August 31, 2002

grammatical musings

My job has been driving me bonkers. Actually “bonkers” is too nice of a word. More like “to depression”. I have worked for this company for one and three quarters of a year. That’s one year eight months. Six hundred and five days (approximately). In all of that time I haven’t felt like just walking out and not coming back. Not telling anybody just leaving and not returning. Maybe send an email to one person the next day saying, “you can tell them I’m not coming back and please keep that Monsters, Inc. guy with the three eyes and glasses as a souvenir.” Like previously mentioned, I moved to a new position. I told my former boss today how I’ve never passed one single test that states I’m qualified for the position. Not even the basic technical test to be hired in my field. Nobody seems to care. I should have taken at least two, but more like three or four tests by now. “That’s like saying,’good luck’ and handing a scalpel to a someone who hasn’t been to college.” What’s worse is that my current managers keep telling me that the employees really like me. That’s like saying, “we think he’s qualified—the patients really like him!” Just wait until the morphine drip wears off.

I’ve been crafting this letter to my supervisor. Tonight it was proofread by an actual human—computers are such liars—and found out that I spelled “coping” incorrectly. The way I had it: copping, is a completely different word. So for the first time “the rule” hit me. If it has a vowel modifier you drop it and add your suffix. If it doesn’t have a vowel modifier you then add another letter and put your suffix. Completely backwards of logic. You should drop a letter (vowel) and add another (consonant). Or in the case where there is no letter to drop then just add your suffix. Here’s a visual aid…

cop (transitive verb meaning “to steal”) = copping (inflected form)

cope (verb meaning “to maintain”) = coping (inflected form)

In other parts of speech an apostrophe is used when a letter is dropped. Such as the case of “ma’am” (madam) or “it’s” (it is) or even in the case where representing possessive such as “Tom’s” where an “e” is represented with an apostrophe. If this is true, why then do we add letters where we shouldn’t (should not) when adding a suffix to a word and remove letters when they should be replaced by another? It’s rhetorical, but if you can find some historical evidence as to why the rule is there, drop me a line.

posted @ 6:23 PM

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