LANGUAGE LOVERS UNITE By Ellen Donker

We care about words

This grammar quiz at the "Rebel with a Clause" movie screening was surprisingly tricky.

I do not consider myself a grammar expert, but it’s always been important to me to speak correctly. I blame my mother for that. In her quiet way, she was particular about how her children expressed themselves. I’m glad she was, because she taught me a failsafe way to determine whether to use “I” or “me” in a sentence.

I learned very quickly not to say, “Denise went to Stern’s with Joanne and I.” And it was like nails on a chalkboard when she heard someone say, “You should’ve went with me.”

My daughter, Madeline, and son, Christian, feel the same way. We can have long, spirited conversations about grammatical topics. And we are skilled in giving each other the briefest sideways glance when someone in our midst uses, say, an improper verb tense.

Recently, my stepdaughter said, “She had sang the wrong note.” And there we gave the glance, partly because we were surprised that Leah, a polyglot who teaches ESL for a living, didn’t use “sung.” But it happens to the best of us.

Years ago, when I worked at AT&T, I had a boss who used the word “irregardless” when she was making a point. She said, “Irregardless of our latest reorganization, we need to keep our eyes on the ball.” I desperately wanted to tell her that the “ir” and “less” equated to a double negative, but I didn’t want to get caught up in the next downsizing dragnet, so I kept it to myself. Other staff members noticed, and we bonded with a secret eye roll, also used when she pronounced an irrelevant issue a “mute” point.

Now, you may look up “irregardless” in the dictionary and find that it is, in fact, a real word. Merriam-Webster’s unabridged edition included it in 1934, and other dictionaries followed suit. Apparently, the word has been in widespread use since 1795. Merriam-Webster’s reasoning is that it doesn’t make the English language. It merely records it.

This is also the case for a word that I realized I had been saying my entire life and never noticed: “nother,” as in, “That’s a whole nother reason not to watch the news.” “Nother” is, indeed, a word but one that you probably will only find in speech and not in print, except for here.

Anyone who is interested in these matters would enjoy a visit to Planet Word in Washington, D.C., a museum with interactive galleries and exhibits all about words and language. When I was there in March, I learned a word describing something I have struggled with my entire life: “collywobbles.” It means intense anxiety or nervousness, especially with stomach queasiness. I now feel seen.

I recently saw a movie at the Ridgewood Public Library called “Rebel with a Clause.” The author, Ellen Jovin, wrote a book about her traveling grammar table that she set up in cities in all 50 states to answer people’s pressing language questions. Her husband, Brandt Johnson, filmed the interactions and turned it into a movie.

Whether you read the book or see the movie, you’ll find out that many people have pet peeves when it comes to grammar. You’ll also learn a lot of language lessons as people ask the difference between “laid” and “lain,” share their outsized love (or disdain) for the Oxford comma, and learn when to use who or whom. During a Q&A with the author, one man admitted to feeling annoyed every time he passed the local Woman’s Club. In his opinion, it should be the Women’s Club, and people should know better.

It seems that I am one of many people who care about using the English language properly. So when linguist Kristen di Genarro approached me with her idea for a language column – Language Matters – I gave her an emphatic yes. We want to know what language questions you have. Email us and we’ll try to address them. It’ll give you a whole nother reason for reading Matters Magazine