On Language and Insomnia

I have had insomnia for years. I fall asleep with no problem, but I wake up and stay awake potentially  for hours. If nothing distracts me, my thoughts will spin, and I will never fall asleep. Since I can’t get up and do something, my solution is to listen to podcasts.

One of my favorite podcasts is The History of English Podcast, by Kevin Stroud. It’s a fascinating, chronological history of English, from its Indo-European roots through modern English. There are 182 one-hour+ episodes so far, and I have listened to all of them many, many times.  This is a great podcast to go to sleep to, because it’s interesting enough that my thoughts don’t wander, but not a nail biter that keeps me up to hear how the episode ends. Plus, each episode can stand on its own, so I don’t wake up and need to scroll to the top because I can’t follow what’s going on. 

I especially love episode 165: ” Glamorous Grammar.” Grammar has always been one of my strengths, to the fury of my younger sister, whom I mercilessly corrected every chance I got. 

Beginning in the 1580s, English scholars took an interest in English grammar. Prior to that, they focused only on Latin grammar. Here’s where I get giddy. The English scholars applied the rules of Latin grammar to English! The rule about not ending a sentence with a preposition? That’s because in Latin one can’t do it. I can verify it, having taken four years of high school Latin. I can really get behind eliminating that convention from English. It’s terribly awkward to find a way not to end a sentence with a preposition when the sentence begs to end with something like up, on, or under.

The convention I am having trouble giving up is not to split infinitives. It’s true that it’s impossible to split infinitives in Latin, because in Latin the infinitive is one word: amare, to love;  cogitare, to think; esse, to be. If it’s impossible to split infinitives in Latin, why did the scholars of the 16th century even think of splitting infinitives?! I know that I don’t need to stop splitting infinitives, but I like to be right. If people are free to split Infinitives, the whole English speaking and writing world is going to be in chaos. On the other hand, if I have learned anything from the podcast, it is that the English language has endured many periods of chaos and survived.