Changes and We

Note: The title of this post was copied from the title of an editorial of a graduate school publication.

A few days back I cleared my desk of clutter - documents, drafts, publications, papers, etc. Sometimes, I like an orderly and neat looking desk. (My extra workload meant schools sending me copies of their school publications; which further meant more clutter on my desk.)

One publication I was about to throw had an editorial titled 'Changes and We'. The title sounded awkward but, so what? What do you expect from a high school paper? But wait. The next page had a picture of my classmate, sporting his signature bald head. Then I looked at the masthead. From day one, I thought that this paper was the domain of English students, sort of their OJT. So, if the paper was run by English students, 'Changes and We' could be right. But, no. The title bugged me. It just crawled under my skin. The title should have been 'Changes and Us'.

I am no grammarian. But in the context of a grad school work, I doubt that 'Changes and We' passes the mark. Of course, I can't fully recall the subjective/objective cases of pronouns. But there are tips that I usually employ when in doubt.

1. Play it by ear. Literally, it must not sound awkward.

2. For a group of words, it may help to make a complete sentence. Changes and we are the topics of this editorial. , or This editorial is about changes and us. The first sentence is too stuffy; the second is straightforward and acceptable.

3. Titles are like captions. And a caption is a shortcut of a sentence about the picture. This is a photo of (or about) changes and us. So my caption/title is Changes and Us.

4. A title is an answer to a question. What is the article about? The article is about changes and us.

5. It is I is formal and correct. But Shakespeare is already dead. And nobody speaks and writes like Shakespeare anymore. So, the conventional and acceptable way is It is me.

6. The editorial 'we' discussed in journalism classes must not be taken literally. Editorials must present a collective opinion.

This post is not to embarrass anyone but to help writers perfect their craft; and to convey the message that somebody reads (good) even belatedly, and analyzes (better) the paper he helped financed (best reason!).

This post is also about my abhorence to someone who regards the English language as a badge of superiority. Speak and write in English as a way of expression, not as a way to massage the ego. I am not keen about English. And more so about grammar. The last time I was so particular about grammar was when I was ed-in-chief of my college and university publications. (And I was a sloppy ed-in-chief. But I was an undergrad then. Undergrads are not supposed to be blamed for the errors. Instead, blame the moderators or advisers.) But after I travelled to France and Germany, where nobody would speak to me in English, and where even the British and the Americans were required to speak in the local language, I no longer cared about my grammar as long as I was understood. Sign language has no grammar. In the United Kingdom where I thought my English had a better chance, my conversations were interspersed with ‘What?’, ‘Please speak slowly.’, ‘Please repeat that’, and other unwanted ad libs. Back in the Philippines, when I practice tit-for-tat and answer a foreigner in Kinaray-a, Filipinos think I am rude. But to the foreigners/tourists who prefer to immerse in the local color, they think my response is proper as they fidget with their translation notebooks. (BTW, more than once I called up an office in DepEd and was answered by a male voice who refused to speak in English as he spoke in fluent Ilonggo. I later learned that the male voice was not a tugabang-and-takway-eating Ilonggo like me, but a DepEd-detailed young Japanese who had arrived only recently and had never been to Iloilo before.)

A classmate once said, 'Kamango sa iya kay English niya sala.' (He is so dumb because his English is wrong.) I pity my classmate. To me, the more we think of English as an instrument to measure our intelligence, the more we are stuck into the third world rut. Japan, France, Germany, etc. have booming economies. And they don't care if their English, like my English, sucks.

Changes and We, anyone?