PARVUM
OPUS
Number
287
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Bryan Garner's Usage Tip of the Day has covered the “It is I” quandary a couple of times this week, giving this example of ordinary usage:
"It is not me you are in love with." Richard Steele, The Spectator, No. 290, 1 Feb. 1712.
“Me” is the object of “with” as well as the predicate pronoun. Transposing the syntax of that sentence, obviously you couldn’t say, “You are not in love with I.” Garner continues:
E.B. White told an amusing story about the fear that so many writers have of making a mistake: "One time a newspaper sent us to a morgue to get a story on a woman whose body was being held for identification. A man believed to be her husband was brought in. Somebody pulled the sheet back; the man took one agonizing look, and cried, 'My God, it's her!' When we reported this grim incident, the editor diligently changed it to 'My God, it's she!'" E.B. White, "English Usage," in The Second Tree from the Corner 150, 150-51 (1954).
I just realized that no one has ever questioned another grammatical point about “It is I” (or you or him): “It” properly refers to an object or animal, not to a human. We might make an exception for a corpse, as in E. B. White’s anecdote. But we don’t say either “She is she!” or “She is her!”
God is quoted as saying “I am Who I am” but that doesn’t work for the rest of us. So we knock on the door and say “It’s me!” or “It’s us!” I doubt if even the people who say “It is I” say “It is we” when they show up for a party.
And if you’re unsure about how to use “than” (than I or than me) read Charles Carson on
than as preposition and/or conjunction in Grammar Girl.
Remember my Indian student who asked if it’s OK to use idioms like “black and white” at work? (Black) Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price got into a snit because (white) Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield said traffic ticket collections had “become a black hole”. Price said it was a “white hole”. Good thing he’s not a physicist. (Black) Judge Thomas Jones (not that it matters) demanded an apology from Mayfield. I call Jones and Price white elephants. And as long as we’re on the subject...
I’ve written before of my puzzlement at complaints and implied accusations of racism about the word “Oriental” used to refer to people from Asia, instead of “Asian.” I’ve been puzzled because the word “Oriental” never had any negative implications for me. Apparently Oriental is now only acceptable in referring to objects from Asia, not people, although the real offense is that Orient means east so the word is Eurocentric: “they” are east of “us”. Of course, we’re also west of them on their maps. True, people usually don’t insult objects—“D* *n Oriental Ming vase!”—except sometimes—“I don’t know if my dog died from eating d* *n poison Oriental dog food or the kids’ d* *n Oriental lead-painted toys from China!”
Naturally the English language names things in reference to English
speakers, just as mapmakers put their own location in the middle of the map.
You can’t get there from there if you can’t get there from here first. If
Columbus had really found China by sailing west, we’d be calling the
Chinese Occidentals.
As it is, no one’s complaining about the word Occidental. I can only
guess what they call
call Europeans and
Americans (i.e. round eyes) in their own languages. What do you suppose the
Chinese called the Japanese, and vice versa, when the Japanese were invading
China? (Read The Rape of Nanking.)
My dad was a committed racist who concentrated most of his vocabulary on
black people, but if he had used the word Oriental it would have been a
compliment. A veteran of the Pacific naval campaign in WWII, his word of choice
for Asians was slopehead. When people want to insult Asians, they don’t use the
word Oriental.
The word orient comes from Latin oriens and oriri, meaning
to rise, as the rising sun. The word origin comes from the same source. The
Japanese call their home the Land of the Rising Sun. Wherever did they get that
grandiose idea? From China.
Wikipedia says,
Both Nippon and Nihon literally mean "the
sun's origin," that is, where the sun originates, and are often translated
as the Land of the Rising Sun. This nomenclature comes from Imperial
correspondence with Chinese Sui Dynasty and refers to Japan's eastward position
relative to China. Before Japan had relations with China, it was known as Yamato
and Hi no moto, which means "source of the sun".
Another meaning is
jewel bright, according to dict.org:
Bright; lustrous; superior; pure; perfect;
pellucid;—used of gems and also figuratively, because the most perfect jewels
are found in the East.
East of...you know.
To orient also means to ascertain your location, since we know the sun comes up
in the east everywhere (except at the poles).
Occident means where the sun “falls” or goes down (something like
accident). Frankly, I’m offended. Let’s start calling the USA the Orient. This
is where the sun comes up for me. Or maybe New York City.
Words don’t insult people, people insult people. Get rid of one word and
people will make up another insult. Avoid the latest taboo and people will make
up another taboo. Literate people do not find Oriental insulting.
||| Here’s another gem from Dave Barry’s Mr. Language Person, where he discusses the “as far as” problem, among other grammatorical issues.
||| In the July 14, 2008 Baby Blues cartoon, cute kid says, “I’m hiccing up!” (I’d write “hicking up”.)
In Grading on a Curse, Theodore Dalrymple wrote about...
...
the head examiner of a British school-examination board, Peter Buckroyd, who
explained to teachers why a pupil who answered the question, “Describe the room
you’re in,” with “F* *k off” ... should receive a grade of 7.5 percent rather than
a grade of zero. Buckroyd went so far as to say that “it would be wicked to
give it zero because it does show some very basic skills we are looking for.”
First,
the candidate had spelled the two words correctly ... which showed some grasp
of English orthography; and second, he had strung two words together correctly,
which showed some grasp of grammatical structure and an ability to convey
meaning. Had the words come with an exclamation mark, moreover, the candidate
should have received a grade of 11 percent, because he would have shown some
grasp of punctuation.
“We’re looking for positives,” explained another examiner, who was presumably desperate to avoid provoking low self-esteem among his examinees. Buckroyd added that, after all, the candidate was “better than someone who doesn’t write anything at all.”
Hmm, so if someone says “F* *k off” to me, I should congratulate him for being able to speak? I don’t know how old the student was who wrote that very brief essay, but surely there’s an implicit expectation that student writing should progress beyond verbal grunts and snarls.
On a brighter note, in an interview Theodore Dalrymple said, “Music escapes ideological characterisation.” This reminds me of Samuel Johnson’s remark that “Music is the only sensual pleasure without vice.” It’s true that most other arts can tend toward corruption or intellectual misappropriation.
This week has produced the most laughs of the entire presidential campaign. You’ve probably seen, or even bought, the New Yorker dated July 21 with Barry Blitt’s satirical drawing of Obama and wife. Naturally the NYer would not presume to satirize the Os, who are not to be laughed at, and moreover are not funny. The magazine is satirizing all non-O fans, who, they figure, are too dim to get it anyway ~ as if everyone west of New York doesn’t already know what New Yorkers think of them. Cincinnati’s cartoonist Jim Borgman did a great satire himself (July 17, 2008 editorial cartoon) on the famous 1976 Saul Steinberg cover of New Yorker’s view of America, and ordinarily Borgman tends to dress left.
At least Blitt’s cartoon begins slightly to balance all the magazine covers of O with a halo. Unfortunately, his cartoon omitted Jesse Jackson’s finely tuned critique of Obama’s political, uh, stance. Better keep that stance narrow, O!
The actual story by Ryan Lizza inside the New Yorker isn’t satirical; it covers his political career, which has been mostly all about campaigning.
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