[Editors] Grammar in the office (or, in our case, on the campus)

[Andrew Whitacre]

What gets me as well is the conflation of grammar with usage/style, which much of the article does. :)

I'm curious about something: would you guys characterize English vocabulary as being largely Germanic and characterize its grammar as Latinate? It seems like so much of our language's grammar and structure rules come from Latin.

That is, the rules don't seem to vary much from what I learned in my Catholic school Latin classes.

However, our best short words come from German, Dutch, and old English. I've been thinking about this as a homeowner who's had to start fixing/building things myself. Nail, hammer, stair, rail, ladder, roof, work, fall, hurt, whine, then, wait, sod, mow, tired, and broke are all Germanic or Old English.

Mortgage, however, is Latinate.

Andrew Whitacre
Communications Director
cms.mit.edu | civic.mit.edu | gambit.mit.edu
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(617) 324-0490
awhit at mit.edu

On Jun 25, 2012, at 12:26 PM, William T. G. Litant wrote:

> And here I thought I was the only one yanking out his hair:
> 
> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303410404577466662919275448.html
> 
> Best,
> Bill
> 
> 
> William Litant
> communications director
> Aeronautics and Astronautics Department
> and
> Partnership for AiR Transportation Noise and Emissions Reduction
> 33-240 Mass. Institute of Technology
> 77 Massachusetts Ave.
> Cambridge, MA 02139
> 01-617-253-1564
> http://www.mit.aero
> Twitter: @MITAeroAstro
> FB: MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Editors mailing list
> Editors at mit.edu
> http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/editors

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/editors/attachments/20120625/a21d9690/attachment.htm