--- title: Is there one proper English? The big arguments — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Is there one proper English? The big arguments», a lesson of the language course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: People have moaned that the young are "ruining English" for hundreds of years: the writer Jonathan Swift complained in 171 --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/20-is-there-one-proper-english/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/) / Is there one proper English? The big a… # Is there one proper English? The big arguments Lesson 20 of the language course of Mova's primary school: 17 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/language/20-is-there-one-proper-english/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/20-is-there-one-proper-english/0/) — People have moaned that the young are "ruining English" for hundreds of years: the writer Jonathan Swift complained in 1712 and wanted rules to stop English changing; English kept changing anyway, and it is still here. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/20-is-there-one-proper-english/1/) — Standard English is the kind taught at school and used in formal writing; dialects like "we was robbed" or "I don't want no dinner" have their own grammar, and everybody understands them, but school writing uses the standard. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/20-is-there-one-proper-english/2/) — Many "rules" are younger than you'd think: "ain't" was used by posh people in the 1700s before grammar books attacked it, and the "never split an infinitive" rule (no word between "to" and the verb, as in Star Trek's "to boldly go") was copied from Latin in the 1800s; most modern guides say "to boldly go" is fine. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/20-is-there-one-proper-english/3/) — English has no boss: unlike French, which has an official Académie Française, nobody in London decides what is proper; dictionaries record how people use words, they follow the language rather than control it. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/20-is-there-one-proper-english/4/) — English belongs to everyone who speaks it: there are more people speaking it as a second language than as a first, and a Kenyan, Nigerian or Indian speaker may have spoken it all their life, so "Your English is very good!" can be a strange thing to say. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/20-is-there-one-proper-english/5/) — In 1712 Jonathan Swift called for rules to stop English changing; people have complained about young people "ruining" English for centuries. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/20-is-there-one-proper-english/6/) — Language changes all the time; that is not the same as getting worse. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/20-is-there-one-proper-english/8/) — A double negative uses two negative words in one part of a sentence, like "I don't want no dinner"; it means "I don't want any dinner", not that you want dinner. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/20-is-there-one-proper-english/9/) — Double negatives were normal in Chaucer's English in the 1300s and are normal in Ukrainian and French; standard English uses only one. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/20-is-there-one-proper-english/10/) — "To boldly go" puts a word between "to" and the verb; some 1800s grammar writers called this wrong because Latin can't do it, but most modern style guides say it is fine. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/20-is-there-one-proper-english/11/) — "We was" is used in many British dialects; standard English says "we were". - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/20-is-there-one-proper-english/12/) — English has no official academy; French has the Académie Française; dictionaries and style guides record how people write. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/20-is-there-one-proper-english/13/) — In the world, more people speak English as a second language than as a first, in many local varieties. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/20-is-there-one-proper-english/14/) — "Ask" and "aks" both come from Old English, which had both forms; Chaucer wrote "axe" for ask in the 1300s; standard English chose "ask", and "aks" lives on in some dialects. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/20-is-there-one-proper-english/15/) — The rule "fewer for things you can count" became popular in the late 1700s; some supermarkets were reported to have changed "10 items or less" signs to "Up to 10 items" to avoid the argument. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/20-is-there-one-proper-english/16/) — In everyday speech "there's" is often used with plurals ("there's loads of people"); careful writing uses "there are". - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/20-is-there-one-proper-english/17/) — In Nigerian English "I'm coming" can mean "I'll be back soon" when someone steps out of a room. - ← previous: [Accents and dialects around the world](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/19-accents-and-dialects-around-the-world/) - next →: [British and American words](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/21-british-and-american-words/) - ↑ back to [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/)