From Booksmart Studios, this is Lexicon Valley.
I'm John McWhorter, and I would like to discuss today something other...
than the fact that Merriam-Webster has decided to declare that it's okay to end a sentence with a preposition.
That has been some of the biggest news in language lately.
And those of you who know my drill on this show can imagine how I feel about that absolutely absurd preposition stranding rule.
But if I pull the camera back, what it makes me think is that we've been misled now.
for centuries to think that one of the most interesting things about language is the way most people for some reason seem to misuse it,
rather than that in each little facet of it, there's some kind of miracle.
And I just found myself thinking you can take the most mundane of words.
And I thought, well, what's a mundane word that seems to be of no interest at all?
And I thought, well, how about the verb to come?
You know, you go, you come, you arrive.
Really, what's interesting is whatever you did once you got there.
So just as a lesson in what a cornucopia a language is far beyond issues of I don't like it when people say this and I don't like it when people say that.
Just words.
Let's try.
come, C-O-M-E.
Where did that word come from, so to speak?
Well, in Old English, it was cuman, so C-U-M-A-N.
Kumon.