Language Dreams

Continuing yesterday's quest to prove how strange I am, here is the story of another language-related dream. When I was in school, one of my areas was medieval literature. I took a lot of Middle English (ME) courses (Chaucer and others), as well as several Old English (OE) courses (*Beowulf*; no comment today on the upcoming movie). These courses, particularly the OE ones, are very time intensive. I became faster at translating OE the more I did it, but I never got enough practice to be very quick. I would spend hours a day translating a small passage for the next class. It consumed me. And at night, I couldn't escape. Invariably, once or twice during the semester I would dream about OE. It was always the same dream: A charcoal-gray background. Words in light gray with a slight halo. The words would speed by faster than I could read. Some of the words contained OE letters like thorns, eths, aesces. Other words were obviously ME. The two mashed together, interlocked with each other. And they kept coming. Faster than I could read, they scrolled by, they never stopped. It probably sounds like the dream had some emotional content, but it really didn't. There were just words without meaning or feeling. I don't know that these were bad dreams in themselves, but the fact that I had them both dismayed and amused me.

Grammar Police

The other night I dreamed I was explaining grammatical rules to someone. Actually, I was explaining how there are rules, rules, and rules. There are rules that someone in the past made up and—if I abide by them at all—I pay attention to them only because other people would think poorly of me if I break them, and language is nothing if not conventional. Generally, all the big, bad grammar rules your teacher used to yell at you about fall into this category. Then there are rules that are good, have basis, and I follow them sometimes. After all, rules are made to be broken. Finally, there are real rules that, when you broken them, you're no longer talking English. If you're a native speaker, you've probably internalized these rules and breaking one just wouldn't occur to you. When I woke up from my dream, I was explaining this to someone, and I pointed out that it didn't matter if you explained, for instance, why the rule about split infinitives is bogus. Those who like rules are going to insist that all these rules must be followed at all costs. Some people just can't handle the freedom, I guess. (Of course, any discussion of faux grammar rules is incomplete without mentioning the phrase attributed to Winston Churchill (falsely): "This is the kind of pedantic nonsense up with which I will not put!" Unfortunately, this refers to ending a sentence with a preposition, not split infinitives.) Against my better judgment, I ask: does anyone else here dream about grammar? The resounding silence reinforces how strange I am,