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Article: EDITORIAL: Language fashions come and go, but rules remain.(Editorial)
- Article from:
- The News-Sentinel (Fort Wayne, IN)
- Article date:
- May 15, 2006
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 The News-Sentinel. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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May 15--I heard a young woman on MSNBC say, "If you have any money laying around . . . " The only thing she should have added to be correct is "Use it as a nest egg." But she didn't.
Once again I wondered what is happening to our language. When I complained to my son, he asked, "When was the last time you heard the word alain'?" I guess, John, it's been about 35 years. Remember how we learned in a drill, "lie, lay, lain; lay, laid, laid"? That was followed by "sit, sat, sat and set, set, set." Then we had to write paragraphs showing we had learned this lesson well.
We learned to recognize some adverbs by the "ly" attached to many of the modifiers, and ...