The Hindu Business Line : A way with words

Assume the position, engage in kinky wordplay and `get sexy with syntax', urges Comma Sutra by Laurie Rozakis, from Viva (www.vivagroupindia.com) . A chapter titled `Bondage 101' is about conjunctions. And `Four play' is on `four common grammar headaches'.

Lest you begin to get ideas, it helps to know that this book is about English, a language with `40 elementary sounds but is written with 26 letters'. And before you groan, a section titled `Gimme some tongue' chronicles how English borrowed from scores of other languages and dialects.

"The 100 most-often used words in English all come from the Anglo-Saxons - as do 83 of the next 100 words," writes Rozakis, in one of the `smarty pants' that punctuate the pages. Another `smarty' cites Ripley's Believe It or Not for the fact that only one person in a lakh can pronounce all of the following ten words correctly: data, gratis, culinary, nuclear, gondola, version, impious, chic, Caribbean, and Viking.

`Come again' boxes, which appear every now and again, define terms; such as, `gerund' explained as a form of verb that acts as a noun. "Gerunds always end in - ing. For example, `Kissing helps a person lose weight,'" notes the author, who is a professor of English and humanities at Farmingdale State University, US.

As a typical pedagogue, she lets you learn through exercises. Only, they are different. For example, this one, where you have to circle the pronouns: "A 90-year-old man bragged to his doctor: `I have never felt better. I have an 18-year-old bride who is pregnant with my child. What do you think of that?'" Before we resume with the story, check if you have already circled the words his, I, I, who, my, you, and that.

Okay, read on: "The doctor thought about this for a minute and then said, `I have an elderly friend who is a hunter and never misses a season. One day he was going out to hunt in a bit of a hurry, and he accidentally picked up his umbrella instead of his rifle. When he got to the creek, he saw a beaver sitting beside the stream. He raised his umbrella and went, `Bang! Bang!' And the beaver fell down dead. What do you think of that?' The 90-year-old said, `I would say someone else shot that beaver.' The doctor replied, `My point exactly.'" Wonder if you completed the exercise.

Examples can be as distracting as exercises, watch out. For instance, when explaining how coordinating conjunctions are used for linking words, the author provides this example: "The verb `cleave' is the only English word with two synonyms that are antonyms of each other: adhere and separate."

In a chapter titled `the naughty bits', the discussion is on the preposition (`big name for a little pip-squeak'). Thus, guides Rozakis: "To determine if a word is a preposition, ask yourself, `Is the word part of a phrase that ends in a noun or pronoun?' And stop moaning. This is a whole lot easier than asking yourself in the morning, `What day is this? Where the hell am I?'"

Let's wrap with `four play', the most common four grammar errors.

The first is `disagreement', where you flout the rule that a subject must agree with is verb in number.

The second mistake is to misplace and dangle modifiers, as in the following inscription from a tombstone in Edinburgh, Scotland: "Erected in the memory of John MacFarlane, Drowned in the Water of Leith By a few affectionate friends." Asks Rozakis: "Now, did the friends drown John or did they erect the tombstone in his memory?"

A book you can drown your language worries with.

SayCheek@TheHindu.co.in