What happened to English grammar?

Oh that English were so regular !Of course its beauty is that it isn't. So many times when teaching foreign students you have to say there is no rule for this: it's just English usage.

I find that headline writers seem to feel themselves exempt from normal rules of English usage. And if you add mistakes to an attempt to write a snappy headline it can be incomprehensible or misleading. Some of us are so embedded in a lifetime of correcting students' language that they can't help noticing this kind of thing. And it is so distracting that it can actually prevent you from appreciating the story!

Non sequitur alert:

I don't consider the man who sank the Belgrano to be a hero.

Here's the wooden spoon for you, petallus.

Just for the record, Fowler 3rd Edition, 1996, ed. Burchfield, notes that the past tense "is now overwhelmingly sank rather than sunk". It is notable in passing that this now aligns the English with the German "sinken, sank, gesunken".

I hope this doesn't lead to the thread morphing into a discussion of the First and Second World Wars, with the General Belgrano being replaced by the Graf Spee.

It might. Why not?

Hopefully grumppa you've scuppered the thread - notice nervous avoidance of sank, sunk, sunken, sunked.

Thanks Bags

It was a point I seriously wanted to make though.

I was hoping I'd torpedoed the thread, heroically.

I guess troops coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq are regarded as heros simply because people have seen these wars on tv and it is fresh in their memories. Feelings on the wrongness or rightness of these wars, and the methods used in the fighting, doesn't really come into it. The men themselves are rightly honoured.

People have short memories.

You like playing wars do you grumppa? (a patronising one)

We have already covered that point petallus.

And we have never been in a situation where we are responsible for the lives of so many British men. I doubt it was an easy order to give.

I feel the same j08 about men fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not so sure about torpedoing a ship though.

It's just that I remember reading awful accounts of the Belgrano sinking. It may have been necessary from a military point of view but in my view not a cause for 'celebration'.

No personal feelings involved here Greatnan. I was simply "gobsmacked".

My OP was about a grammatical error that a journalist should not have made. Nothing else.

I was rather amazed myself, jingle, at the ridiculous attack on my sensitivity - not by you.

And my first post on this thread expressed my feelings.

Oh dear. I hope this thread, and my contribution to it, hasn't caused upset between RL friends. To be honest, I was worrying about this in the small hours.

Did anyone celebrate it petallus. God, I hope not.

You certainly haven't caused any upset between any of my friends and myself, jingle, but it is nice of you to be concerned.

It was calling the 'the man who sunk the Belgrano' a hero!

If he was a hero, then his memory deserves that he be reported in the best possible English.

I don't regard him as a hero. He was just doing his job as he thought best. There's no conscription in this country so people choose to enter the armed forces in order, presumably, to do the jobs armed forces require them to do. Some of those jobs may end up being heroic but no more so than, say, a surgeon's job would – especially surgeons who work for an outfit like, for instance, Médecins sans Frontières, and clean up the mess left by, among others, armed forces various.

You can give me the wooden spoon back now, petallus

Oh God, were n' t they all heroes, poor sods. I remember going and standing by my one year old son's cot the night it kicked off and praying that he would never have to get involved with anything like that. I hope and pray the same thing about the grandsons now.