Disputes in English Grammar

English is a spiteful, hateful bitch. She'll text you romantic things one day and then change her locks on you the next. I know there are a lot of ridiculous languages out there (French, I'm talking to you. Just change your damn spelling already, or start pronouncing those superfluous vowels. I'm warning you.), but I'm pretty sure English is the only one that even native speakers don't know how the hell to use. Like, what's the past perfect tense of drink? "I had drank? drunk? dranken? drunken?!" Don't feel bad, no one knows. I'm a linguist, and I just don't use the past perfect. I suggest you do the same.

Linguists are a funny group of people because they can spend 10 years arguing about the construction of a simple sentence, and still not reach a conclusion. (Pro tip: if you have to go to a party full of them, stay away from the theoretical linguists. Don't say you weren't warned.) During one of my many hours of downtime at work, after a twitter debate about stranding prepositions (I'm a loser, okay, get over it), I found a fantastic wikipedia article about all the disputes in the English language. Here's my favorites, with my completely unbiased and 100% official decisions on how you should deal with them.

Preposition stranding. Fun fact: someone who hated humanity decided this was wrong. Every linguist says it's okay. Sentences like this should hold all the proof you need: This is the sort of English up with which I will not put. Winston Churchill said that. Do you think you're smarter than Winston Churchill? He and I agree you should just say This is the sort of English I will not put up with. Yeah, sounds like a sentence now doesn't it?

Double negatives. I just like how wikipedia's example is "I don't want no scrubs." Take that, TLC.
Double modals. This is phrases like "You might could use it." It's clearly ridiculous, but I think anything people say with a Southern accent is cute, so carry on. Also, interestingly, wikipedia points out that phrases like "I might be able to" which are more commonly considered grammatically correct, are secret double modals (be able to functions as a modal here, since it means the same thing as could). So there.

Dangling modifiers. That's what she said.

Usage of hopefully. I find the concept of a feud over a single adverb a little ridiculous, but this was one of my favorite examples in college. In English, in a sentence like "Hopefully, the train will arrive on time" the adverb is generally used to describe the speaker's state of mind. However, it's actually a disjunct (meaning, since you're not the subject of the sentence, it's not syntactically connected to you), and if you look at the construction of the sentence the only thing it can logically modify is the manner in which the train will arrive. So you're really talking about a hopeful little train peeking around the corner, and linguists don't like this problem. But they do like talking about it.

Who vs Whom. You guys, it's really easy. Do you know when to use he vs him? It's EXACTLY THE SAME. "I'm fond of him" = "Of whom are you fond?" "He's my friend" = "Who is your friend?" "He is in charge" = "Who ever is in charge?" "I'm going to marry him" = "Whomever will you marry?" Okay? Stop arguing about it.

OH BY THE WAY I had too much coffee this morning and when that happens apparently I lecture people about linguistics. Consider yourself DOUBLY warned.