"... in the recent, charged debate over whether Israeli or Lebanese people invented hummus; in Disney’s 'remixing' of traditional fairy tales into profitable mega-franchises; in the struggles of universities to attract humanities majors. What unifies these phenomena, he thinks, is that they unfold in a cultural vacuum. In the past, a society could rely on 'a shared system of language, signs, symbols, representations of the world, body language, behavioural codes, and so on' to govern all sorts of situations. Today, in the absence of that shared background, we must constantly renegotiate what’s normal, acceptable, and part of 'us.' ... [Roy writes] 'Here we are on a terrain in which culture has no positive aspect, since the old culture has been delegitimized and the new one does not meet the necessary condition of any culture, which is the presence of implicit, shared understandings'.... Around the world, cultures aren’t being replaced by other cultures; the idea of 'Westernization' is a red herring, he suggests, because, despite the worldwide popularity of pizza and 'Succession,' what’s actually ascendant are 'weak identities' constructed through that 'collection of tokens.' It’s a bit like moving from a place where your family has lived for generations to a faceless suburb. You could adopt your neighbors’ traditions, if they have any, but they don’t—they’re just a random collection of people who happen to live near one another. 'You do you,' they say...."
From
"Is Culture Dying? The French sociologist Olivier Roy believes that 'deculturation' is sweeping the world, with troubling consequences." The article, by Joshua Rothman in The New Yorker, reviews Oliver Roy's book "The Crisis of Culture: Identity Politics and the Empire of Norms."
Rothman writes "I’m one of those people who is 'spiritual, but not religious'" — people who is?!! I'm one of those people who remember when The New Yorker had a noble tradition of meticulous editing. Has that degenerated into a nonculture of if it sounds good, write it? But we've already analyzed this grammar issue and come up with the answer. It's a rule. If you don't follow it, your venerable institution is crumbling. You're just a random collection of scribblers who happen to publish under the same cover.
Rothman's last paragraph gestures at the struggle over immigration that's roiled American politics:
Suppose your neighborhood is, in fact, just a collection of people who live in the same place. Possibly, that’s good. Maybe they’ll find a way to care less about where they came from, and more about where they live. If culture is becoming less powerful, that’s a loss—but there are other ways of experiencing commonality which, while not equivalent to culture, may have their own advantages. Mourning the loss of what’s gone is healthy, as long as you embrace the possibilities in what remain.
What a wan expression of optimism!
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73 comments:
I don't know if we are losing culture, but it does feel like it is homogenizing. I think other countries have felt something similar because Canada had and may still have broadcast requirements to have a certain percentage of Canadian artists instead of being swamped by American artists. I think France has a ministry to protect the French language from foreign words.
The propaganda must be clear of Strunk & White. How quixotic…
I had to diagram the sentence — something I don’t think I’ve done since 8th grade — but you’re right, Althouse. It should be “people who are.” Like the writer I thought the subject of the verb was “one,” but it isn’t.
The title of Roy’s book in the original French is “L'Aplatissement du monde.” A literal translation of this title is “The flattening of the world.” This points to the great leveling of the vast, infinitely varied cultures of the world into one global culture that is in practice no culture at all. It is simply the individual unmoored from any historical or social milieu. It is as if the variety of regional restaurants are all replaced with fast-food franchises.
The American Maoists leading the current cultural revolution welcome this. The Red Guard of the Chinese cultural revolution desired to destroy the “four olds” (old ideas, old culture, old customs, old habits) to usher in a glorious, prosperous future. The American Maoists desire the same, which leads to such debacles as Springfield, Ohio, as well as the reported infiltration of traditional Catholic masses by FBI agents.
The end result of such a flattening, such an utter and complete destruction of the variety of cultural norms, is that the individual stands naked before the State and does its bidding (or else). This, of course, would please Mussolini to no end: “Everything within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State."
Another Western writer imagining that the deconstructionism and degeneracy of the West is universal. It's not.
lap lap lap…nuthin’.
More than 30 years after returning to the States from Québec, I remain connected there and what's happening in the government's fight to retain the "culture" is an horrific re-descent into jack-booted authoritarianism. "Re-descent" because from the mid-'30s to the late-'50s the place was dominated by a full-on dictatorship, enforced by the Roman Catholic church and the police.
