First of all, I must confess that I do not know that there are so many elements in the English language, especially their funny names (e.g., Hendiadys, Chiasmus, Adynaton, etc.) I had enough trouble with nouns, verbs, adjectives already. Nevertheless, not knowing that they exist (or their names) does not mean that I do not use them; I used them thinking that they were as common as 'standard grammar'.
While these elements are tools of writers, it is really the readers (or listeners) who keep them alive. As such, I could relate to most of what was written in this book except for one - Versification. This practice of designing a sentence in verse form (te-TUM te-TUM te-TUM) was beyond me because Singaporeans emphasise the wrong syllables in our use of English, for example SylLABle would be SYllaBLE to us. There is much to learn.
The author obviously knows much and has read much. He was humourous, educational, and elegant throughout, but it was when he was talking about Anaphora that I was rather moved by his use of Sir Winston Churchill's use of anaphora to send two messages while skillfully only allowing his audience to remember one (pg 197). You can say that Churchill was honest, yet achieved his goal of exalting his countrymen to fight. No wonder he was considered a great orator.
But it was really at the conclusion of the book that the writer wrote something that I agreed very much. In explaining his motivation for writing the book he wrote:
Above all, I hope I have dispelled the bleak and imbecilic idea that the aim of writing is to express yourself clearly in plain, simple English using as few words as possible.I have, for a long time, wondered about the English language in comparison to Chinese. While today's use of Chinese has been greatly simplified compared to the past (as has English), the Chinese language has retained many elements such as 成语 and 谚语 which enrich and add colour to the language. English, especially the brand that I learned in Singapore, has constantly emphasised the use of as few words as possible and the eradication of anything that felt cumbersome. I am not talking about redundant words here (like 'free gift', although according to this book, 'gift' which is understood to be free, sounds different from 'free gift' to the listener, read this book), but even in structure, we have been taught to be as 'standard' as possible. Perhaps being non-native speakers, our teachers felt that it would be beyond us to appreciate the beauty in the language. Or perhaps we had an utilitarian motive for learning the language: to connect to those who could do good for our economy. In the end, English became a 'business' language, stripped of all its live, learnt for the sole purpose of landing a job.
English is a beautiful language. Not being an English major, I surely have not the ability to appreciate it fully. But as a language that I've learnt for the better part of 40 years, I cannot accept that it is only as I know it. There would not be so much to celebrate about English literature otherwise and to start to understand why people read Shakespeare, read this book.
(Find this book at Goodreads)
