Type this into a search engine and see what you get. I’m delighted there’s still an argument about how to use these adjectives when referring to food. The words that come out of my mouth are as important to me as the foods that go into it. In fact, I’d rank the need to preserve good grammar and promote healthful eating right up there with saving the planet from global warming.
First, the grammar issue. A website called englishplus reminds us that “In formal English, things are healthful (i.e., good for one's health). People or other creatures are healthy (i.e., in a state of good health).” Thus, “broccoli is healthful” means that it’s good for you, and “broccoli is healthy” means that it’s still bright green, perky and undamaged by a long trip in a refrigerator container from Mexico.
Simple guidelines like this evoke my 8th grade English teacher, Georgiana Gilbert whom I channel daily as a teacher of basic writing skills at a small college in Queens, New York. “Use who for people, and use that for things,” Miss Gilbert would prescribe crisply as she wielded her red pencil back in 1951. When I quote her today, my students have no trouble understanding the rule when I ask them which pronoun they would choose to objectify their mother. “My mother who works in a hospital,” beats “my mother that works in a hospital,” hands down.
But, ah, my foes, and oh, my friends – Miss Gilbert’s lovely candle is guttering in the meltdown of language as it is being spoken, written, tweeted, abbreviated and horribly abused today. Listen up, folks. You’ll hear everyone including me use that for people and breaking other rules with embarrassing frequency.
The author of the grammarist website explains why we’re throwing in the towel on good grammar. “We can’t fault writers for using healthy in place of healthful,” she writes. “This practice has been standard for so long that it’s probably irreversible, and we would be crazy to call it incorrect.”
Well, call me crazy. It’s not incorrectness, though, that drives me nuts. It’s lack of respect for simple logic. Here’s an example from a recent article in the “Dining” section of the New York Times. A chef at a high-end restaurant considered adopting a new symbol on menu items to make it “easier for customers if they choose to be healthy.”
Well who wouldn't choose that? Are the customers who choose not to be healthy still chain smoking out on the sidewalk? Choosing food that is healthful makes good sense both personally and grammatically. Options are not people; abstractions cannot choose. And you just can’t pack a life choice for good health into the selection of a luncheon dish.
The author of the grammarunderground website rationalizes that “most people would say that ‘healthy diet’ is more popular and more natural-sounding than ‘healthful diet’,” and calls traditionalists like me “misinformed sticklers.” According to her, “in language, you have to pick your battles.” Mercifully, someone blogged right back: “To follow your usage logic . . . we should just go along with the 'dumbing down' of society!”
Not on my watch. I’m sick of dialogue sprinkled with redundancies like one I recently heard on the 6 O’clock news, “iconic images,” and larded with meaningless hyperbole. (Might we consider retiring the word “devastate” in all its forms?) I refuse to accept the text message on the wall that says grmr rls r 86. Why do I think it’s so important to be precise, to think about the words we use and how they relate to each other?
Here comes the food part. Language, great language, nourishes us greatly. Thoughtless, careless, empty language is our verbal fast food, devoid of nutritional value. It clogs the imagination and generates the emotional equivalent of a sugar high. Weighed down and numbed, we tune out on content and wait for the next tempting morsel of phony drama. This is cause for alarm because language connects us and defines us as human. Learning language in the first years of life informs the way we learn everything else, the pleasure, the curiosity and the diligence we bring to every enterprise. We disrespect and diminish language at our peril.
And how does this relate to the dangers of an overheated of our planet? Of course, there are natural changes in our environment, and surely much of that process is beyond our control. But denial of global warming and/or refusal to deal with whatever we do have the power to reverse, prevent, rescue or protect is just plain dumb. Likewise, dismissing egregious insults to the spoken and written word as inevitable or wave-of-the-future could someday leave us, as the blogger who defends my position concluded, “Emoting sounds and groaning at each other like cave people again.” I would have thought that notion ridiculous until I began to face classrooms of young people who have never acquired the habit of speaking in complete sentences and who find it extremely uncomfortable when they attempt to do so. It’s a slippery slope!
If you want to hear “the King’s English” beautifully written and exquisitely articulated – watch “Downtown Abbey.” Apparently 7.9 million people tuned in to the 2-hour third season debut episode. It can’t be just the fabulous costumes, the intrigue, and the restrained romance. Clearly audiences will sit still for its tightly compressed lessons in history and social class. But why doesn't anybody mention how easy this show is on the ear? All the characters both upstairs and downstairs speak gorgeously and employ a rich vocabulary I wish I could offer my students in a daily pill. No viewer to my knowledge has ever complained, “I don’t understand what they’re saying.” I think people relish whole language the way they take to whole grains and garden greens. I’ll do what I can to stimulate this healthy appetite. (Whoops! Please forgive my exception to the rule in using the term to imply “robust.”)
http://englishplus.com/grammar/00000219.htm
http://grammarist.com/usage/healthful-healthy/
http://www.grammarunderground.com/healthy-vs-healthful.html
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