If you spoke out against the government, they could, and commonly did, shut down and seize your business or your publication ... often your home as well. The revolt was generally peaceful after the dictator died: the church was pitched into the gutter and with contraception they stopped having babies. For a generation it was an open and dynamic place, the old culture having been overthrown.
By the '80s, demographic realities caught up with the francophones, partly because they weren't having babies, and partly because the immigrant population (of which I was one) was increasing. I'm skipping over a lot here, but the rallying cry became "The French language is threatened !" and its use in all circumstances, increasingly obligatory.
Here we encounter a cautionary tale of what Roy was discussing. The "pur laine" [pure wool] Québécois faced the ultimate dilemma: they could preserve their language, yet lose their culture to immigrants like me, even though I had developped near-native fluency in French. Someone put it straight to me, after I was turned down for position in which I was clearly the most-qualified candidate -- "You speak almost perfect French, but you think like an Anglo."
The "pur laine" crowd had defined "culture" as French, and French only. I left in '91, my sons [both native speakers] a year or two later, and my then wife (also near-native fluent) in '97, as the descent into linguistic xenophobia deepened sharply.
These days the "padlock laws" have returned. There are literal "language police" crawling all over the place. Backed by heavily-armed provincial police they raided Jewish stores **during Passover** and removed all food not "prominently" labelled in French. They closed down a popular and successful Chinese restaurant in Montréal because the cooks, Chinese all, were speaking Mandarin instead of French. The cooks were fined, and the owner fined so heavily that he lost his home. When he commented to the media that this was "worse than China", he was jailed 5 days for "contempt of court." Store clerks in Anglo parts of Montréal are fined for not addressing customers only in French unless the customer asks permission to speak English.
The court system in Québec is now on the basis of "guilty until proven innocent". Defendants are not allowed to speak in court, they're forced to sit in the dock alone, and may not discuss the case with their lawyer.
Some culture deserve to be "deculturated", and the authoritarian "pur laine" culture is one of them.
If Rothman is talking about immigration in the quoted paragraph then his view isn't wan optimism, it's bi-polar.
It's pro-assimilation conservatives who (at least we're told) are "mourning the loss of what's gone" not anti-assimilation liberals, and certainly not the incoming folks gathering around the barbeque who don't appear to have left anything they wanted behind. The mourners are routinely told that they should care less about what's happening to the place they already are, not an unnamed place they came from.
It's far more likely that Rothman's passive-aggressive prose is more temporal and less geographic, as in don't ask too many questions about what your neighbor is serving up for dinner. Just smile and act like it tastes good.
If you are, for example, a Frenchman who enjoys his French wine and his French cooking, and desires to live the rest of his life in the French manner among Frenchmen and those who choose to live as Frenchmen always have, those who embrace the culture and the language, well, we have a word to describe you: 'Nazi.'
Roy. used to be smarter than this
It feels to me as if this is a critique that could only come from a French person. I wonder what it is about French culture that causes its adherents to defend it so firmly (or mourn it so dolefully).
Yes, British culture has its defenders, as does American culture - which does exist but is unique in being based on not sharing history, like explicitly not sharing an ethnic history, so much as sharing adopted values. Or at least it did exist. But the French seem always to have someone willing to stand athwart history saying "Stop!" or whatever the thing is.
What I mean about American culture is that we used to be proud that we were from everywhere and had come together here because we all felt that natural rights deserved and required our defense, and that as long as we shared that sense, we were as American as any Pilgrim (possibly more so). And yes, I know that's a rosy-hued vision of America, but it was a cultural touchstone.
Damn. I would've used the singular verb, too. I'm embarrassed.
Good review, we are standing on the edge of the abyss.
Love all these comments. Unspeakable but gotta speak.
Culture is not a static unchanging social contract. Crying about the loss of culture it's just a pathetic response to getting old and irrelevant. That sick feeling that life is passing you by death is near consumes the weak hearts of cowards whiners and complainers.
The culture you are in is the culture that you surround yourself with and help create and influence. Go ahead and blame some nameless faceless government agency, politician or immigrant group. That's how the irresponsible comfort themselves for their own personal failures of fortitude
I was just watching for a little bit a movie called "Wagon Master," I think, that was about a wagon train heading west, people seeking a new life, and I wondered why I could not feel any emotional power in this movie, a movie which evidently moved audiences when it was made in 1950, and I have a theory: I was rooting for the Indians. The massive grab of aboriginal lands that is the root of American history is more than a bit morally problematic, so was the slavery, it must be admitted, so let's all pretend that our history began at some later date, when all of this was behind us! But as Faulkner said, "The past is never dead, it's not even past."
