Reviews for Word on the Street: Debunking the Myth of a Pure Standard English

The average rating for Word on the Street: Debunking the Myth of a Pure Standard English based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-04-15 00:00:00 Laurent Lalonde Here's the one-sentence description of this book: if a grammar rule forces you to say something awkward or that sounds wrong, then it's a safe bet that what is "wrong" is the grammar rule. --update Some of the points he discusses: -All languages are always changing. -Just because something in language is "illogical" doesn't mean it's wrong. -Whom is unnatural because it's the sole remnant of what was hundreds of case endings in Old English. Its death is inevitable. -They/their is a perfectly acceptable singular pronoun, precisely because everyone uses it that way. -Not splitting infinitives and not ending sentences with prepositions aren't even real rules of English. They're faux-Latin. -Shakespeare is boring/tedious because he essentially wrote in a foreign language (late Middle English?). Many many words meant different things then than they do now, and what is almost incomprehensible to us would have been readily accessible to people at the time. We should translate Shakespeare into modern English to renew the joy in the experience. But what McWhorter *really* wanted to write about was the controversy of classifying Black English ("ebonics") as a foreign language and teaching English as a second language to kids who speak BE. He devotes 3 full chapters to this, much much more than he devotes to any other topic. I didn't care 3 chapters worth. --update: Goodreads says that this book has an average rating of 5.65 out of 5 stars. So to the list of reasons why this book is good, please add 'supernatural powers that trump/transcend math.'

Review # 2 was written on 2012-06-23 00:00:00 Kenneth Phillips This man is the Captain America to every Grammar Nazi. 'Nuff sed.