THINK AGAIN.

I cleared my Oracle exam; scored an 81% neat. Yay!! The Structured Query Language has left my brain completely unstructured though. I need to return to some language that I understand (and enjoy) more. Speaking of languages, my perception of the English language has changed drastically in the last 2 months, since T.I.M.E happened (T.I.M.E is a popular coaching class that helps you prepare for the MBA entrance exams). I used to be a complete English grammar freak, a thorough perfectionist. There was no rule in grammar that I didn’t know about blah blah! All the while I was blissfully unaware of the most important rule: There are no rules in the English language. Can’t blame me though, they never said this in school.

A language is governed by the rules of its grammar say our English teachers. What is grammar if I may ask?

Wikipedia describes grammar as the ‘field of linguistics that covers the conventions governing the use of any given natural language. It includes morphology and syntax, often complemented by phonetics, phonology, semantics, and pragmatics. English grammar is a body of rules (grammar) specifying how phrases and sentences are constructed in the English language.’

Going by these definitions, a sentence does not qualify as correct if it does not abide by the rules of grammar. But then again, what is a language? Isn’t it a mere means of communication? Any means of communication succeeds if it can convey correctly. So then is grammar as important as we have been taught to think it is? Let's find out.

We’ve been told since the day we learnt to break a twig that a proper noun (name given to a person, place or thing) cannot be preceeded by an article. But you do agree that the Ganga is considered sacred in India. I read in the papers today that Indian artwork is scoring really well in the United States of America. (Apparently a stainless steel mirror sculpture by Indian artist Anish Kapoor sold for a sum of Rs. 6.8 crore at Sotheby’s sale of contemporary art in London.) I would myself love to own a Jiaur Rahman. (He is a brilliant young Indian artist. What you see in this post is a watercolour by him titled ‘Rainwashed’. You can check out more of his works at http://www.jiaurrahman.com/). The joys brought by fine art are something else; and they say abstract nouns (names given to physical entities that we cannot see, hear, touch, taste or smell) cannot be used in plural. Yeah right!

What about Mc. Donald’s very famous tagline, “I’m Loving It!” It’s grammatically incorrect. Do we question it? No. Do we use it? Yes, because it speaks to us. It’s become a trend! There’s another rule stating that words indicating indefinite quantity (some, few, many, much, more) have to be followed by plural forms but we never say ‘some breads’, do we? They also say that collective nouns are always followed by verbs in the singular form but the committee was never seated around the Round Table. The committee were seated around the Round Table. The simple present tense, as a rule, is used to indicate facts, habits, opinions and routine activities. But we use it more frequently to predict future events!

There are a hundred other such exceptions that you will come across if you pay a little attention and this is only about spoken English. Written English is another story altogether! So how can rules be called rules if there are more exceptions to them than normal occurences?

Grammar, in practical terms, is just a set of guidelines agreed upon by the world to standardize the language. Without grammar, what an Indian perceives of a verbal communication may be completely different from what the American intended to say. The Wren & Martin is not the Bible. Of course, there are a few basics we can’t argue about, but that’s about it. After all, the language came first, not the Wren & Martin.