That's what I tell any American Indians that I meet.
"I am one... who is...". What's the objection here? It seems correct.
Credentialed gatekeepers of culture has lost some authority and they don’t like it one bit.
What a vacuous time we live in. Yes, the culture, our culture, Western culture has been delegitimized. And yes, it has been replaced with nothing, or worse than nothing, abysmal culture. Garbage culture. The praise of awful for the sake of being awful. There are no standards other than low standards, no goals other than celebrity, or be that unattainable, a heavy dose of self-indulgence. (he says, self-indulgently)
The problem is this: Culture is the accumulated knowledge, customs, and habits of a people. Throw out the knowledge of generations of those who came before you, made the mistakes before you, and learned (or not) from them. Continued and progressed, and made it to this day. Through all the ages, all of the calamities of humanity, all of the wars, migrations, diseases until the very era we're in now.
And what have we done with the surviving and blossoming culture that has dragged humanity out of darkness into the greatest overall prosperity and health the world has ever known?
We've spent the last 50 years derailing and destroying a bit at a time. Slowly at first, then in a rush, a tidal wave of incoherent language and ridiculous ideas that had as its bottom line, the removal of the entrenched culture.
So we are left with multiple pronouns, fluid genders, no black, no white, just gray. Muddled thinking amidst a slippery landscape. Nothing to hold onto. Nothing to tie us to, nothing to moor us. And we have Those Who Would Be Leaders telling us to vote for them because 'Joy'. You simply cannot get more vacuous than we have become.
More like standing on the verge of gettin’ it on, folks.
The French complain as their culture is being crushed by the Anglo-American empire. The Germans, after Hitler, have been ashamed to make a peep about it, the British live under the illusion that they are some kind of equal partner, but recent events related to Ukraine demonstrate that they are nothing but forelock tugging vassals to the US President as well. The Spanish were disposed of as a major power long since, and have become used to it, like the Greeks, and the Italians, besides, there is not the love-hate relationship that the best of frenemies, the French and the English have. So yes, we and the French share a kind of fraternal twinship, but power being what power is, Cleopatra killed her fraternal twin, Ptolemy, for the power of the imperial throne, it's a tale as old as time.
Ah, Bart Hall, then you will understand why I don’t care to interact with French speakers. Many years ago my hubby and I drove through Quebec on our way to Maine. We stopped for gas. The young attendant filled our vehicle and my hubby paid him in cash. We were expecting quite a bit in change. The attendant just shrugged his shoulders, said something in French and walked away. This was on a major highway; I called BS that he didn’t understand us. Our next experience was in Belgium on a morning train from Mons to Brussels. It was fairly full so we had to sit across from each other rather than aside. I made the mistake of saying something to him in English. When he sat down next to a woman commuter, she scowled, and pressed herself tightly against the window as though being within 6 inches would give her cooties. On German trains we were always able to strike up conversations. Not on the French Belgian ones.
@Yukon ... do you actually have an association with the place? I do.
Rothman writes "I’m one of those people who is 'spiritual, but not religious'" — people who is?!!
I don't get your objection. The subject of the sentence is Rothman himself, not people in general.
The sentence could be cast differently while retaining the same meaning: "Like many people, I am one who is ..."; "I am one who, like so many other people, is ..."; "I am one who is spiritual without being religious, like so many other people."
Removing Rothman from the sentence changes it entirely, to the point of incomprehensibility: "People who are ..."
But I have long since forgotten how to diagram sentences, so what do I know?
Huh?
Patrick, you forgot the "of."
I strongly recommend you read historian Eliot West's Contested Plains. The essence is that, functionally, Europeans were just one more group fighting over that land, just as the Comanche, Osage, Kaw, Quivira, and others had done for centuries.
"in Disney’s 'remixing' of traditional fairy tales into profitable mega-franchises" - A point of order! Disney isn't turning anything into profitable mega-franchises and hasn't since End Game.
