EthicalDative

“I completely understand — it’s the two greatest players of all time,” Mouratoglou said of the attention. “But I’m really focused on the singles, because my goal is that she [Williams] wins the Australian Open.”

(Ben Rothenberg, “Serena Williams and Roger Federer Face Off for the First Time,” NYTimes, 1-1-19)

I would say “my goal is that she *win* the Australian Open.”

I’m content to publicize this further bit of evidence that the subjunctive mood is on the ropes in English. And why not? What problem does it solve? The speaker quoted, Patrick Mouratoglou, is Serena Williams’s coach. He’s French, and the French equivalent — “qu’elle gagne” — wouldn’t have distinctive present subjunctive marking either. Could that have influenced him to use the indicative in his English statement? To quote James Joyce, “Ask yourself the answer, I’m not giving you a short question.” I surmise that the past subjunctive form would rear its head if he said the French equivalent of “my goal *was* that she win (wins?) the Australian Open.” I forget, however, how to conjugate that particular form in French. Would it be “gagnasse”? I’ve dug myself down a French rabbit hole in pursuit of a fly speck of English trivia.

(c) 2018 JMN.

Time was that you had to be an experimental weirdo to ditch vowels. In “Finnegans Wake,” James Joyce used the word “disemvowelled” in a section that includes this exchange of crystal-clear dialogue:

— Nnn ttt wrd?

— Dmn ttt thg.

Before we are all Joyce — God bless him — I would suggest that we take a deep breath, a mndfl one even, and consider the culling of our five (maybe six) friends. After all, there are words that can hardly do without them: muumuu, audio and oboe, just to queue up a few. One cannot text someone “b” and expect them to know one is referring to an oboe.

(John Williams, “Where Have All the Vowels Gone?” NYTimes, 12-29-18)

[I’m dmnd if I can winkle out what the “Nnn ttt” part of Joyce’s “crystal-clear dialogue” signifies.]

(c) 2018 JMN.

The Airprox board said this, combined with a lack of visual warning, had resulted in “a significant and largely unmitigated safety risk” and recommended that RAF Air Command uses a system to receive notification of commercial drone operations.

(BBC News, “Suffolk farm drone in near-miss with Tornado jet,” 12-24-18)

In the above text I would write (and say) “use” instead of “uses,” substituting subjunctive mood for indicative mood. The verb in question is in a subordinate noun clause depending on a main verb “recommended.” It’s a case of an “influencing” statement. The subjunctive helps convey that the action in the subordinate clause is theoretical and not factual. I wonder if other English speakers feel as strongly as I do that subjunctive must be enforced in this sort of utterance.

(c) 2018 JMN

Persons from the UK had a bit of fun with the NYTimes in responding to a query concerning “crimes” to which they had been victim in their native land. The following tweet, among others, appeared in The Guardian in mid-December:

Once I accidentally queue-barged a man in a supermarket. I apologised profusely for not realising they were in a queue. They then apologised for making a big deal about nothing. I then apologised for their apology. Then someone behind us apologised for asking us to move up.

There it is: assault by apology, a tort of courtesy. The low-hanging fruit here, linguistically, is “ ‘queue-barged’ a man.” The phrase “queue-barge,” new to me, is vastly superior to its USA equivalent “break in line” (“I broke in line in front of a man”). The felonious welter of apologies pursuant to the primary infraction is secondarily ravishing. It reminds me of the “thank you”s I had to endure in passing through the Heathrow security check: “thank you” for stepping a bit this way; “thank you” for holding my wallet during the body scan; “thank you” for raising my arms slightly during the scan; “thank you” for retrieving my personal effects; etc. etc. etc. At the end of the 10-minute ordeal I was exhausted from saying “you’re welcome.”

(c) 2018 JMN.