Earlier this year, before the Victorian Opposition Leader Matthew Guy zeroed his attention to the highways and roads of this traffic-jammed city, he posited the view that it was a damn fine idea to send the police back into the classroom.
Ten schools deemed to be “at risk” (the parameters of risk aren’t quite known) would have full-time police officers assigned to them in a two-year trial. Mr Guy said at the time: “This is about combating crime before it’s a problem, it’s about respect, it’s about tolerance. It prevents crime before it becomes crime, before it is a problem.”
Now there’s nothing like a touch of the Taser to quieten down the youth of today causing bother in the class and on the streets, but there could be another avenue of corrections on which the police could walk.
Perhaps in a break from the law enforcement lessons, they could tackle the insidious vandalism that is destroying this great nation.
I write of the destruction of language.
The youth are not entirely to blame for this, and thus it would be an exemplary service for the greater good of society, if the officers were to help nip it in the bud. Children, after all, are only the sponges soaking up, well mainly soaking up, what drips of knowledge expire from their elders and blink at them from their smartphones.
No, it’s at the fountainhead that the patrolling needs to be done. There is a limit to the destruction of what is right and good.
And learnings is it.
People are taking their “learnings” seriously, and in this case, it’s a worry. It may seem a small thing, adding an s on to a word but it makes a fool of the user and a mockery of the language.
As the website The Grammarist, says: “Learnings is a pluralisation of an erroneous form of learning as a singular noun. Said singular noun (eg, a learning) does not exist, at least according to most dictionaries. Colloquially, especially in the medical field, learnings means specific items that were newly discovered or learned.”
Learning dates from Middle English, about the 14thCentury, but its mutant variant dates only from the beginning of this century. It arose from those purveyors of twisted syntax, the denizens of the corporate and management world. It became a buzzword, and thus indispensable. It was, and has continued to grow into, a secret word for the initiated. One knows a member of the same club by one’s common words. “How are your learnings coming along, alright?” “Yes, had a good session. Really starting to go places with all these learnings.”
People are taking their “learnings” seriously, and in this case, it’s a worry. It may seem a small thing, adding an s on to a word but it makes a fool of the user and a mockery of the language.
Really, it’s speaking in tongues for the dumb.
Sacha Baron Cohen lampooned this in the 2006 film title Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
This invasion of idiocy has even been too much for 7.30 host Leigh Sales who recently tweeted, and for Radio National host Fran Kelly, to retweet: “Crusty old bag alert: why did people start using ‘learnings’ as a word? There’s an actual proper word: lessons.”
It goes across the Tasman, too, NZ Labour Party MP Deborah Russell tweeted: “Reading some papers for the Environment Select Committee meeting this week but brought to a complete halt by ‘learnings’. Lessons is a perfectly good word.”
Indeed it is.
Many will say that since language is a living, breathing thing, it will always be open to evolution. This is true. Words change: some die, some are born. Chaucer’s world, and Shakespeare’s, are not ours. As objects or actions become a new part of our society and our lives, so language adapts. Inventions play an important role in this.
This evolution is no more in evidence than in the work of wordsmiths employed by news mastheads to patrol the grammar in their publications. It’s an irony, none really care to admit openly, that everything is set in stone until the enemy assails the castle of style’s ramparts. This foe is the dreaded phrase “common usage”. For then whatever has been denied, is allowed. The people have spoken.
Well, let them never speak abundantly of the learnings of the day.
We have a word for it. It is a perfectly good word. It is lessons.
In an age where social media has condensed conversation into button faces and abbreviations, let the pedant police win this one.
