon take place. Say to your guest, “Please come to the party and bring your spouse.” Now envision yourself in a location different from where the party will be held. Now you should say, “Please go to the party and take your spouse.” There! That’s really all that there is to it.
My dear late father used to constantly disparage the unnecessary confusion between “take” and “bring.” According to him, there was no such confusion prior to the advent of television. Before that, he used to say, only New Yorkers confused “take” and “bring;” he even had the impression that they knew that they were wrong, and that it was a “fashionable” deliberate slang. Unfortunately, with so many of the earliest TV shows being broadcast from New York City, he claimed that “New-Yorkese” blanketed and polluted the country, and that now, he feared, we’d never be rid of it. I can’t say, of course; all of that was before my time. However, regardless of the source, I share his annoyance with the problem.
Another nuisance is when speakers don’t know the difference between “farther” and “further.” The two are not interchangeable. “Farther” quite literally means just what it looks like: more far, a greater distance. “Further,” however, is not so concrete; it is a more nebulous, figurative term meaning moreover or additionally. Imagine an official giving a speech about how he intends to improve some situation. He might typically say, “We are going to do this, this, and this; and further, we are going to do that, that, and that.” He might replace “further” with “furthermore,” but they are one and the same.
A pervasive grammatical problem of our time is when speakers use they (and its associated forms: them and their) as if it could be a singular. All forms of they refer invariably to a plural: to two or more things or persons. This problem of misusing it as a singular was created by women’s liberation. Speakers have become unwilling to correctly use he to refer to a singular individual where the gender is unknown. Well then, why not just say he or she? This would still be technically correct. But substituting they for a third person singular is as wrong as it would be to substitute I, you, or we in such a context. Remember, grammar isn’t about supporting or rejecting women’s lib or any other issue; it is simply grammar.
Another bit of linguistic nuttiness is the misuse of the reflexive pronouns: those words ending in –self (myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, and themselves). The very nature of reflexives is that the action reflects back on the subject (the “doer”). For example, “I look in the mirror and I see myself;” “he fell and hurt himself;” and so on in that vein. When someone greets you with “how are you,” the correct response is “fine, and you,” not “fine, and yourself.” The strangest example of abuse of the reflexives that I ever heard was often spoken by vice-principals during morning announcements in the schools. Typically, such a vice-principal would say, “Anyone wishing to attend Friday’s dance should see either Mr. Smith or myself.” (Mr. Smith of course refers to the principal). I would hear that from my classroom and positively shudder. He should have said, “Anyone wishing to attend Friday’s dance should see either Mr. Smith or me.” You can easily see why by simply removing the grammatically-unnecessary phrase “Mr. Smith or;” now the sentence reads, “Anyone wishing to attend Friday’s dance should see me;” you wouldn’t even be tempted to say, “Anyone wishing to attend Friday’s dance, should see myself.”
And I mustn’t omit the greatest grammatical affront of all: ending a sentence in a preposition. It is never correct to do so. Further, in foreign languages that I’ve studied (French, Spanish, and Russian), it is never done, even by the most illiterate. Apparently, only English speakers abuse our language that badly. Prepositions are, of course, words such as at, of, from, in, out, through, behind, under, over, above, below, etc. It is wrong to end a sentence with any of them, because it creates an incomplete thought; some noun must always follow any one of them; for example: under what: under a table, under a bed, etc. Though I hate to see or hear any preposition at the end of a sentence, somehow I’ve always cringed the worst by hearing at at the end of a sentence. After a while, I figured out why that one irritates me the worst. At least with most of the prepositions, most of the time, the preposition in question does belong in the sentence; the speaker simply forgot to place it at the beginning of the sentence where it belonged, and stuck it on as an afterthought at the end. But in many cases, at didn’t even belong in the sentence in the first place, let alone at the end. For example, when a speaker asks the recipient of a letter, “Who is it from?” instead of the correct, “From whom is it?” at least the questioner is using a preposition that the sentence does need (from). But typically, when the speaker asks, “Where is it at?” instead of “Where is it?” he or she is employing a totally unnecessary preposition. You can prove this to yourself by moving the preposition to its correct location at the beginning of the sentence: “At where is it?” See how awkward? At is not needed at all. It’s completely extraneous.
Lest someone point out the atrocious grammar employed by the beloved novel, “The Yearling,” and by the sequel and many short stories that I have written based upon it, my reply is thus: “The Yearling” takes place in 1871 backwoods Florida; the people in it had close to zero opportunity for education. But now, in our enlightened day and age, what’s your excuse???
