Scones and Biscuits. Water and Hell.

I was listening to Grammar Girl's "Quick and Dirty Tips" podcast this morning (episode 355) and she was talking about subject-object usage. The subject being the person/object that is the instigator of the action (verb) upon whatever the object is. So, "I threw the ball" involves "I", the subject, "throwing", verb, "the ball", object. While you can tell that spelling is not always my best skill and I have a tendency to think faster than I type (i.e. I occasionally drop words on accident) I enjoy language and how it works and flows. However, English grammar for me did not start to make sense until I studied Russian. I started in 10th grade and eventually minored in it. My teachers talked about subject, verb, object, indirect object, gerunds, imperatives, post predicates, etc. and unless I learned what the blazes those were in English I did not know how to use them in Russian. I'll be honest, I like Russian grammar than English grammar. It is a lot more structured yet maintains some great freedoms of expression.

It's curious how American English has formed over the years. I had a linguistics class my fresman year, "Latin and Greek Elements in English" taught by the wonderful Dr. Mark Damen. I describe his lectures as going to a stand up comedy about Greek tragedy. I almost fell out of my desk one day from laughing so hard in his class. In addition to being a very humorous professor, he is also very thought provoking and I consider him one of the best instructors I ever had. He had a lecture on "American English" in this class and the biggest thing I took away from the class was in language, just like biology, separation breeds new species. If you take two microbes that are initially identical, and separate them in different environments you will eventually end up with two differ species of microbe. We are not taking about trans-species evolution, but simple adaptation. The same is true of languages.

English is a wonderful example of this because the British Empire spread the language everywhere. You have British English, Australian English, Indian English, American English, African English, and even Engrish (although that is due to bad translations more than long time development). Not only do these groups speak with different articulation, and use words differently but also some have words that others don't. Several years ago my wife and I were at a restaurant for dinner. Behind me, in the next booth over, there was a couple from the British Isles as we could tell from their speech. Not being able to help it we heard their exchange with the waitress when she came to take their order...

Guest: "Excuse us, but what is a Navajo Taco?"
Waitress: "It's got beans, and lettuce, and hamburger on a scone."
Guest: "Oh, you mean a biscuit. We know that what we call scones, you call biscuits."
Waitress: "No, it's not on a biscuit. It's on a scone."
Guest: (pause) "So, what's a scone?"

I can't remember the reply, but I do remember smiling at the confusion of both parties. The waitress probably didn't think anything else in the world could be called a scone and the guests were amazed that even with their preparation, the language barrier had still managed to rear it's ugly head.

So, remember, as you travel and learn new languages, or different versions of your native one, Just expect to put your foot in your mouth at least once. For my part, I managed to change, "Would you like me to boil (some) water?" into "Would you like me to burn in Hell?" As soon as I said it, I realized what I had said. To his credit, my friend replied, "Would you like me to answer that questions?"