Pained the eye and stunned the ear
I've been slowly reading Anne Curzan's Says Who?: A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words. 📚
In chapter 32, passives were corrected, she quotes from a grammar critic in 1830, who writes:
“For some time past, ‘the bridge is being built,’ ‘the tunnel is being excavated,’ and other expressions of a like kind, have pained the eye and stunned the ear.”
Strong opinions!
How times change …
Hollie @Miraz "The house is building".....it sounds so strange! :)
The house is building...what? What it is building?
Leon Mika This reminds me of a lecturer I once had, who wasn't a native English speaker and thus had a more formal training of the language than myself, who made a point about how much he didn't like applying the active voice for inanimate objects. I can't remember what I said at the time — something like "this program is building" — and he stated that it's not that the program was building as the program is not sentient. Instead, it was that the program was being built.
Miraz Jordan @lmika @hollie How language changes! That whole 'sentient' point is interesting, but languages are so variable from one to another. I guess English just doesn't work like that. When I lived in Edinburgh for a while I noticed a big difference where I'd say "The floor needs sweeping" and the Scots would say "The floor needs swept". Fascinating stuff!