Thursday, October 31, 2013

Grammar Got Run Over By A Reindeer

As most of you know, I am fascinated by the English language.  More than fascinated, you might say that it is one of my earliest and most enduring loves.  As with almost all long-times loves, this relationship has developed its own fetishes and perversions.  In my case, the most perverse is...I LOVE ENGLISH GRAMMAR.  There.  I said it.  Publicly on Facebook where it is visible to over a billion people.  And along with the base perversion, there exists a sort of corollary:  I am a Grammar Nazi.  As you can see, as GN, I have a Seal of Approval and a Seal of Disapproval.
I have found one song and one song only that addresses this fetish.  Its..oops!  I mean it's a Parody of "Gramma Got Run Over By A Reindeer," a trite and silly song that begs to be parodied.  It's called "Grammar Got Run Over By A Reindeer."

Here are the lyrics.


Grammar got run over by a reindeer

Walking home from our house Christmas Eve
You can say there's no point to good grammar
But as for me and Mignon we believe

She'd been drinking too much eggnog.

Had she drank or had she drunk?
With all her sentence fragmentation,
We'd all told her that her sentence structure stunk.

She was so very, very angry!

She figuratively stormed right out the door.
There were quotation marks around her
We kept wondering what those silly marks were for.

Grammar got run over by a reindeer

Walking home from our house Christmas Eve
You can say there's no point to good grammar
But as for me and Mignon we believe

Hopefully we'll all find grammar

On whom our writing does rely
We may start struggling with pronouns.
Is it you and me or is it you and I?

It's not Christmas without Grammar

We just don't do nothing correct.
And we just can't help but wonder
Are we feeling the affect or the effect?
THE EFFECT!

Grammar got run over by a reindeer

Walking home from our house Christmas Eve
You can say there's no point to good grammar
But as for me and Mignon we believe

Now the podcasts's on our iPods.

And our ear buds in our ears.
We'll be listening in weekly
So we can point out grammatical errors to our peers.

We've warned all our friends and neighbors

Better listen for yourselves
Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing
Is better than any books on your bookshelves.

Grammar got run over by a reindeer

Walking home from our house Christmas Eve
You can say there's no point to good grammar
But as for me and Mignon we believe.

Grammar got run over by a reindeer

Walking home from our house Christmas Eve
You can say there's no point to good grammar
But as for me and Mignon we believe.

I cannot find it on Youtube, but an mp3audio is at http://grooveshark.com/#!/album/Grammar+Girl+s+Quick+And+Dirty+Tips+For+Better+Writing/182994


Note:  Kulwinder Singh, this is worse than most of my songs.  Don't listen, and, if you ignore my advice and listen anyway, don't complain.  You were warned.


Now, a further confession.  I love the fact that the English language is alive, constantly growing, changing, evolving, spinning off in unexpected ways.  I am most grateful that we don't have the equivalent of the fascist Academie Française, telling us what we may or may not say.  There is no point in trying to preserve the purity of the English language; indeed, English has no purity to preserve.  It is a mutt, a mongrel, a Germanic language overrun with vocabulary and grammar from the whole of the Indo-European linguistic family and some from other families, as well.


I am known to occasionally use non-standard grammar, most especially when I verb nouns, a favourite manifestation of my perversion, what you might term a fetish.  Grammar Nazi allows herself this privilege because she knows what she's doing.  When your English is as good as hers, you have her permission to do the same.


(WTF, there is something seriously wrong with you if you need my permission.  Freedom is an even higher value than good grammar.) 

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comment if you like. Or not. It is your choice. No coercion from moi.

Sorry about the word verification thingy, but I was getting way too many spurious comments, some obscene, some just in bad taste.