A cow is not a cow it is a pig

Nell has just blogged and I had thought I wouldn't join her tonight as I am in a VERY BAD MOOD, but she said things I thought were actually quite true, so thought I would quickly say what they were.

I HATE Grammar police. Hate them, hate them, hate them. The ONLY reason language exists, is to allow us to communicate. Not to be tested on, in order make people look clever/smug/stupid, not to be used to pit one person above an other, for their precise knowledge of how best to use an adverb or construct some perfectly formed sentence.

There was an article in the Guardian yesterday about the use of the word 'literally'. How we are using it WRONGLY by saying things like 'the sun was literally piercing my eyes'. Who cares? We understand its use in this context, we know that we don't literally mean it when we literally say how literal we are being. We just know we are using the word 'literally', to stress a certain aspect of what we said. And that's what happens with language, it EVOLVES. It grows as our communication grows. There aren't a finite number of words in the world, there are as many as we want there to be, and they can mean what we want them to mean, because we make them up.

A cow, is a cow, only because we call it one.

So I think Nell's idea about writing words, like they should be spelt, is a great one. There is even a whole load of people in America (I know, America - but still...), who think that we should ditch the way we write altogether and that if you mean knife, you should just damn well write nife.

So Gove, when my 9yr old fails her Sats due her inability to spell, it wont be because she is stupid, it will be because she is EVOLVING....unlike you...

ps. Nell has just corrected me. Apparently it would not be 'nife' it would be 'niyf'. You heard it here first.