—
As summer gently fades and children return to school, it’s time for all of us to receive another grammar lesson from loveable Judge Judy.
English, as we all know, has two parts: literature and composition.
I hated literature.
Not all of it, mind you, but the “biggies” that dedicated English educators are supposed to revere … Shakespeare, Chaucer, Hawthorne, Longfellow.
However, grammar always fascinated me.
I loved diagramming.
Every word performs a specific function in every sentence … symmetry at its finest.
My students didn’t share my enthusiasm.
Each June, on the last day of school, I’d tell my underclassmen, “Remember, next year when someone asks you who you had for English … and they will ask … the correct answer is, ‘I don’t remember.’ ”
Judge Judy, a fellow grammar-holic, suffered an emotional setback last summer.
One afternoon, she interrupted a hearing to announce that some contemporary dictionary (probably a disreputable group with a name like “Chablis Oxford” or “Moonbeam Webster”) had declared “conversate” a legitimate word.
“Conversate,” a ragtime mutation of converse and conversation, emerged as folks (most of whom are dumber than a box of rocks), try to sound scholarly for their TV court appearances.
It made Judy crazy, and she corrected her litigants relentlessly. But, as sometimes happens, “conversate” oozed into accepted vocabulary.
What else lit Judy’s fuse last season?
An irate woman shook her finger at a defendant and bellowed, “He did not never show up!”
“I couldn’t, Your Honor,” her companion protested. “I was putted in jail!”
I bet Judy sips bourbon laced with Maalox from her coffee mug.
It’s probably the only thing that prevents her from bursting an artery.
A plaintiff sporting numerous elaborate tattoos claimed his divorce couldn’t be finalized because “too many strings were attatchified to the agreement.”
A thief, ordered to make restitution for the Honda Civic he stole and totaled, justified his actions: “I needed a car to transportate myself.”
Judy asked a female litigant why she never married the defendant she’d lived with for 12 years.
“He gets angrified too easy,” she replied.
If I had to choose the most unforgettable language boo-boo committed all summer, the honor would go to a grubby and seriously over-pierced slacker.
He was demanding payment for defamation of character.
Asked why, he answered, “She incinerated that I sold her a stolen car.”
Judy leaned back in her chair wearily.
“She ‘insinuated,’ ” Judy corrected.
“Yes, Your Honor,” he piped up excitedly. “That too!”
The prosecution rests.
Michele Mikesic Bender is a Johnstown resident and a member of The Tribune-Democrat’s Readership Advisory Committee.
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