But why? Demographic migrations have driven human history from time immortal. I was at a church service a year ago in Boulder. It was fairly mainstream Protestant, until the end, when they all recited an acknowledgement that we had appropriated the land from the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Utes. Except that at the time of our Revolutionary War, the first two tribes had been farming in the upper Midwest, in maybe Minnesota. They, along with the Sioux, had been pushed west by other tribes, acquired horses (to ride, and not eat), ultimately added firearms, and had a population boom during the first half of the 19th Century, because they could then follow the bison, instead of waiting for them to come by twice a year or so. By the Centennial of our founding, the bison had been butchered, and they were then quickly pushed onto reservations. But even without that, their days were very limited, because they were hunters, competing for the land with farmers. The result was that even ignoring cities, the land could, and did, support maybe 10x the population of farmers, than Hunter/gatherers. The result was that (mostly) European descendants have held that land now for twice as long as those two Indian tribes did.
Meanwhile, the upper Plains tribes pushed the Utes and Blackfoot west, in the latter case, over the Continental Divide, which pushed other tribes further west. Where we live in MT, the Blackfoot pushed the Salish further west in the latter 1820s, forcing the fur trading post, by what is now the town we live in, to shutdown, because the Salish preferred to trade, while the Blackfoot to raid. The Salish got the area back as a huge reservation, after both tribes had surrendered, only to lose 90% of it later in a renegotiation of their treaty. Today, it’s one of the mostly sparsely settled portion of MT.
But how is that any different from the innumerable other population driven migrations through the ages, where some innovation caused one people to increase their population, expanding, forcing other peoples to move, and those peoples pushing others? The Jews ended up in Cannan (modern day Israel) as a result, and ended up being conquered repeatedly over the next three millennium. And those conquerors were ultimately conquered by other peoples, as their populations growing faster than the ones ruling the area at the time. Ultimately, both parts of the Roman Empire fell to these migrations, first in the Western part to Germanic tribes being pushed out of Eastern Europe, then the Eastern part a millennium later by the Turks pushing out of Western Asia. This was happening even through the 20th Century, when west Central African tribes all but eliminated two of the races that had lived there for ages, and greatly encroached on the area controlled by other Black tribes. In practically every case, the land went to the group that could make the highest and best use of it. Why was it morally wrong to do it to our Native Americans in the 19th Century, but not for these myriad of other tribes and peoples who have done exactly the same thing through the ages?
Illegitimize a successful culture, as progs have done with Western Civ, and it is all too easy to illegitimize less successful cultures, from religious belief groups to ethnic minorities to anyone targeted at the moment.
Now no culture is legitimate, so uncultured barbarians will rule by force, and will eventually set up an authoritarian culture with enforced participation and deviance prevented. Hence there will be no criticism of the culture. See China for how this works, with social credits and constant monitoring and a ruling kleptocratic minority elite punishing deviation from their rule.
British culture was imperial, expansionist, colonialist. Them's fightin' words now. French culture is exclusionary, imperial and colonialist. Only two of them is fightin' words now, at least for the French.
....'massive grab of aboriginal lands...'. Always presented as if we pulled down one flag and replaced it with another, hung their president and stood their senators and judges up against a wall. We've mended our ways, dude: Haven't you noticed the Open Borders yet? Aren't the results simply spectacular? Don't you feel purified?
If you ask me, the loss of culture is due to the replacement of cultural norms with the principles of consumerism, and the subtle (and not-so-subtle) control that government holds over the reins of our financial system, the fuel for consumerism.
I prefer "they" rather than "we." Some of us have studied history. They don't read books.
I was informed by an Ojibwa of the persecution of their Ontario tribe by New York Iroquois tribes. I later read a history of Great Lakes tribes wherein a band of Hurons were chased across Michigan through the upper peninsula into Wisconsin by a band of Iroquois. The battles took place many over years' time.
See also: https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Article/CS3584
Ann wrote, "Rothman writes 'I’m one of those people who is 'spiritual, but not religious' — people who is?!!"
I was taught many years ago that when diagraming that sentence, I should treat it as, "I'm one who is ... " because "one" is the subject of the sentence. "Those people" is/are not the subject.
Maybe the rules have changed.
Althouse writes, "What a wan expression of optimism!"
What an artful use of an increasing abandoned word... No, not abandoned, marooned on an island of culture in a sea of inarticulate apathy.
So you moved someplace, decided that they needed to change how they live to accommodate you, and since they refused, you believe that their culture should be destroyed. You do think like an Anglo!
But after reading your comment, I was in the coffee shop reading Montcalm and Wolfe, which I am working through, and I came upon a section of how the French crown used the Catholic Church in New France to undermine English rule, even where England had a "right" to rule by treaty.
