Speaking right

 You must have seen that hilarious video. Actually it begins on a very serious note. It shows a post-burial scenario. The pastor then invites the daughter of the diseased to speak. 

She begins, "The man who i am going to speak...". Promptly the pastor intervenes and says, "The man whom...', and pedantically explains how she is the subject of the sentence and the father was the object, and hence it has to be "whom". 

The flustered daughter continues, "between our family members..." Yet again corrects the pastor "Among the members of our family...'. The daughter next mentions,"The faculties of my college". Much more teacher-ly is the zealous priest who says it has to be "The faculty in my college...' "According to me...", the daughter is  about to let loose her "ability". She is promptly corrected coz English never allows "according to me".

The girl wants to praise her father's sense of humour, and says, "people literally laughed their heads off at his jokes". The church father patiently explains why it cannot be as "literally" and "heads off" cannot factually jell!

The daughter, by now exasperated, gives the vicar one good whack of her huge purse, and says, "now regard what you did as you lay there". Promptly comes the answer, "no, no, i would have to regret as i lie here". 

Exaggeration spart, the video raises a very genuine question. What matters more, mere communication or speaking right? Well, it is "Speak, right?" or is it "Speak right". I would say, to "speak, right",  you must "speak right". In other words, effective communication cannot happen unless you are grammatically correct, too.

Do not you know the famous "visiting relatives can be boring" declaration? Who or what is boring here? You visiting the relatives or the relatives visiting you?  Such ambiguity at the syntactic level can be hyper dangerous for familial peace and/or relationships.

In other words, to ''speak, well", you need to ''speak well". It is equally true of formality and informality as well. No harm in "hey, ya, dude, wassup? Long time, no see?". Possibly, however, you cannot thus address your college Principal or the company MD, right?

Similarly, if you were to use "i  having many friends", the sky is not going to fall off, yet those in the know would nicher a laugh, or rather, a smirk born of linguistic superiority! Why give any one the right to laugh at you? Rather, speak well and be/make merry!

Pratima@"Good English spoken and written well," says W.A. Raspberry, "opens more doors than a degree. Bad English, on the contrary, will close doors you never knew existed!"