Because The Onion Radio News has released a fake news item about an alleged move to Anglo-Saxon syntax, a number of linguist bloggers (including the venerable Language Log) have discussed the original article in the written version of The Onion.

• Rules Grammar Change

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  • One thing I like about this spoof is that this syntax quickly seems natural and native speakers seem to have an easy time adopting it. One reason might be that English-speakers are often trained to read rather old texts. Rabelais had a similar impact on me, though it took more than a few pages before I really got used to the language and was able to read the original text without reference to translations into Modern French. One reason is that Rabelais’s French is not only syntactically different from modern French but also different in lexicon and spelling. Not to mention that the cultural context has changed enough that reading Pantagruel was an ethnographic experience. (Of course, the texts themselves were largely about exploration and discovery, which are related to ethnography). Maybe I should reread Rabelais. It’s been more than twenty years. – post by enkerli