The French had never reconciled themselves to the loss of Acadia, and
were resolved, by diplomacy or force, to win it back again; but the
building of Halifax showed that this was to be no easy task, and filled
them at the same time with alarm for the safety of Louisbourg. On one
point, at least, they saw their policy clear. The Acadians, though those
of them who were not above thirty-five had been born under the British
flag, must be kept French at heart, and taught that they were still
French subjects. In 1748 they numbered eighty-eight hundred and fifty
communicants, or from twelve to thirteen thousand souls; but an
emigration, of which the causes will soon appear, had reduced them in
1752 to but little more than nine thousand.[74] These were divided into
six principal parishes, one of the largest being that of Annapolis.
Other centres of population were Grand Pré, on the basin of Mines;
Beaubassin, at the head of Chignecto Bay; Pisiquid, now Windsor; and
Cobequid, now Truro. Their priests, who were missionaries controlled by
the diocese of Quebec, acted also as their magistrates, ruling them for
this world and the next. Bring subject to a French superior, and being,
moreover, wholly French at heart, they formed in this British province a
wheel within a wheel, the inner movement always opposing the outer.
The Catholic Church was the main instrument of French foreign policy in New France, not just among the Habitants, but the "Black Robes" carried their mission to the indigenous peoples as well, turning them against the English wherever possible, regardless of any treaties the French king's plenipotentiaries may have set their hand to.
Plus ca change; "the past is not dead, it's not even past."
Jamie, to your second point, I'd just note that in JD Vance's convention speech, he fairly explicitly argued that Americans ARE an ethnicity (a "people" of a certain place). He was pushing back against the claim that America is different from other countries because it's an "idea." Just food for thought.
I agree, the land is ours by right of conquest. When we killed those 300 Sioux at Wounded Knee who were the last free roaming band of Indians on the Plains, it became ours to do with as we please. It's ours until somebody takes it away from us. Which is what is currently happening.
When the Goths overran Rome, they were big admirers of Roman culture and the comforts the Romans enjoyed. So they kept the forms of Rome, but simply used the DEI strategy of putting Goths in all of the important jobs, whether they were qualified for them by character and training, or, and which was most likely the case, not.
Soon the manufacturing colossus which was the Roman Empire collapsed, due to the loss of knowledge, the system of laws collapsed, due to corrupt judges who valued the identity of the contestants before them over the law, so the "Twelve Tables" collapsed. And then Rome was gone, and the standard of living of Europe was set back for a thousand years, and maybe never fully recovered until the second Industrial Revolution, the first being that of Rome.
I'm not religious or spiritual, but I'm a big fan of culture. That is, the high culture of the West, the ups and downs, bounds and rebounds of its evolution into global dominance.
Maybe they did keep their language but lose their culture. The language police antics could be a reaction to that deculturation.
Those who didn't like old Quebec didn't have to live there. On another site, the name of Boston mayor James Michael Curley came up. I wouldn't want to live in Curley's Boston or in Maurice Duplessis's Quebec, but that's because I grew up in a very different society. If I grew up 80 years ago, I might find a lot in my city or province to cherish and react to today's world with horror.
Christopher Clausen's Faded Mosaic: The Emergence of Post-Cultural America is a book that never got the attention it deserved.
America has become Teen Vogue. Young women who are fully Americanized use their "diverse" origins and colors to push out old White men. They pick out things and call them their own culture, but they've been assimilated, and the purges are now part of American culture, rather than uprisings of different, diverse cultures against the prevailing culture.
Assimilation did work after a fashion, so Biden/Harris opened the spigot full blast to new arrivals, hoping perhaps to outrun the assimilation process. Either it's more of what we've been having, or it's opening the door to a much more divided country.
The French demographer Emmanuel Todd has also been making noises about the decline of Western Culture, which he attributes to secularization, one of the aspects of deculturalization.
In terms of language, I'm constantly amused by the non-use of possessive pronouns by many current sports analysts on TV. "He's the best hitter on they team..." "They weakness is Cover 3." etc, etc..
"I am one... who is...". What's the objection here? It seems correct.
"People who are spiritual" is unitary; the speaker is one of them; therefore, "I am one of those-people-who-are-spiritual."
While I'm being obnoxious, the tag should be "Olivier Roy," not "Oliver Roy."
""I’m one of," so far, so good.
