The Hopeless Case of 'Hopefully'

...Such is a common result of verbal innovation: Instead of something valuable it causes either muddle or the departure of a once-useful word...

...it is quite inconceivable that an American publisher would bring out a study of English usage with an equally local flavor by a Scottish, Australian or Nigerian writer...

...Careful writers abandon ambiguous expressions for fear of "running the risk of being thus misunderstood...

...In college, I had a friend who had studied Latin and thus saw himself as a man of learning...

...In the rales, observances and decencies of language, however, it is often wise to give free rein to our darkest and most reactionary feelings...

...Fowler and his younger siblingF.G...

...Another is a style so ironic that, in his discussion of the subjunctive mode, he felt it necessary to say, "The above rules are not flippant or satirical...

...I later bought the first edition (1926), as well as the Concise Oxford Dictionary (1911), by H.W...

...Onions, in Modern English Syntax, lists 33 he considers to be usable...

...In appropriating the title The King's English (St...

...Sentence adverbs really have been a slippery slope, and in the years since 1904 English usage has slid down it...

...The author has his own pet theory: "The most serious objection to the use of hopefully in a dangling position [Amis' odd terminology...

...The argument was lost in 1394...

...Who is doing the hoping, the writer or the aunt...

...Fortuitous did not mean fortunate...

...Amis does have the principal literary virtues needed for such undertakings: succinctness and clarity...

...In fact, it is Amis' claim to be pro-American that is suspect: Our version of English played in his system the role of Polish Yiddish in my grandfather's...

...Fowler's Modern English Usage (1965), revised by Sir Ernest Gowers...

...Indeed, his standard was not just the English of England but the English of the southeast—the triangle formed by Oxford, Cambridge and London, where the modern language originated...

...In the past, sentence adverbs invited strict scrutiny...

...In his heart," Amis admits, "no Englishman readily allows linguistic equality to an American or anyone else born outside these shores...

...Reference books should not force readers to ask such a question...

...It does present such a possibility, but so do the sentence adverbs thankfully, evidently, fortunately, happily, rightly, understandably, unfortunately, and unhappily—each blessed by Onions in 1904...

...The answer is a more general—and more effective—form of Amis' notion: Hopefully fails to specify whose point of view is meant...

...Amis said he kept a copy of the 1926 Modern English Usage "open beside the typewriter" while composing this volume, and suggested that his readers have all of the Fowlers' works at the ready...

...All these locutions are sentence adverbs: They modify the whole sentence, in contrast to an adverb of manner (or true adverb), which modifies a verb (he prayed fervently) or an adjective (extremely stupid...

...The overall impression would not change...

...My mother got them from her father, who thought of himself as speaking the proper sort of Yiddish and not what he deprecated as mere Polish Yiddish...

...but that it is dishonest...

...For example, did you know that "lord" and "lady" are descended from Old English terms meaning, respectively, "owner of the loaf" and "one who kneads loaves...

...Usage and grammar manuals by writers on other subjects are exceptional...

...he tried, for instance, to argue against spelling reform by claiming absurdly that there are few "popular misspellings" in English and that "Their general paucity is a strong recommendation of the English orthographical system...

...No doubt Amis' conservative disposition occasionally led him astray...

...This seems no better than hopefully...

...Fowler, and the brothers' The King's English (1906...

...Books of this sort invariably revisit many familiar battle grounds...

...Amongthem, notwithstanding the point-of-view objection, are all the adverbs in the previous paragraph except hopefully...

...Amis, by the way, uses post-Onions sentence adverbs: He writes of Old English that "it is of linguistic interest, naturally...

...True, but what else would it mean...

...On the whole, we would be better off as well if existing words never acquired new meanings...

...They show up in good used-book stores...

...The author also saluted a few other books, including the excellent Modern American Usage (1966) by Wilson Follett, who is referred to several times, not always by name...

...Organized by century, the largest single number are coinages of 1801-1900: admittedly (1804), allegedly (1874), apparently (1846), clearly (1867), frankly (1851), happily (1871), and presumably (1846...

...Why are "I hope" or "with luck" more honest, or even more clear, than hopefully...

...My grandfather may have inherited this state of mind from a line of Yiddishists, Hebraists and so forth stretching back, for all I know, to Ur of the Chaldees...

...Virtually all authors of treatises like these made language their specialty...

