“Your grammar is a reflection of your image. Good or bad, you have made an impression. And like all impressions, you are in total control,” so goes a thought-provoking quote by the famous American author Jeffrey Gitomer. This quote reminds me of a beautiful lecture I had in school many years ago about the importance of grammar in the English language.
One day, it so happened that my school principal was making rounds to ensure that the classes were running smoothly. I remember quite well that it was our English class and the teacher was absent. Our noisy class suddenly turned pin-drop silent as he entered our class. Before proceeding, I would like to mention a few words about my principal. Not only was he a strict disciplinarian, but also had an excellent command over the English language. His personality demanded respect, and needless to say, we were all in awe of him.
The first thing he did as he entered our class was to check the proverb that had to be written every morning by the monitor on the blackboard in every class. The quote was written thus:
“Where their is a will, their is a way!”
He gently picked up the duster and erased what was written. Then he asked us to point out the mistake in the saying, which forced him to wipe it off. While most of us knew the error in the quote, none of us dared to stand up and point out the same. As none of us volunteered, he turned towards the blackboard and wrote the word ‘homonyms’. He gently urged us to explain the word that he had just then written. Most of us genuinely did not know its meaning. Seeing our scared faces, he smiled and went on to narrate about one of his most fascinating life’s incidents, which was a revelation to all of us. Here, I take the opportunity to share it with the readers!
He had a village background when he joined the 6th grade in the city. Learning English was tough for him and he had a very difficult time coping with learning the language. His cousin also did his schooling there and had a great degree of fluency in English. One day it so happened that his uncle had quizzed them both on the basics of English grammar, for which my principal could not answer anything. The way his cousin could answer almost all the questions put to him had made my principal hang his head in shame. Noticing his condition, his uncle gifted him the Wren and Martin grammar book. My principal had then taken a vow to master the language’s grammar by reading it literally from the first page until the last and doing all its exercises. He ended his monologue by stating that if someone from a village background could master a language, so could all of us.
So saying, he finished the class with an explanation of homonyms and explained why the word ‘their’, was not suitable in that particular proverb. It was only then I understood that homonyms are words that sound the same but have different meanings. The monitor came up to the blackboard and set right his mistake by changing the word ‘their’ to ‘there’ in the saying.
That day was an eye-opener to all of us that grammar is the soul of any language, and one has to get it right to bring out the beauty of the expression to be conveyed. Every year, 4th March being observed as International grammar day, let us take a pledge to give an honest try to use correct grammar in both written and verbal language!
