The Abused Article

There was once a time when the little people of the English language, a, an and the, had a place and purpose in the great scheme of things. They knew where they belonged, who their partners were, and where they would always find welcoming arms. There was no ambiguity about their billet and station in life. They were used when needed, otherwise they stayed safe in the sanctuary of security of purpose, away from the violence and turbulence that plagued the rest of the language.

 

Now their life of comfort has been snatched away, leaving them bewildered about their raison d'etre.

 

I place the blame for this deplorable state of affairs at the door step of modern laxity of speech: when we read with indulgence the ramblings of would-be writers camouflaged in the guise of bringing the language closer to the common man, we condemn the articles to obscurity. What is forgotten in this quest for propinquity is that the language in which they write is only the illegitimate child of English, an indelible blot on the escutcheon of a proud language.

 

There are books being written, by the roll of the printing press, the mantra for which, supposedly, is accessibility of the language. I would say that the purpose of these books is to clothe the ignorance of the language with the garb of innovation. But innovation starts to lose its sheen when researchers abound aplenty.

 

When we can read without wincing a sentence like: "Following are a detail you wanted", we become conspirators in hastening the language to its demise. When the superflous apostrohe in a board indicating that we can buy fresh "Fruit's" here doesnt elict a shocked gasp, at the very least, from us, we can be certain that we are battle-hardened soldiers, whom no horrors may astonish. And when a request such as: "Will you please bring science book which you have gave me earlier", doesnt reduce us to tears, we may conclude that we have lost all our finer feelings and sensibilities.

  

The newspaper: that guide to the language, that torchbearer for the masses; is also the ring master of prowling thieves of the sanctity of the language. The articles are used so frugally that one starts to wonder if they are in short supply, and whether one should use one's contacts in the black-market to start hoarding up on them. But its not just the articles; grammar, in its wondrous entirety, absents itself with an unnerving frequency from the pages of our newspapers. One can see the astonishing prowess of the country's police-force when one reads of twelve men being "arrested with 50 kg of Ganja". What is even more distressing is our placid acceptance of the absurd.

 

Indeed, one doesn't need to go through the trouble of buying a book and reading it, or even turning the pages of a newspaper to find examples of betises that hound the language. Just drive by any random road and you will find ample evidence of abuse. Shops that want to encourage people to sample their 'western out feet' are not hard to find.

 

A hoarding advertising a playgroup for children reads "School for children with health-care"; one can only wonder whether to tack on 'issues' at the end. Send your offspring to such a school, and you can complacently expect a generation that speaks, at best, a perverted variant of the language.

 

Convention seems to suggest that as long as you get your point across grammar is irrelevant. That is, language is nothing more and nothing less than a medium of communication, and the rules of grammar can be buried six feet below the ground as long as we understand each other. In that case, we might as well start burning up the works of art of every language that we can lay our hands up on. The fallacy of this argument is that rules, convention and tradition in every language have developed with the sole aim of communication. Through the ages they have gathered legitimacy,almost a ne plus ultra. Language, some may argue, is not a destination, but an evolution. In forming new traditions, we must not transgress the established.

 

At the risk of sounding pedantic, I must confess that, when it comes to language, my blood doesnt rebel against establisment. Every misused 'a' makes me want to rush to it with first aid, every missing 'the' hits me like the loss of a loved one and each absent 'an' makes me weep.

 

When Lord Byron wrote the lines:

 

"And when I laugh at any mortal thing

'Tis that I may not weep",

 

it must have been in anticipation of times to come.