...Amis' opus is largely a collection of crotchets and jokes...

...only the fine early 19th-century Grammar of the English Language by William Cobbett, the first great practitioner of journalism in English, comes to mind...

...is not that it is not good English, though it is not, nor that it is a trendy usage, though it is...

...Horrified to discover that I did not know the difference between the possessive adjective "its" (its time will come) and the bastard contraction "it's" (it's time to go), he gave me a copy of the second edition of H.W...

...In addition, he understands the romance of words...

...Martin's, 288 pp., $23.95) for his posthumously published effort, the English comic novelist Kingsley Amis gives the impression of having aspired to a very high standard—and, perhaps inevitably, fell short of it...

...There is no general rule that would exclude hopefully but not other common sentence adverbs that are also vulnerable both to the pointof-view objection and to the possibility of confusion resulting from a dual role as sentence adverb and adverb of manner...

...We continue to make hopefully the symbol of a much larger class of questionable usages...

...An authority of 1904, C.T...

...In any event, strongly established words that raise similar problems include thankfully, conceivably, evidently, fortunately, happily, rightly, understandably, undoubtedly, unfortunately, and unhappily...

...Since Amis wrote in a self-consciously informal way, it might be a good idea to have Eric Partridge's Dictionary of Slang handy, too...

...Double negatives were strictly forbidden...

...In a great many sentences instanced by the OED, it might be possible to construe the adverb either way: "Euripides incontestably displays the quality of radiance" (John Addington Symonds, 1873) could mean "Euripides displays radiance in an incontestable manner" or "it is incontestable that Euripides displays radiance...

...Hopefully"—as in "Hopefully, the plan will be in operation by the end of the year"—was "too famous to be passed over...

...Can an author who tells us "that in almost all political and social matters I am strongly pro-American" be serious when he characterizes usages or pronunciations as "a trifle underbred," not once but several times...

...But in many sentences there is no standpoint except the writer's to consider...

...These are still the most important books on English to appear in the past century...

...The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) helps us explore the history of the words on Onions' list...

...Take the sentence, "My aunt said, hopefully, that the question would be resolved...

...Where Dad acquired these attitudes toward language I don't know...

...Another charge against the offending word is the possibility of confusion caused by its use both as a sentence adverb and as an adverb of manner (I await the future hopefully...

...Very often, as in this case, a word's use as a sentence adverb emerges from the chrysalis of its origins as a true one, so some readers, in perusing the relevant entries in the OED, might consider a number of these dates too early or too late...

...This falls only a bit short of the most wonderful philological discovery I ever made: "Science" and "shit" come from a common Indo-European source, skei, meaning to cut or split...

...Although it may injure the selfregard of English-speakers elsewhere, the usage of this region has enjoyed a privileged position for centuries...

...At its best it is a commentary on the Fowlers' canon...

...All that is really meant is 'I/we hope that the plan will be in operation by the end of the year,' or still less honestly, 'With luck, the plan,' etc...

...These include evidently, fortunately, happily, rightly, thankfully, understandably, unfortunately, and—one of the first instances of an adverb modifying a sentence—unhappily...

...Again and again Amis shows that the introduction of new ones—say, the transformation of "dilemma" from a term referring to a choice between two dismal possibilities into a synonym for a difficulty of any kind— has made the language poorer...

...Some have been used as sentence adverbs for a very long time: actually (1587), conceivably (1625), consequently (1483), evidently (1690), luckily (1717), possibly (1391), probably (1647), undoubtedly (15 00), and unhappily (13 94...

...Nonetheless, he was right in his larger point: that spelling reform would cut us off from the literature of the past and have the effect of "banishing millions of literate people from the existing community of English-readers," because it could not be accomplished everywhere similarly...

...At one point Amis comes to the verge of scolding "Americans for using an Americanism in America"—then concedes that this "seems a bit much" at the last moment...

...See the magnificent section on Indo-European roots in the American Heritage Dictionary) Despite Amis' real strengths on usage, his casualness in choosing his subject matter is hardly the sole problem...

...I myself sympathize even with Amis' preference for traditional southeastern pronunciations, such as "regment" for regiment, but he states it in an unpleasant way, blaming the current tendency to pronounce words as they are spelled on "the employment of broadcasters bom outside the traditional RP [Received Pronunciation] area...