What am I one of? "those people who is 'spiritual!" yikes!
When I was growing up in a small town in the Midwest, I spent many hours reading through my local library's complete bound collection of New Yorker issues, starting from 1925. It was as good an education in a certain type of cultural history as you could get. But people have been complaining that the magazine has "lost its way" forever, possibly culminating when Tina Brown took over as editor back in 1992. Of course, the publishing business -- and certainly the magazine business -- has been in economically tough times for decades. Among magazines that have managed to survive, I doubt that any, including the New Yorker, can still afford an office full of highly qualified copy editors (and if they still have fact-checkers, they're probably interns on loan from journalism school).
@tim in vermont -- The Québec to which I moved was a happy, dynamic, yeasty, multilingual, polyvalent culture. Our regional farmers' group was a glorious mix of French, English, and German, with occasional Polish and Hungarian. Our crop improvement meetings were two-day parties with singing, dancing, music, and wonderfully diverse food. There were probably a few babies conceived. That characterised Québec in the late-'70s and the '80s.
I knew the curtain was coming down when we were informed that all our communications and proceedings were to be only in French. We were part of an international association, founded in Québec in the mid-'80s. By 1991 we had some 40,000 farmer members in 17 countries, and our annual meeting took up a fair chunk of the Château Frontenac. By common agreement we operated in English, because that *is* the world language, spoken to some degree by well over half the world's people.
We were fined $3000 by the 'Office de la langue française' for not conducting our official business in French. We expatriated the assets and told them to go fuck themselves. The association has been HQ'd in Nebraska ever since.
So it's not that I felt "they needed to change how they live to accommodate you, and since they refused, you believe that their culture should be destroyed" but au contraire that the political elite were pushing hard to reimpose the authoritarian culture of earlier generations, by crushing what had developed after 'la Revolution tranquile'.
Tim @ 10:14: "Soon the manufacturing colossus which was the Roman Empire collapsed, due to the loss of knowledge, the system of laws collapsed, due to corrupt judges who valued the identity of the contestants before them over the law, so the "Twelve Tables" collapsed."
This seems vaguely familiar. I'm trying to place it.
Tim @ 10:14: "Soon the manufacturing colossus which was the Roman Empire collapsed, due to the loss of knowledge, the system of laws collapsed, due to corrupt judges who valued the identity of the contestants before them over the law, so the "Twelve Tables" collapsed."
This seems vaguely familiar. I'm trying to place it.
French attitudes have much to do with having been one of the world's dominant cultures and losing out to English-speakers. French standoffishness does go back further than that, though. Spain and Germany also have language authorities, but they take an interest in current usage and try to reconcile the current usage and the rules. The French Academy is much less open to change.
Mourning the loss of what’s gone is healthy, as long as you embrace the possibilities in what remain.
Rothman may be assuming things are irretrievably lost while they're still around. Assume that we're already past the point of no return and we soon will be. He also doesn't consider that those possibilities may be much fewer in the post-cultural world of the future. And what of the world outside New York City, America, and the West? Is it similarly decultured?
If this comment by Nick Freitas is offensive or irrelevant to this post I promise to take it down as soon as I find out.
Tweet - The Left: “No one is eating people’s pets.”
Which means we’re 1 week away from:
“Why do you care that people are eating pets.”
3 weeks from:
“Why eating pets is a good thing.”
And 4 weeks from:
“Refusing to eat pets is white supremacy.”
“Rothman writes "I’m one of those people who is 'spiritual, but not religious'" — people who is?!! I'm one of those people who remember when The New Yorker had a noble tradition of meticulous editing. Has that degenerated into a nonculture of if it sounds good, write it?
That’s actually how it works. The rules of grammar evolve as people’s taste changes. That’s why we don’t speak the language of Chaucer anymore.
That said, the quote with “people who is” is grammatically awful in speech or writing, as well as being semantically vapid (is he an atheistic ghost or something?)
That's a common grammatical error, but if it was an on-the-tape quote then at least it deserved a [sic] inserted in there.
You are correct.
The art history major is not.
The tenure "I cannot err" is for law , not grammar.
The lady never admits a mistake.
...and my hubby paid him in cash. We were expecting quite a bit in change I'm gonna guess you paid in USD? Mais non...though I will say, when the $CAD is strong Vermonters are always accommodating to the Quebecois, accepting loonies at face value, like they were legal tender...
