Who cares about National Grammar Day? Or is it whom?

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

The use of nouns as verbs is common in American English. That is to say, any noun can be verbed. For that matter, nouns can be adjectived (or at least made the first elements in noun compounds).
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-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
Date:         Thu, 4 Mar 2010 10:41:09
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject:      Re: [ADS-L] Who cares about National Grammar Day? Or is it whom?

One thing from the Olympics I hadn't heard before is the word "podium" used as a verb.  "To podium" means to get a medal, be it gold, silver or bronze.  To say "She podiumed 3 times" means she got 3 medals of various kinds for 3 events.


Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL7+
see truespel.com phonetic spelling




> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Dennis Baron
> Subject: Who cares about National Grammar Day? Or is it whom?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> There's a new post on the Web of Language:
>
> Who cares about National Grammar Day? Or is it whom?
>
> March 4 is National Grammar Day. According to its sponsor, the Society
> for the Promotion of Good Grammar (SPOGG, they call themselves, though
> between you and me, it's not the sort of acronym to roll trippingly
> off the tongue), National Grammar Day is "an imperative . . . . to
> speak well, write well, and help others do the same!"
>
> The National Grammar Day website is full of imperatives about correct
> punctuation, pronoun use, and dangling participles. In the spirit of
> good sportsmanship, it points out an error in the Olympic theme song,
> "I believe," which contains the phrase the power of you and I (that's
> a common idiom in English, even in Canada, plus it rhymes with fly in
> the previous line of the song, but SPOGG would prefer that Olympians
> sing you and me). There's even a link to vote for your favorite
> Schoolhouse Rock grammar episode (hint: unless you prefer grammar
> rules that have nothing to do with the language people actually speak,
> don't pick "A Noun is the Name of a Person, Place, or Thing").
>
> The National Grammar Day home page has even got its own grammar song
> available for download, though it's of less than Olympic quality, and
> the site also boasts a letter of support from former Pres. George W.
> Bush, apparently SPOGG's poster child for good grammar, who writes
> that "National Grammar Day . . . can help Americans prepare for the
> challenges ahead." To be sure, Bush wrote that before the grammar
> bubble burst. The growing number of grammarians filing first-time
> unemployment claims suggests that the former president was wrong about
> this, as he was about most things.
>
> read the whole post on the Web of Language: http://bit.ly/weblan
>____________________
> Dennis Baron
> Professor of English and Linguistics
> Department of English
> University of Illinois
> 608 S. Wright St.
> Urbana, IL 61801
>
> office: 217-244-0568
> fax: 217-333-4321
>
> http://www.illinois.edu/goto/debaron
>
> read the Web of Language:
> http://www.illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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