28 thoughts on “For the record . . . .”

  5. Welcome to my Pantheon, all. I claim as my domain the realm of Flying Pizzas. Pray to me, and I shall stock your grocer’s shelves with delicious, crispy Red Baron’s Pizzas for your home enjoyment.
    And you are?

  6. I am merely a Master, not a God (humility wouldn’t allow me to ace the test), but I did spot the typo in #7 that gives these testers little room to talk when evaluating “perfection.”

  8. Yes, Grammar God, and all that. I wish that I knew how many questions I answered incorrectly, though.

  10. I’m only a master. I probably missed the ‘which’ vs. ‘that’ questions. But I’m quite certain I got the ‘who’ vs. ‘whom’ distinction right. It is easy once you take Latin and find out that ‘who’ is for the Nominative case and ‘whom’ is for everything else.
    Hmm. Is that like saying: “It is easy once you get a PhD in nuclear physics”?

  11. The whole concept is lame without specifiying British /American English (the subjunctives and punctuation), prescriptive vs descriptive, audience, … GG but wanted to quibble with many of the questions.

  12. A god am I.
    Question #7 is problematic even apart from the typo, since it’s testing your punctuation skills rather than your grammar. Same with question #16.
    rilkefan, seems to me the fact that you obtained divine status demonstrates that they didn’t need to specify their assumptions — you were obviously able to determine them from the context, as were the rest of us higher beings.
    So does this mean that we gods are on the same plane as the Medium Lobster now?

  15. So does this mean that we gods are on the same plane as the Medium Lobster now?
    Well, I, God of Flying Pizzas, ain’t. My perception of The Medium Lobster is still limited to perceiving him as just another medium lobster.

    The Medium Lobster is a higher being with superior knowledge from beyond space and time. To your limited perception, he appears to be just another medium lobster. To your limited perception.

  16. to some extent I answered what I thought the survey expected.
    Exactly. Why would it have a question about splitting infinitives unless it was written on the assumption that splitting infinitives is ungrammatical? That was my point.
    I actually agree with you — it was a silly quiz (most of them are). I’m just being argumentative.

  17. Why would it have a question about splitting infinitives unless it was written on the assumption that splitting infinitives is ungrammatical?
    An example of cultural bias?

  19. I took it again and chose what I considered the more questionable/traditional answers and the thing now claims I’m a God…still want them to correct the typo in #7

  21. I posted the following:
    OH, YEAH?

    You are a GRAMMAR GOD!

    Perhaps so, but I’m unimpressed with a test that includes items such as:

    #7. __________ faced turned a bright shade of red.

    Or where #10 offers multiple correct answers that merely hold different meanings. #16’s answer is correct in American English, but not British English; it may come as a shock to some Americans, but we didn’t actually invent English, and don’t hold a lock on what is “correct.”

    More to the point, neither do the sort of people who hold a sufficiently superficial knowledge of the history of grammar and usage as to believe what their junior high or high school teacher told them about there being absolute “rules” of correctness, rather than observations as to historical usage, opinions about the felicities and infelicities of various usages, and a briefly lived, mainly 19th Century-only, attempt by some to impose opinion as authority.

    Which is why these sort of tests, which I do very well on, leave me unimpressed; they exist mainly to make people feel unjustifiably pleased with themselves.

    Lastly, English will most certainly not be “preserved.” It will constantly evolve, or die. (Still write like Chaucer, do you?)

    (There are other flaws to other questions; on top of that, it gave the same response to multiple answers to the same question; I suspected as much and checked; after I had changed four different answers, and it still claimed the same sterling result, I, in the words of Nero Wolfe, said “pfui,” and gave up.)

    (Via Obsidian Wings.)

  22. Gary’s right, what’s correct is subject to location and time. That’s why Latin’s a dead language – it’s still spoken, but will never evolve.
    Extra marks for mention of Nero Wolfe.

  23. “Lastly, English will most certainly not be “preserved.” It will constantly evolve, or die. (Still write like Chaucer, do you?)”
    This seems incorrect to me. English is now subject to dampening forces Chaucer couldn’t imagine – dictionaries, universal literacy, English universality, and reruns of old tv shows.
    Re the supposed flaws, I performed a similar experiment and was able to move my score from godlike to average. I suspect some of the questions are weighted more heavily than others, or have more than one acceptable answer; and that “master” covers a wide range. Whether these are flaws probably depends on one’s point of view. It’s conceivable that the test deals with Brithish/American issues by simply demanding consistency. But this level of consideration is already overkill.

  24. The quiz may say that I am a Grammar God, but it is a lie. I am a Grammar ninja. So it be said, so it be done.
    You truly are the Joe Lieberman of grammar, Moe.
    – Anarch, Grammar God of awkward pauses, stretch vellure and small — but not medium — crustaceans.

  25. “This seems incorrect to me. English is now subject to dampening forces Chaucer couldn’t imagine – dictionaries, universal literacy, English universality, and reruns of old tv shows.”
    Reweally?
    Perhaps.
    It’s also subject to mighty expansive forces Chaucer — well, he seems to have had a pretty good imagination, actually, but, still, that he would have been unlikely to have predicted as surety.
    “English universality” is a major reason for the evolution of English, not its stabilization.
    Forces such as: the internet (see how I didn’t capitalize?), the intermingling of vast numbers of wildly diverse domestic subcultures in each English-speaking nation, the intermingling of vast numbers of wildly diverse cross-cultural international subcultures, constant invention of new slang, the constant invention of new technology introducing not just new terms, but new cultural effects, and so on and so forth, all lead to new words and new usages, not to mummification, which is never going to happen.
    I don’t see how anyone can look at, to pluck just a few random examples, the inevitable cross-fertilizations of “hip-hop” language, “Jinglish,” the distinctive English of the various provinces of India, BBS usage, and, of course, bad J. R. R. Tolkien imitators, and argue convincingly that English change is slowing and will continue to slow. Not to mention.
    yIDoghQo’
    Do not taunt happy fun K00! English, I tell you very most severely, dude, lest thou not fear being forced into gafia most funky. Word. No kaplagh! Kno’ whut I’m sayin’? It’ll shizzle yr dizzle, 4 shore you find most entirely egg on yer nano-enhanced genotype.

  26. I am perfectly happy feeling unjustifiably pleased with myselves. And, grammar god though I be, I still bow to Giblets, certainly the most revered pontiff of unjustifiable pleasure. Such as we perceive the Medium Lobster merely as a short-sighted snack.

  27. “English universality” is a major reason for the evolution of English, not its stabilization.

    I still disagree – I think you’re using reasoning about language development which doesn’t take the modern world into account. American movies spread our version of English to the four quarters. Continental Europeans regularly travel to England or America; many students come here and take fluent English back home; many Northern Europeans learn fluent standard English in school. People in India and the Philippines are taking classes on how to speak like Ohioans. I expect that the integrating world economy will make standard English a basic skill everywhere.
    Of course English will pick up new words and idioms and sounds as it always has. But I don’t believe Chaucer-now, or Shakespeare-now, set the scale for future changes. More like Moliere-now – and with my rusty modern French I can read him as easily as a newspaper. In fifty years (not long before the computers take over and make this question moot) people in Malaysia will be watching Buffy reruns without strain.

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