What's Nostalgia Got To Do With It? —
People Pay Good Money For This Sort Of Thing
Vol. I, Issue II - Oct. 2010

Let's begin with a funeral oration for the defunct past tense “sneaked.” The standard traditional form is now a certified stiff, killed off by someone’s cleverly sneaky invention “snuck,” which now regularly appears in conversation, newspapers, novels and poems, in the U.S.A. as well as the U.K. It doesn’t matter that this invention goes in the opposite evolutionary direction from complicated and obsolete grammar and its convenient replacements, whereby, for example, “dive”’s “dove” and “diven” were both killed off and replaced by “dived.” Usage has spoken, “sneaked” took a dive, and “snuck” is here to stay.

Condolences as well for the objective case when pronouns are used in compound constructions connected by a conjunction. “Dad saw she and I at the football game” has killed off “Dad saw her and me at the football game.” It doesn’t make any difference that no one ever says, “Dad saw I [or she] at the football game.” When the pronouns are compound objects, the nominative case takes over. Even when one of the compounds is a noun, the pronoun insists on being nominative case, as “Sylvia invited Arnie and I to her party.” And absolutely when pronouns are the subject of infinitives they are nominative. “My boss wanted him and me to arrange a conference” is deader than a coffin nail and will always from now on be, “he and I.” Though of course only when there are two pronouns: “He wants me to arrange a conference” is alive and well. Is this logical? Nope, and nobody cares that it isn’t.

Ring out “as if” and “as though” and ring in “like” as the conjunction of choice between main and subordinate clauses. While you’re at it, acknowledge that the subjunctive mood for the verb in a subordinate clause like this is now quite thoroughly dead. R.I.P. “He spoke to me as if I were his worst enemy.” Welcome in “He spoke to me like I was his worst enemy.” After all, “Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should.” Anyway, if I was you, I wouldn’t use the subjunctive nowadays, unless, like, you want to be thought of as a pipe-smoking professor or the Grammar Police. But wait a minute: didn’t Beyoncé sing a song with the refrain “If I were a boy”? She did, but she hasn’t read this article yet.

Since we’re on “like,” we might as well say a few consoling words about the demise of “said,” noting that the poor thing has been replaced by “was like.” When’s the last time you heard anyone say, “So I said, ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’” Nope, the living idiom is, “So I was like, ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’” When people criticize this usage, I’m like, “Well, criticize all you want, but you’re not gonna stop people from saying it.” I now pronounce “said” dead and gone and done with.

Speaking of pronouncing, let’s spare a tear for pronunciations that have now gone on to their reward. Start with the “–able” triplets. Goodbye to FOR-mid-able, hello to for-MID-able. Goodbye to LAM-en-table, hello to la-MEN-table. Goodbye to in-COM-parable, hello to in-com-PAR-able. Yes, stress accents can die. EX-qui-site died, and ex-QUIS-ite stepped up to the plate. Then the adjective con-SUM-mate (as in “consummate fraud”) passed on, and its brother CON-sum-mate consummated a marriage with public favor. Poor old con-GER-ies passed, leaving its worldly goods to CON-ger-ies. And a fond farewell to va-GAR-ies as we embrace VA-gar-ies.

Now, consider an important verb tense marker: If it isn’t quite dead, it’s in the ICU. I’m speaking of the future helping verb “shall.” Perhaps in a courtly mood we say, “Shall we?” (have a drink or dance or go upstairs) but, otherwise, sweet old shall is thoroughly moribund. Along with it goes the distinction between “I will do it” and “I shall do it,” (the former implying special exertion of, well, will.) And the same with “he will do it” and “he shall do it,” which can even imply coercion. Needless to say the death of its negative contraction “shan’t” came even earlier. It was last seen alive in a poem by Elizabeth Bishop titled “One Art,” after which… Also very ill and hanging on by a thread is the future perfect tense, as I think you will have heard. It seems a little healthier in its negative form, e.g., “I won’t have done it by then.” But “It won’t be done by then” is gaining fast; plan on a funeral before long.

The old standard verbs of obligation have been felled by “need to,” at least in the second and third person. We still say, “I have to,” “I ought to,” “I should,” “I’ve got to,” or “I must”; but for “you” and “s/he” and “they,” it’s “need to.” You know, like, “You need to stop asking me for favors.” For about a decade the intermediate “want to” held sway (mostly for the second person), but it, too, sickened and died, replaced by the universal “need to.” Apparently the older verbs sounded too bossy, and therefore, in the age of self-determination, it became a no-no. Still, a friend could help you discover a need you didn’t know you had and say, “you need to think about why you’re saying that.”


Dear beloved and robust “you”! You have killed off the old impersonal “one,” as in “One doesn’t like assumptions being made about one’s character when the person making them is a stranger.” Our friends “you” and “your” can handily replace the defunct loved one here, and no one will mind at all. Very few mourners showed up for “one”’s funeral, which proves you’re not on safe ground when you use an expression so antiquated. Less predictable than this was the replacement of “I” with “you” in personal narratives. How many memoirs have passages like this: “You would go to school every day and you’d always see the same bullies bullying the same kids and hear the same teachers cracking the same old jokes. You’d wonder if you were stuck in this dumb life forever and hoped you wouldn’t be.” In earlier periods, “I” would have done duty for each of these “you”’s. But why use the sickly “I” when our healthy “you” is ready to shoulder the burden? I think you realize now that “you” is your best pronoun, no matter how you use it.

Um, by the way, that word “defunct”: Isn’t it now, like, deceased? Hasn’t this late euphemism been replaced by the strong and healthy “dead” or more politely “passed on” or just “passed”? Discussing this with a friend the other day after he used the term, I was like, “You really need to question that word because, though forMIDable, it’s not like it’s immortal or anything. I predict that within the decade we shan’t ever hear it again. If I was you I’d be a little more careful.” People began staring and we saw they didn’t want he and I to keep on discussing this topic, so we snuck off to a place where we could talk without being overheard.

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