"DRIVE SLOWLY," OR "AS YOU LIKE IT."

Timaru Herald, Volume CVIII, Issue 16884, 4 August 1919, Page 7

"DRIVE SLOWLY," OR "AS YOU LIKE IT."

To the Editor of the "Timaru Herald." Sir,—l think this subject has had an adequate share of .public »attentiQii. At the same time I would crave space for a brief comment upon your editorial notes in Saturday's issue. Let me say at once that I make'no'objection to "s-low-ly,"Cbut..admit that, Jacob-like, it is defrauding its older brother of the birth-right. At the beginning of. this controversy it was stated that teachers would have ta explaiji m their pupils that ''drive sow" was "bad grammar." It is to this statement that I have taken exception, and I have tried lo show that the form is grammatically correct. My quotations were from Chaucer, because the AV.E.A. class was reading his "Prologue." Similar forms may be found in the older prose. I should not apply the terms "bad grammar" to the phrase under discussion any more/than I should to the relative in the opening sentence of the Lord's Prayer. Dr B. Skeat says: "In order to understand English spelling fully, every leading word musit be examined separately, amd its whole history traced. "We must know all its changes, both in form and sound, before we can fully explain it."—l am. etc.. GEO. T. PALMER.-