马上就要走了，整理了一下家里的书，翻到了这本Woe is I，是一本讲语法的书，作者Patricia T. O'Conner曾经是The New York Times书评板块的编辑。我个人对语法很有兴趣，喜欢读各样的参考书。有关语法，我不喜欢其中的种种“术语”，我更偏向用简单直白的方式把语法理解 — 语法和音标都是记录语言使用习惯的工具，也是我们用来理解语言和表达自己的一个参考工具。

这本Woe is I并不推荐大家购买，有兴趣的话可以在网上找到电子版读一读就好了(点击阅读原文下载)。原因是这本书并不是针对我们而写的，而是写给native speaker。例如我们不会有their/there, its/it’s傻傻分不清楚的问题。

今天和大家分享的是这本书的introduction部分，或许也会对你的英文学习有一些启示:) 作者的观点之一是: 英语要不是这么“变化无常“的话，就没意思了。当然，这部分也介绍了一下“我这本书如何如何的好”，这个没关系，主要是我们了解一下”作者认为英文语法的特点和难点是什么？““英文语法的教学的问题和解决方式是什么？” “使用字典的注意事项” -- 向每个人学习。

We all come from the factory wired for language. By the time we know what it is, we’ve got it. Toddlers don’t think about language; they just talk. Grammar is a later addition, an ever-evolving set of rules for using words in ways that we can all agree on. But the laws of grammar come and go. English today isn’t what it was a hundred years ago, and it’s not what it will be a hundred years from now. We make up rules when we need them, and discard them when we don’t. Then when do we need them? When our wires get crossed and we fail to understand one another.

If language were flawless, this wouldn’t happen, of course. But the perfect language hasn’t been invented. No, I take that back—it has been done. There are so-called rational languages (like the “universal” tongue Esperanto and the computer-generated Eliza) that are made up, designed to be logical, reasonable, sensible, easy to speak and spell. And guess what? They’re flat as a pancake. What’s missing is the quirkiness, as well as the ambiguity, the bumpy irregularities that make natural languages so exasperating and shifty—and so wonderful. That’s wonderful in the literal sense: full of wonders and surprises, poetry and unexpected charm. If English weren’t so stretchy and unpredictable, we wouldn’t have Lewis Carroll, Dr. Seuss, or the Marx Brothers. And just try telling a knock-knock joke in Latin!

But we pay a price for poetry. English is not easy, as languages go. It began 1,500 years ago, when Germanic tribes (mainly Angles and Saxons) invaded Britain, a Celtic-speaking land already colonized by Latin-speaking Romans. Into this Anglo-Saxon broth went big dollops of French, Italian, Spanish, German, Danish, Portuguese, Dutch, Greek, and more Latin. Within a few hundred years, English was an extraordinarily rich stew. Today, it’s believed to have the largest lexicon (that is, the most words) of any major European language—and it’s still growing and evolving. Is there any wonder the rules get a little messy? 

And let’s face it, English does get messy. Bright, educated, technologically savvy people who can program a supercomputer with their toes may say or write things like: 

“Come to lunch with the boss and I.” 

“Somebody forgot their umbrella.” 

“Already housebroken, the Queen brought home a new corgi.” 

Every one of those sentences has an outrageous howler. Some kinds of flubs have become so common that they’re starting to sound right. And in some cases, they are right. What used to be regarded as errors may now be acceptable or even preferred. What are we supposed to make of all this? 

Woe Is I is a survival guide for intelligent people who probably never have diagrammed a sentence and never will. Most of us don’t know a gerund from a gerbil and don’t care, but we’d like to speak and write as though we did. Grammar is mysterious to each of us in a different way. Some very smart people mess up pronouns, and I’ve known brilliant souls who can’t spell. Many people can’t tell the difference between it’s and its. Others go out of their way to avoid using quotation marks. Whatever your particular blind spot, Woe Is I can help you without hitting you over the head with a lot of technical jargon. No heavy lifting, no assembly required. There are sections on the worst pitfalls of everyday language, along with commonsense tips on how to avoid stumbling into them. Wherever possible, I’ve tried to stay away from grammatical terms, which most of us relish about as much as a vampire does garlic. You don’t need them to use English well. If you come across a term that gives you trouble, there’s a glossary in the back. 

One last word before you plunge in. A dictionary is an essential tool, and everybody should have at least one. Yet the fact that a word can be found in the dictionary doesn’t make it acceptable English. The job of a dictionary is to describe how words are used at a particular time. Formal or standard meanings are given, but so are colloquial, slang, dialect, non-standard, regional, and other current meanings. A dictionary may tell you, for example, what’s meant by impostors like “restauranteur” and “irregardless”—but you wouldn’t want to embarrass yourself by using them. Buy a reputable dictionary or consult one online (there are recommendations in the bibliography), and read the fine print. 

The best of us sometimes get exasperated with the complexities of using English well. Believe me, it’s worth the effort. Life might be easier if we all spoke Latin. But the quirks, the surprises, the ever-changing nature of English—these are the differences between a living language and a dead one. 

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