Grammar Misdemeanors

"Me and her are going to the park."

A sentence like this, spoken aloud in my mother's presence, would have raised the dreaded Red Flag of English Errors in my growing up years. No matter how occupied she was with something else, her ears would have perked up, her eyebrows would have jumped an inch, and her mouth would have opened involuntarily as the corrected sentence burst forth from her lips. I used to cringe whenever one of my friends used the word "ain't" in front of my mother, because there was no stopping the free-flow of incorrect-grammar-detection and the resulting lecture on proper speech. (Even as I write this, I am carefully choosing words and sentence structure so that, in the unlikely event of my mother reading this post, I will not receive a red-pen corrected version in my email.) I found it rather embarrassing when my mom would repeat a sentence spoken by one of my friends, giving the correct version along with the "why that is the right way to say it" English lesson.

By far the worst offense was the use of the word "snuck". This would actually produce something akin to righteous indignation. "Snuck" was a common word to use in place of "sneaked" which was, at that time, the correct past tense version of "sneak". However, as an interesting note, "snuck" became so common that it is now the accepted past participle (it sounds like I know what I'm talking about, doesn't it?) for "sneak". Microsoft Word recognizes "snuck" as a valid word entry and Merriam-Webster's online dictionary acknowledges its use without even referring to it as slang. Breathe, Mom.

Why am I taking time to write about this now? Because yesterday, my 6-year old came in the front door after school and began telling me about something that his classmate "brang" to school. Immediately, the red flag popped up in my mind and, before I could stop myself, the word "brought" burst forth from my lips, and I realized that the next generation of grammar police had donned its mantel of authority.

(For those who care, the correct form of the sentence at the top is: "She and I are going to the park." The way to check for correctness is to separate "she/her" and "me/I" and try each by itself in the sentence. In my mother's words, "You would not say 'Her is going to the park' but rather 'She is going to the park'; and you would not say 'Me is going...' ", etc. If this lesson offends you, I'm sorry, it's just the way I was raised.)