For as long as the NYT will let its gratuitous status last, this is a gift article, no paygate.  And by the time the “gift status” is disallowed by the NYT, maybe I'll have thought to copy and paste some of the best excerpts.  Because I like this, even though, or perhaps because it's wholesome and is not in the least political. I first put it on FB, because I  know  there are a few retired teachers, and some other old folks who are convinced that there is such a thing as a normative Queen's English … or should we say the “King's English” now?  Anyway, people who at least implicitly disagree with me that as long as clarity is achieved, there's no right or wrong way to speak English.  Or any other language.  

 

As backstory, I'll not that while it's really NOT political, I actually thought this article was going to be.  The writer, John McWhorter, is a Black linguistics prof at Columbia U … and beyond that, is what I think is a very reasoned and principled conservative when it comes to affirmative action. Other veins of thought, not so much. He's very supportive of LGBTQ rights, for instance, including the acceptance of “they/them” as a non-gender pronoun to replace “him/her.” Frankly, this particular reliance on imprecision to avoid gender identification drives me crazy, and I would prefer that we come up with a new word entirely for singular 3rd person pronouns. McWhorter says 'get over it, you'll get used to it.' But I've had to wade through long MH clinical narratives in which clarity was lost due to the dual usage of they/them for singular pronouns, and I'd like to see the introduction of other words … xe/xem, for instance, has been suggested. So I'd say to John Mc, YOU get over, because YOU'LL get used to the replacement faster than I get used to the confusion.

 

Anyway, I like to read McWhorter, in part because he's simply a great writer, in part because it's good to find 'conservative' thought that's actually reasonable, and in part because, truth be told, I have my own worries about the way our recently departed affirmative actions rules worked (I just thought they were better than the alternative outright bigotry and race-based exclusion).

So … I was pleased to find McWhorter's piece, not surprised to find out he agreed with Jackson's dissent, and even more pleased to discover that his writing was not about the ruling, but about the past tenses of the word “blink.”

 

And no … it's not “blunk.” But as McWhorter explains, “you can be forgiven” if that's the first thing that popped into you head … in part because it would logically run parallel to sink … as in sink, sank. sunk … but it's more complicated than that.

 

I love this kind of linguistics stuff, now that I don't have to study it or write about it or take tests on it, or horror of horrors, take a doctoral comprehensive exam in it, as I had to back at the end of the 20th century.

 

Maybe somebody else will be amused. Easy read, and intriguing.