Friday, June 5, 2009

. . .But the Grammar Police Were There First

Here is an a story which has a thing or two to say about Neil Armstrong's remarks on the moon in 1969. You might recall the astronaut's phrase--it was short and to the point, something about a small step. Still within ten words (or was it ten?) people found questions that needed answering. Linguists, spectrographs, and poetic analysis ensued. Though the reseachers concluded that Armstrong had left an entire article out of his first sentence, they did admit his style was great. I shall refrain from comment. Just go read it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is intriguing... and funny! Most languages don't bother with 'a' and 'an' having only the definite article 'the', so English is one of the few languages in which the sentence was grammatically incorrect!

Maria :)

Molly said...

The poor man should only have been speaking Irish!