The endless mistakes of the Speak Good English Movement

You may be forgiven for thinking that I have a personal vendetta against Singapore's Speak Good English Movement (SGEM) when I honestly have none. You may think that way because this blog has more than a hundred posts that highlight the ludicrous language mistakes made by the SGEM. But the fact is the SGEM is unbelievably ignorant of even the most elementary rules of English grammar and I can't help picking on it when everything it says or publishes is erroneous. I just went to its Facebook page and I saw this:

'Do you say "the photos you sent me" or "the photos you sent to me"? Let's learn and improve our English with Kai Ying and Robin!'  

I was naturally curious what nonsensical error the SGEM might come up with this time and I clicked on the link which brought me to a video that the SGEM produced, complete with real actors. It's a cringe-inducing video which is just what I expected of the SGEM. The video pokes fun at how an uneducated Singaporean speaks which is of course in poor taste. Although the SGEM loves to make fun of the the way an uneducated Singaporean speaks, it is itself hopelessly unable to get its own grammar right. I forced myself to continue watching the video and I waited for the SGEM to make a pronouncement on grammar. As I have shown in countless articles in this blog, the SGEM is totally incapable of getting its grammar right. I knew that all I had to do was to wait for it to condemn a sentence as grammatically unacceptable and the SGEM would most certainly be in error and expose its own ignorance of English grammar rules.  I didn't have long to wait.

This is what the SGEM says:

One unhappy reader of the SGEM's Facebook post wrote this comment:

Presumably, the reader knew somehow that the SGEM couldn't possibly be right and did some googling and found some confirmation that the SGEM was wrong. She probably had some trouble understanding the linguistic terms but she asked the wrong party when she asked the SGEM to explain what she discovered. I just couldn't help laughing because I'm sure she must have known that there was no way the SGEM whose ignorance of English grammar is phenomenal could possibly answer her question.

There are pitfalls when you go to Google for all your questions. There are a million answers to every question and they are all different. I don't like answers that resort to references on grammatical case which is essential if you are dealing with a language such as Latin but not so helpful when you are examining the English language. When I was a boy, I was made to study Latin which I have always regarded as a total waste of my time because I couldn't even shout 'Help me!' in Latin if I had fallen off a boat into the Adriatic Sea in ancient Rome.

But the one thing my hours of having done declension and conjugation exercises might be of use is in the area of grammatical case. I can spot immediately any inaccuracy in terminology when people, usually English grammarians, refer to the double accusatives or the dative in this instance. The fact is both are wrong. There are really an accusative and a dative and not double of either.

When I teach my kids grammar, I do not resort to such references which, as I have already said, are more suitable for a study of Latin. I merely explain the rules in plain words.

But there are some sentences ('Send the photos to me' is one example) that any English-speaking child knows deep within himself to be correct. It is sad that the SGEM doesn't even know what every child knows. I have been asked why I hate the SGEM so much. I don't hate it; I utterly despise it. I have nothing but pure contempt for the SGEM.  Of course, an English-speaking child or an adult may not be able to explain why some sentences are correct if he or she has no knowledge of grammar. But that doesn't matter. The fact is every child knows there is nothing wrong with the clause 'photos you sent to me' and only the nitwits in the SGEM do not know this.

There is a simple but inflexible rule in grammar which every English-speaking child knows instinctively but which the SGEM is in the dark about: the monotransitivity of a ditransitive verb always remains intact and is never vitiated by its ditransitivity. If you don't understand that, it does not matter one bit. All that you need to know is the SGEM is, as always, totally wrong.

For a one-page summary of all the blog posts on the incredibly stupid errors made by the SGEM and its committee members, please click here. Let's all hope that the Ministry of Education will do the right thing and shut down this contemptible organisation.