Progressing with the progressive

Too many people these days acquire their knowledge from the internet but the quality of such knowledge is dubious. It's true that you can learn a lot from the internet - I am the grateful recipient of life-saving knowledge from the web. Recently, I climbed up the roof of my house with the wrong ladder and I couldn't climb down. After that experience, I went on YouTube to arm myself with information on ladder safety and the many different kinds of ladders and I have just ordered (through the internet again) my new ladder which will be delivered tomorrow. That is the kind of knowledge you can gain from the internet. 

I don't normally read Quora but yesterday, I received an email from Quora on a subject that was of interest to me. So I clicked on it and I was brought to a whole new world that I never thought existed. It was a world of the blind leading the blind. Someone asked in Quora the question 'Why is it correct to say "I am having a party tomorrow" but incorrect to say "I am having class tomorrow"?'

The first person to offer his opinion has this to say:

I hope my readers do not think I'm being critical of this commentator or the others whose comments I will be quoting in this blog post. I'm not criticising them. I merely want to illustrate the problem almost all English speakers face today after linguists recommended in the 1960s that the teaching of English grammar be discontinued. It was a recommendation that was accepted in every school from Alaska to New Zealand.

This commentator begins by liberally declaring both sentences correct.  You can say both 'I'm having a party tomorrow' and 'I'm having class tomorrow'.  He then adds an 'afterthought' which is quite hilarious. A party is not a repeated event while a class is. Also a party is thought of as an extended event while a class is 'mentally condensed'. 'Have' is more suitable for a repetitive condensed event while 'having' is for 'out-of-the-ordinary or extended events'. He doesn't explain why a party is 'extended' while a class is 'condensed' but I would surmise that a party is fun and enjoyable and you want it to last while a class is what you want to see condensed to 5 minutes, if that is possible. So what if I hold a party every month? And what if my class is really interesting and I enjoy it more than a party?

And there are 79,700 views of what this commentator wrote. Even if half of them accept what he wrote, we have 40,000 people misled by someone who has no knowledge of English grammar.

Another commentator has this to say:

Marilyn is of the view that 'having' a party means hosting it. But she doesn't explain why she thinks 'having' a class doesn't mean attending it. Neither does Juanita who agrees with her. One would have expected Juanita to do some explaining since she says she is an English teacher. A student cannot be faulted if he wonders why 'having a class' can't also mean 'attending a class' when 'having a party' can mean 'hosting a party'.  So, we are all left in the dark if we have to depend on the internet for our English grammar lesson. First, we have a man who thinks both sentences are all right (but he has an afterthought - let's not forget that). Next, we have two women who seem to agree with the original question but they fail to answer the question. 

There is never a dull moment on the internet. There is bound to be some other grammar ignoramus who has to have his say. The internet is all about democracy. Anyone can have a say even if he's the village idiot. It doesn't take long before another commentator comes along with an explanation of his own and he uses grammar terms too!  Or more accurately, his own unique understanding of what these terms mean:

Richard is utterly confused. First, he doesn't know what an active or passive voice is. When he says the second sentence is in the passive voice because 'the person is on the receiving end of the process of education' his understanding of 'active' and 'passive' may be correct in sexology but wrong in English grammar.

The fun is not yet over. You may think that's about all the mistakes anyone can come up with over two simple English sentences but I have a lot of experience with grammar ignoramuses and I just knew even as I was reading the above comment that there were more surprises in store for me. What I didn't expect was a comment that shows a writer who totally does not know what a transitive verb is and if a copula were to jump out of a page and hit him on the head with a club, he would be none the wiser: 

And that's not all.  After demonstrating to his readers that his only knowledge of the transitive and copular verbs is how to spell them, Phil comes down like the wolf on the fold and butchers more grammatical terms:

He obviously doesn't know what a possessive is but he probably thinks it sounds good when used in a comment on grammar. Neither does he know what an auxiliary verb is but mere ignorance doesn't deter him from referring to 'have' in that sentence he wrote as an auxiliary. His 'grammatical alarm bells' don't ring when he misuses grammatical terms because he doesn't know what they mean in the first place. Besides, nobody will tell him he's wrong, as indeed nobody did on the thread. He should also learn that 'I'm having' is not 'the future continuous form'.  There are just too many mistakes in one small comment. The reason is obvious - he, like everyone else who commented on the thread, doesn't know a thing about English grammar.

What everyone needs to understand is our response to English grammar should not be the same as our feelings for a good movie which are subjective. With a good movie, you can say you like the music best because when the music came on, you could feel a tingling sensation in your spine. You can't do that with English grammar. You can't say you feel a tingling in your spine when you classify 'have' as a copular verb and so it must be right. Grammar doesn't work that way. It's not a free-for-all. 

Psychologists should examine why people who know no grammar seem always so eager to give their opinion on a question on grammar. If there is a question about dark matter, nobody who knows no Physics will presume to give his opinion. 

5 years ago, a Facebook post on a child's English test paper led to a case of online bullying of a schoolteacher by a large group of people who knew no grammar. That led me to write 3 blog posts on the subject, the first part of which can be accessed here.

When I wrote my title at the start of this blog post, I thought that since the subject of discussion revolved around the progressive aspect, I would have the space in this post to talk about the very interesting future of the progressive and hence, the title would have been most apt. But it looks like I will have to deal with the future of the progressive in another blog post.