English Lessons

It has probably come to your attention that the English language – all of it, from syntax to semantics – isn’t what it used to be. Although there are plenty of institutions to fault for this state of disrepair I place the preponderance of blame on the J-schools.

English: Some Assembly Required

Oh, I know, I shouldn’t simply blame “journalism” for the demise of the mother tongue. It’s death spiral  has been hugely assisted by the birth of the Twitterverse and the explosion of texting. These two platforms alone have served to reduce most  human communication to acronyms and emojis interrupted only by the random, and most likely rogue, punctuation mark. And don’t get me started on the auto-correct feature which has created an infinite array of alternate meanings for otherwise perfectly good words.

As long as journalism schools taught the who, what, where, when and how method of reporting the English language stood a chance. But once journalism shifted from reporting to propagandizing language took on a new role. Proper linguistic usage entails far too many rules and constraints when your purpose is to promote social justice and wokeness rather than simply conveying facts and information.

With that in mind and in keeping with the Christmas spirit I’m publishing this old but always entertaining grammar teaching tool as a public service. I consider it doing my share to keep the English language alive and on life support as the second language of the United-for-the-time-being States.

I call it “The English Teacher Steps Out.”

• An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.

• A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.

• A bar was walked into by the passive voice.

• An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.

• Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”

• A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.

• Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.

• A question mark walks into a bar?

• A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.

• Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, “Get out — we don’t serve your type.”

• A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.

• A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.

• Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.

• A synonym strolls into a tavern.

• At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar — fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.

• A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.

• Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.

• A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.

• An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.

• The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.

• A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Ralph.

• The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.

• A dyslexic walks into a bra.

• A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.

• A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.

• A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.

• A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony.

So let’s all get out there and walk into a bar to save the English language! Just be careful not hit your head and slip on your onomatopoeia.