IANAL

There's an initialism you often see on social media, IANAL, which looks vaguely naughty, but stands for "I am not a lawyer". Given that IANAL is nonetheless generally followed by an opinion on some legal matter, it might equally well be IAABRL: "I am a barrack-room lawyer", defined as "a person who freely and confidently offers authoritative-sounding opinions, advice, or arguments on rules, policies, or legal matters without any formal legal training or qualifications". The term was originally British military slang for any soldier who claimed to know "King's Regulations" well enough to argue with NCOs and officers or advise fellow squaddies on their rights. However, I will be using IANAL in this post to indicate that "I am not a linguist". Although I suppose I might lay claim to being a barrack-room (bar-room?) linguist.

Of course, those of us who have studied a foreign language or two – in my case four (does Latin count? If so five, plus various bits and pieces that add up to a macaronic sixth) – and even those who simply have strong opinions about the rights and wrongs of their native tongue, are all would-be amateur linguists. Although the language interests of the latter generally centre on a few of their favourite language peeves. You'll know the sort of thing that is meant by a "peeve": split infinitives, "less" versus "fewer", gender pronoun wars, Americanisms, and so on. But knowing your way around a few languages or having strong opinions on "correct" usage does not qualify anyone as a linguist, as such, linguistics being an entire field of scholarship and research in its own right. Although, naturally, that doesn't stop us having strong opinions and voicing them, just as we might on art or politics or anything else. What are blogs for, after all?

So, recently on a language-related blog that I read most days – one that is followed and commented on by a lively and intimidatingly well-informed posse of actual linguists – I was reading about the complaint (and lawsuit) of Lin King, a professional translator who has published an award-winning translation from Chinese into English, and who became aware of the uncompensated, unacknowledged use by a publisher of her own English text as the basis of further "translations" of the original book into other European languages. This is an example of so-called "relay" or "indirect" translation – translation from one language into another via an intermediary language – and has for a very long time been the way texts written in less well-known languages have been made available; the Bible is a prime example. 

How far this well-established practice is actually "illegal" is not the issue here (hey, IANAL I am not a lawyer...). No, what caught my eye was this quote:

I am often asked whether I identify more as a writer or translator. This is a false binary. Not all writers are translators, but all translators are writers. I chose, from the chaotic expanses of the English lexicon, every single word in Taiwan Travelogue. Shuāng-Zĭ [the original author] cannot read it, much like how I will not be able to read most translations of my novel when it is published next year. Our translators will write those books, not we.

Now, "Our translators will write those books, not we" strikes me as an extremely awkward piece of English. "Our translators" is, on the face of it, a bit strange – at first I took it for a typo for "other" – but what she means is "the future translators into other languages of both Shuāng-Zĭ's book and my own upcoming novel". OK... But what reads most oddly is that final "not we".

At least, it does to me. Which means I can crank up one of my own personal peeves. Stand back!

I think pretty much all native English speakers would have used "us" here, rather than "we", as in: "Our translators will write those books, not us". In fact, I also think I'd actually prefer "our translators will have written those books, not us". But "not we" would never feel like idiomatic English to me, in any context. Here's a curious thing, though: had she written "my translators", some of us would have said "not me", and some of us "not I", and both would pass the idiometer test. Which is interesting, no? Why this difference between singular and plural "first person" pronouns? Unfortunately, I don't know the answer: IANAL.

Now, I am admittedly a native speaker of British working-class English, albeit given a thorough makeover by further education. But, although I accept that to use "not I” here is perfectly idiomatic, I do find it excessively “proper”. Or perhaps it's that it feels inappropriately rhetorical, in a histrionic sort of way? It makes me think of Gloria Gaynor singing "I Will Survive": Oh no, not I!

Think of this scenario. Someone asks, "Who is that knocking at the door?" You could answer with one these two reponses: "It's me!" or "It is I!" I know which I would use. What you probably wouldn't say is "It's I!" In the end, such choices are all a matter of register or tone. [1]

Similarly, simple comparative contrasts show up the same issue. For example, "she is shorter than we" sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? But what about "she is shorter than me / than I" or "someone as ignorant of politics as me / as I"? Personally, I would never say or write "as I", and yet others would insist that this is more "correct". My presumption is that, like amputees sensing the presence of a missing limb, the "I" people sense the absence of an implicit verb – "she is shorter than I [am]" – whereas I do not. As Julie Andrews sings, "Me is a name I call myself"... Jack is taller than Jill; Jack is not taller than me.

