Pop Quiz: Who can name all 10 reindeer? Yes, 10 of them. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure most people will come up with Dasher and Dancer, Hansel and Gretel, Comet and Cupid, Sleepy and Bashful, but there is a tenth whose name will appear at the end.<\/p>\n
Is it just me (or, as my English teacher would say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Is it just I?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d), who becomes giddy this time year, knowing 40 reindeer paws will land on my roof in a couple of weeks? Here are some observations I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve made over the years:<\/p>\n
Sunday night, we spent a couple of hours enjoying an all-female Irish group called the Celtic Woman, who sang Christmas carols. Notice I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t write \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Holiday Carols.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d This group of young women with such beautiful voices used words like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Gentlemen\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153God rest ye merry,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and not \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Gentle-persons.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
They sang the carols as they must have been written originally, long before \u00e2\u20ac\u0153political correctness\u00e2\u20ac\u009d became an issue. And we heard other terms like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153men\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153boys and girls,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d without anybody\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s attempt to neuter the terms.<\/p>\n
And on Facebook, there are people posting notes indicating they like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Christmas\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and we should use it, while eschewing \u00e2\u20ac\u0153holidays.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t feel too strongly on these terms; to me, December \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and even year-\u00e2\u20ac\u2122round \u00e2\u20ac\u201d is all about good will, peace, love and harmony.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
I slept through grammar classes at Immaculate Conception School,\u00c2\u00a0 dozing off to the tune of a long unit on diagramming sentences. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve made this argument many times:<\/p>\n
But does the best diagrammer of sentences ultimately become Hemingway or Faulkner? I believe that for too long, people have believed you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t write well unless you know all the silly grammatical terms like gerund, participle, predicate nominative and the dative case. I used the dative case only when I looked for a prom date.<\/p>\n
Days ago I saw this posting on Facebook:<\/p>\n
Your wrong its not that way when he said I want to run for rep he didnt mean it you need to check your fats more carefully.<\/p>\n
In a stretch, the Facebook posting is understandable, but all my previous English teachers would be stirring in their graves over such a construction.<\/p>\n
Language has many rules. Perhaps the most confusing deal with quotation marks. My friend and fellow columnist, Lupita Gonzales, has excoriated me for misusing one of the terms, in print. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The word is \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcquotation,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 not \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcquote,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she insists. She says I should use \u00e2\u20ac\u0153quote\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as a verb and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153quotation\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as a noun. And she added that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There are no such things as \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcquote\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 marks, just \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcquotation\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 marks.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
So I ask her, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153May I quotation you on that?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d That exchange called to mind an exercise which I now ask readers to wrestle with. I placed it on Facebook and got various replies, ranging from, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I used to know it, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve forgotten,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Does it even matter?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You must be kidding!!!!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
The sentence I ask you to punctuate might appear as merely a string of 11 instances of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153had.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Regardless, can you punctuate it?<\/p>\n
Smith, where Jones had had had had had had had had had had had the teacher\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s approval.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u201a\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2\u00e2\u20ac\u201a\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
The 10th reindeer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s name is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Olive,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Olive, the other reindeer, used to laugh and call him names.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pop Quiz: Who can name all 10 reindeer? Yes, 10 of them. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure most people will come up with Dasher and Dancer, Hansel and Gretel, Comet and Cupid, Sleepy and Bashful, but there is a tenth whose name will appear at the end. Is it just me (or, as my English teacher would say, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1159"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1159"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1160,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1159\/revisions\/1160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}