The experts tell us that English, and perhaps all languages, change over the years. 

My teachers used to burble on about this, and how inevitable it was; how strange then that they should get into such a tantrum if one of us changed it even slightly. 

Being an ancient Briton, I have witnessed written and spoken English change quite a lot, much of it being due to Americanisation; the US has been for some time the senior partner in this business, and foreigners learning the language learn American usages and pronunciations as a matter of course. 

So we hear “harass” with the accent on the second syllable, “schedule” as if it has a “k” in it, “obligated” being used instead of “obliged” and young people talking of “filling out” forms. 

Not all the changes are due to the US however; the word “homage” is now frequently pronounced in the French manner.

Traditional English is short of pronouns of indeterminate gender and when I was young the masculine forms were used for this, so one might say “The last person to leave didn’t lock the door, and he is to blame for the burglary.” 

And if in that sentence a child in those days wrote “they” instead of “he”, he’d be rapped over the knuckles because “the last person” is singular and “they” is plural. 
Grammarians would say  — I imagine with a wintry smile: “The masculine form embraces the feminine.” 

All my Latin has long since evaporated, but I seem to recall that that language had a similar usage and “Puer” could mean boy or child depending on the context. “They” is now the common usage.

Skipping lightly onto another subject, I well remember some lines which were designed to show the perils of bad punctuation: “Caesar entered on his head; his helmet on his feet; his sandals in his sheath; his broadsword in his eye! A fierce look!” 

In a television comedy, the words: “What’s that on the road ahead?” were read as “What’s that on the road? A HEAD?” 

And again “What IS this thing called love?” — the title of a song, was read as “What’s this thing called, love?” 

Legal documents used to avoid punctuation apart from full stops as this was thought to cause possible ambiguity.

And another odd sentence comes to mind: “The bishop gave the dog the bone” in which the word “only” can be inserted in any position giving the sentence seven different meanings or shades of meaning.

  • Last month I asked which character in literature was haunted by King Charles’s head?  That was Mr Dick in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield. 
  • Now, which character in literature says:”I don’t want to talk grammar, I want to talk like a lady!”