In No Particular Order, In No Particular Form
I'm not your conventional linguist. (I'm referring to linguistics as in the science of language ya, not as in 'knowing many languages') I like the academia because they allow for freedom of expression, and especially because they accept the 'rojak-fication' of American/British English conventions. I enjoy reading bilingual blogs, and always I marvel at the way how some writers have skilfully blended three or more languages (and slang, mind you) into a single post. Of course, some of these passages may not be understandable to the foreign eye, but I think it's diversity; as long as the majority of your intended outreach understands you... well, you're good to go. I don't believe in prescriptive grammar; I trust that language being a living thing, is subject to change and growth, and negatives and positives are very seldom placed in a black and white situation. I'm what linguists call a 'descriptive grammarian'. And oi, I'm Malaysian and as far as I'm concerned, I don't really care about 'good English', because I don't believe in 'good English'---to me the concept doesn't even exist.
Unfortunately, in my line of work, grammar, spelling, style... is a black and white concept. It's either right, or wrong, and Br/E is the way to go. This is where the problem kicks in.
I can't be unstylistic. Yet I still have to be stylistic. I can't bring in American conventions, yet in spoken British English even, they have Americanisms seeping through and 'polluting' the language, as purists maintain. I have to be very cautious about spelling, have to watch out for the 'z's and the 's'es very carefully... you never know you see... and you can't ever be too sure. For every preposition that appears in a line, I have to question it. You can't ever say 'I'm calling for a meeting.' It's got to be, 'I'm calling a meeting.' Both are right in society but because we're using British English, the former is absolutely intolerable.
I have to make sure that contractions don't appear at will, sentences don't ever start with the conjunction 'but'. I have to ensure the right use of the Past tense, make sure that the continuous tense should never appear when it's meant to be a simple tense, and mind you, it isn't ever that simple.
It's easy to know all these conventions, you just need to memorize them from grammar books. You just need to 'take charge of your own learning', (well, as if I have the time to), and then convince people who obviously have years and years of experience ahead of you, that you are right and they are wrong.
Now try convincing authors when they have past year examination papers to look back and present proof in that manner. You photocopy the materials from THE number one grammar reference. It's what we're all trained do to, check up your reference, memorize the points and rules, keep them yardsticks and share this gained knowledge with authors. Oooh, authors, they're like dormant volcanoes, rich in knowledge, but when they explode, they really explode.
'Bullshit. I don't care if the grammar books say that, the past year examination paper tests on it, and so I want that line in the passage NO MATTER what you say.'
And so we keep making mistakes (that aren't really mistakes if you're talking about language in the real world), and every year, over-zealous parents and teachers bang the doors of the Lembaga and Majlis Peperiksaan Malaysia complaining about factual and language errors.
Students hardly study for knowledge. They all study to score in the examinations. If you get 2 As, you're not clever, if you get 12 As, you're a genius and you gain national fame. It's terrifying, everyone out there is competing to prove their might, when all our students are ever learning to do is 'pass examinations with flying colours'. The screwed up thing is, the examination questions aren't even accurate in the first place, if you really checked up British English (which is what Malaysia is supposed to be using). Wait, wait, not only are the examinations thick with errors, even the HSP (Huraian Sukatan Pelajaran, the national syllabus) for English is strewn with grammatical errors, incomplete sentences, and 'colours' is spelt as 'colors' in some pages, 'colours' in other pages.
Well, this is only about English. Ever wonder what happens in other subjects that our poor students have to study and sit? By the way, it's supposed to be 'sit the examination' not 'sit for the examination'.
Now excuse me while I go and mark out all the 'but's' in the sentence openers.
