Tuesday, July 17, 2007

i need a verberizer. . .

. . . because this word is still bugging me: condensation. How do you turn this word into a verb? Is it condenscencing? Ah, the pitfalls of the English tongue. I managed to get through an entire education without once having been taught grammar. I mean from day one. Right through college. Amazing that even as an English major I was not subject to having to understand the basic fundamentals of my language and thereby enhancing my own understanding of what I was reading. So I learned grammar the way everyone does - by reading.

But now this has become problematic. Because the ideas of strict writing are out the window. Sentences no longer must be carefully constructed with a direct object, a verb, a noun, or whatever else sentences must have. I don't do sentence diagramming. Never have. (Isn't this kind of funny though? Imagine me teaching people how to write and I have never dissected a sentence. Should I make the obvious surgeon joke? No. That would be trite.)

Any grammar I do know I picked up off the street or in my required French classes. Trying to figure out the equivalent to French grammar in English grammar made those classes twice as hard. My point?

Well my fridge is (where's my verberizer?) condenscencingationing on the outside. And I am reading Marisha Pessl's Calamity Physics, which has a main character who's vocabulary and reading background is pretty damn hot for her age. She even indulges in a bit of ranting on a teacher who uses the dangling preposition. Which does make me chuckle, sure. Until I come across a huge glaring misspelling/typo/editing faux pas that made me laugh. It wasn't intended to be there either - Pessly does misuse grammar upon occasion when it serves her purposes.

So where am I going with all of this?

Nowhere. I'm just ranting. And for no good reason. I like Pessl's book thus far, the fridge will be fixed. The birds will stop yelling. All will be good.

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