It's interesting to see how other European languages handle this. For example, the French for "she is shorter than me" would always be elle est plus petite que moi; "moi" being the equivalent of "me" ("I" would be "je"). Whereas in German it would always be sie ist kleiner als ich, with "ich" being the equivalent of "I" ("me" would be "mich"). A quick sample on Google Translate shows that Italian and Norwegian are "me" languages, whereas Spanish and Swedish are "I" languages. It all seems pretty random, although a proper linguist could probably account for it. Sadly, I don't think any read this blog. Being British, of course, we hedge our bets and have it both ways; probably, like most British things, based on the shibboleths of social class.

But talking of social class, there are also other ways that "I" is often used that I would consider "wrong", or perhaps just annoying, given that any understandable utterance can't really be declared "wrong", linguistically-speaking.

An example I often hear would be something like: “They gave that job to John and I to do”. But if John is taken out of the picture, surely no-one would ever say, “They gave that job to I to do”, would they? Unless it was Talk Like A Pirate Day, obviously (September 19th, since you ask). [2] I suspect this odd "X and I" construction is a result of two possible factors. But bear in mind that IANAL...

First, class cringe. We're in toilet / lavatory / loo and sofa / settee territory here. Somehow, some aspiring folk from the British working and lower-middle classes seem to have gained the impression that "me" is in some way not as correct as "I", or is perhaps even a bit chavvy, like dropping your aitches, and they overcompensate. Others hear this particular usage from the mouths of those same aspiring folk, assume it must be "correct", and do the same. [3]

Second, the "X and I" construct (as in the former Queen's much parodied "my husband and I") seems to have achieved liberation from the constraints of grammar, and operates independently as a single unit. Would Her Maj ever have said, "The crowd threw rocks at my husband and I"? I don't think so, but I could be wrong. Whatever, the incompetent rock-throwers missed both her husband and she.

The thing is, though, most actual linguists tend to be "descriptive" in their approach, not "prescriptive". If people split their infinitives (a daft concept in the first place), or put up signs at supermarket checkouts for "five items or less", or now think "forensic" means "scientific investigation of crime scenes" rather than "for use in a court of law", then that's just language in the process of changing, as it will, not precious rules being broken by annoying, know-nothing fools. Language is as language does, not as pedants and the self-styled language police would have it do.

Of course, all languages do have internal "rules", for want of a better word, that native speakers understand without ever having to learn them. Germans don't put their verbs at the far end of a clause, or regard girls (Mädchen) as neuter or masculinity (Männlichkeit) as feminine out of perversity (at least, I don't think they do). An excellent example of an internal rule in English is the order of adjectives, something few of us will ever have given a moment's thought to, but will never have got wrong, except perhaps when drunk. The order is:

Opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose (OSASCOMP)

Obviously, nobody ever really tests this order to destruction in real life (although it's fun to try), but a simple example makes the point that this is the only order that feels right and makes sense. You can say "A big black police car", but not "A police black big car". "A big police black car" is similarly awkward, but "A big police black saloon car" does make a sort of garbled sense; don't ask me how or why. IANAL, and I don't make the rules.

Let the peeving commence!

1. I was amused by comedian Chris Rock's remark that getting punched in the face by a bully at school is how you learn about tone... I certainly learned to moderate my tone at age 17, when I lost two front teeth round the back of a pub in 1971.

2. Accepting, of course, that in certain Caribbean and other dialects that might be a perfectly normal usage, and not at all "wrong".

3. People are very prone to copying such bits of prissy politesse. For example, I have completely lost patience with the fashion among people being interviewed on the radio for saying, "Good afternoon! Thank you for having me on the programme!" in reply to the first question like a well-schooled child at a birthday party, as if to say, "You, interviewer, may have no manners, but I was brought up properly"... To which the only proper response is what used to be called "an old-fashioned look".