English grammar has never been my favorite subject. Even today I am not very clear on the use of “I” or “me” in a sentence. I understand that "I" and "me" are both pronouns that we use to refer to ourselves. As Dr. Goodword puts it - occasionally we drive a long way down the wrong road, knowing we have made the bad turn, but press on, hoping we will somehow end up in the right place. That is what happened to me.
During a casual conversation with my friend, I happened to mention to him - “I and my brother take turns to look after my aged mother”. He corrected my English usage and told me that one should always mention the other person(s) first. I guess that this usage must have come out the logic of being polite and also respecting the other person. Due to this strong logical reasoning, I never repeated my mistake.
But let us look at some rule based grammar. The correct usage is - “It is I”, “That's he”, and “It's she", but sounds rather funny to me as we generally say - “It is me”, “That's him” and “It's her”.
I won a bet with one of my family members regarding the plural of fish. He said it is fishes and I maintained that it was fish. When we looked up the dictionary, we got the explanation - Fish is both singular and plural within a species. Fishes is the plural when you have more than one species.
I feel that the above rule based grammar will die soon.
For some strange reason, I took a liking for “Transferred epithets”. In a transferred epithet (also known as hypallage) the adjective or adverb is transferred from the noun it logically belongs with, to another one which fits it grammatically but not logically. The above explanation of is rather confusing.
But our English teacher taught us the meaning through two examples in prose and poetry. I cannot forget it till date.
"The plowman homeward plods his weary way, / And leaves the world to darkness and to me" (Grey, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"). The weariness of the farmer is transferred to the way.
The other example was through an essay of Charles Lamb – Dream Children: A Reverie. The author is a confirmed bachelor. Yet he dreams that he has a family and children. He suddenly wakes up and this is how the essay ends: " ------ and immediately awaking, I found myself quietly seated in my bachelor arm-chair, where I had fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget unchanged by my side -- but John L. (or James Elia) was gone for ever”. The bachelor status of John L got transferred to the chair in which he was sitting.
Later popular authors like Wodehouse used TE liberally in his novels.
“As I sat in the bath tub, soaping a meditative foot and singing, ….." (P.G. Wodehouse, Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit,)
“I balanced a thoughtful lump of sugar on the teaspoon” (P.G. Wodehouse, Joy in the morning)
Finally you may ask me “What is the most often used transferred epithet in our daily lives?”
“Well, that’s a silly question”