I'm pleased to see that the Putin-fellating anti-Semite Tim in Vermont (but more likely St Petersburg) has unmasked himself as an America-hater much like the loathed Inga, Bich, Chuckles, etc.
The rulebook.
Althouse for the win.
@rehajm - as a kid in northern Vermont, random Canadian coinage was often mixed in with American and used interchangeably. No one bothered about it if they got a Canadian quarter instead of an American one in their change at the market. Ski resorts such as Jay Peak will usually take $CAD at par. In the 80s/90s there was a group of resorts on both sides of the border who teamed up to issue season passes so users could swap between depending on conditions, etc. But then that portion of the border was so porous anyway. Crossing the border was nothing more than a back road.
@Bart Hall I remember when the whole language policing thing started, in the mid 80s I think, with the passage of Bill 101. At the time I listened to a lot of Anglophone talk radio from Montreal and callers were cheesed about it because it was a full-on threat to commerce. And as these things go, the heavy-handed tactics drove a lot of companies out of QC.
Lol. Nope... you're a biased one.
(and it didn't read NIG on the jammies either... hth.) ;0)
Puritanical and pedantic... nice.
Good people do not insert [sic] unless they just learned the term. hth. ;0)
The grammatical issue that appeared at the very beginning of this thread is a good example of how "culture" works with us (Americans; perhaps not the French). The example was a statement in which the singular noun was obscured by reference to a plural noun. As commenters have noted, you can analyze the sentence the way we were taught in elementary school, and if you do it one way the subject is singular, and if you do it the other way the subject is plural. The sentence has a weird construction, so if I were quoting it in a brief I'd fix that, so it was clearly singular or clearly plural (I'd use brackets or something like that to show the changes).
But the main point is that we native English/American speakers generally don't have to diagram sentences to communicate with each other.
Notwithstanding the differing cultures from which we came, we acknowledge each other as members of the same community.
Jack Cashill noted that, in clauses like this one, BObama usually failed to create subject-verb agreement in his few known, non-book writings, which made him wonder about the true authorship of the stylish Dreams, which is full of long, complicated sentences.
Let's go back to the time in North America before the Europeans got here. The religeous beliefs of nearly every tribe in America was one of warfare against their neighbors. Primarily it was war for scarce or desired resources. Land, game, women, slaves. Very few tribes didn't practice warfare on their neighboring tribes. The Inuit didn't choose to live in the high arctic. They were forced there by stronger tribes. The Anasazi, Hopi and Pueblo Built their houses the way they did where they did because they were constantly being attacked by stronger tribes. The teypical mistake the indians in America made was they thought there were a finite number of whites. That if they made war and killed the ones in front of them there would be no more. When they were given the opportunity to visit large cities on the east coast they gave up. The land given up was land taken in battle. Treatys were made and broken by each side. Most of the time it was justified. When the native Americans were describes as bloodthirsty savages it was because that is what they were.
"of those people" is what's called a "partitive genitive," which indicates one member of a plural category. The most prescriptive (and Latin-based) rule for partitive genitives is that the phrase as a whole is treated as a singular. If the phrase as a whole is the antecedent of the relative pronoun "who" is singular, then the verb has to be singular, "is." So in terms of absolute technicality, "is" would be correct.
But, as Ann and many others (me included) noticed, "is" sounds wrong.The reason is mildly interesting, but you are unlikely to find it in any prescriptivist grammar book. Descriptive Linguists would say that our feeling that the verb in the relative clause should be "are" is based on the "rule of the nearest noun": our immediate tendency in parsing a sentence and coming upon a relative pronoun or a demonstrative ("this," "that") is to infer that the antecedent is the nearest noun. In this case, the nearest noun is "people," a plural, and so we expect "are" and are thrown by "is," which refers to a non-nearest noun, "one."
It's a problem similar to that of the "misplaced modifier" or "dangling participle": If the noun nearest to the pronoun is not the noun that the writer/speaker wants to modify (usually because there are stacked-up prepositional phrases that end with a different numbered noun), we parse the sentence wrong. I vividly remember my 7th grade English teacher mocking my sentence "Running down the alleyway, the garbage can tripped her" and drawing a little garbage can with legs on the blackboard (the fix was "Running down the alleyway, SHE tripped over the garbage can").
Rearranging your sentences to make sure that the nearest noun is the correct noun substantially improves reader comprehension.
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