CORRESPONDENCE FILM GRAMMAR.

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 July 1936, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE

FILM GRAMMAR.

[to the editor.]

Sir, —I am moved to ask you to allow mo space to express my views on an advertised motion picture title, namely, “Littlest Rebel.” We find it featuring that redoubtable juvenile actress Shirley Temple. Thousands of children throughout New Zealand and other English-speaking nations will see this picture, and they will have coined' another word for their infantile vocabularies, “Littlest.” The quantative adjective “little” has no regular comparatives. Its comparison is defective rather than irregular, i.e., the positive has no comparative or superlative of its own, but has borrowed them from an adjective that has no positive of its own. It may be compared as follows:—Little, less, least. The talkies have introduced to our language many illiterate and weird phrases and words, but when they reach a stage or setting a title heading with such a grammatical error, I think it is high time that our Censor made of the power conferred upon him, and thus protect the grammar of our children.—Yours, etc. ROY QUINN, Cobden, July 23.