A prescriptivist, manner peremptory,
Sought for language a future redemptory.
“Native speakers today
Hardly know what they say,
And the goods ones are all in the cemetery.”
—Pumptilian Perniquity
There once was a curate of Kew,
Who kept a tom cat in the pew.
He taught it to speak
Alphabetical Greek,
But it never got further than μ.
—Anonymous,
The Animal Communication Researcher
F before double F,
G, NG, H, I don’t
Understand how things could
Go so amiss.
Help! My geiriadur’s so
Lexicographically
Jumbled, I’ve got to ask:
Who ordered this?
—Mam Ŵydd
Mary, that sweet shepherdess from childhood, had a little lamb-
-da calculus core textbook that she read from every day
But Bo-Peep one day lent her a book on cognitive semantics
So Mary threw her little lamb(da calculus) book away.
—William Deakspeare
I Want You to
Be Like Me
Oh, I’m the King of Prescriptivists
A linguist VIP.
I heard some pop and valley talk
And that’s what’s bothering me.
Hee, Hee, Hee. The world should talk like me, hee, hee.
An English prof
A proper toff
Like me, hee, hee.
But alas, it’s true, hoo, hoo
They all talk like you, hoo, hoo.
How I wish they could be classy too.
—Col. O. Nihilist
