Making English grammar conform to Latin rules is like asking people to play baseball using the rules of football.
Political correctness is neither political nor is it correct. It amounts to social censorship, and the sooner we spit it out, the better.
I went to Glenalmond and got the piss taken out of me for my Glasgow accent. Then I spent five years at this very posh school, came out sounding like Prince Charles, which you have to do in order to survive, and then I got called Lord Fauntleroy for the first six months at art school.
Language is political. That's why you and me, my Brother and Sister, that's why we supposed to choke our natural self into the weird, lying, barbarous, unreal, white speech and writing habits that the schools lay down like holy law.
Don Cornelius gave me an incredulous look regarding my accent. I lessened it; he gave a nod of approval. Instantly, I felt ashamed. I had made my first conscious effort not to sound ethnic.
When I read some of the rules for speaking and writing the English language correctly, I think any fool can make a rule, and every fool will mind it.
Political correctness is tyranny with manners.
The disquieting thing about newscaster-babble or editorial-speak is its ready availability as a serf idiom, a vernacular of deference. "Mr. Secretary, are we any nearer to bringing about a dialogue in this process ?
Words fashioned with somewhat over precise diction are like shapes turned out by a cookie cutter.
We must use words as they are used, or stand aside from life.
I vowed to never use my American accent, and I didn't. Even going to get the paper in the morning to buying milk down at the shop, getting a cab, wherever.
One does, after all, take on many of the givens of a society when one takes on its language.
