QUESTION What are the worst uses of grammar in a popular song?
In Rich Girl, Gwen Stefani sings ‘If I was a rich girl…’
However, she would have been wise to have paid attention to Topol, who correctly sang If I Were A Rich Man in Fiddler On The Roof.
‘If I were…’ is the grammatically correct form for a type two conditional sentence, which is one that expresses a hypothetical or unreal situation.
Everytime You Go Away by Paul Young, or Everytime We Say Goodbye by John Coltrane should both be ‘every time’ as ‘everytime’ is not a true compound word like ‘everyday’.
Me And Bobby McGee by Kris Kristofferson is grammatically incorrect in formal English because it uses the object pronoun ‘me’ instead of the subject pronoun ‘I’.
It should therefore be Bobby McGee And I. Likewise, Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard by Paul Simon and Me And Mrs Jones by Billy Paul.
However the most famous example is probably The Rolling Stones’ (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.
‘Can’t get no’ is strictly a double negative, so Mick Jagger can get satisfaction.
The Stones weren’t alone in using the double negative: Bill Withers had ‘Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone’ while Pink Floyd sang ‘We don’t need no education’ in Another Brick In The Wall, Part 2.
Logically, the lyric means ‘We need education’, which contrasts with the rebellious sentiment of the song.
Of course, songwriters often prioritise flow, rhythm or cultural vernacular over grammatical accuracy.
Paul Williams, Lampeter, Ceredigion
QUESTION What are some of the traditional card games worthy of being revived?
My grandfather was German and taught us Skat and Sheepshead, while my grandmother taught us Forty-Five, Spoil Five and Piquet.
These were common and cheap entertainment when I was young.
As a prisoner of war in Germany during the Second World War, my father used to play cricket with cards.
Most of the usual rules and laws of the sport can be accommodated. My father taught the game to his three sons after repatriation, and I have since taught it to others.
A very good game from the Whist family of games which is not played much nowadays is Solo Whist.
Q: Are there other countries that have an equivalent of the Loch Ness monster?
Helen Casserley, Luton, Beds
Q: Was Holst the first composer to write about the planets?
Susan Bowes, Market Rasen, Lincs
Q: Why is George Stephenson’s Locomotion No. 1 (1825) regarded as the first steam train?
What about Richard Trevithick’s Penydarren (1804)?
Richard Coke, Coventry
My parents taught us to count playing cards from an early age and, as a result, we were proficient at basic maths when we went to school.
Peter Lewin, Kings Langley, Herts
I’d recommend Bezique, a classic two-player card game using a 64-card deck. A mix of trick- taking and rummy games, players score points by forming specific melds, such as the ‘bezique’ (Queen of Spades and Jack of Diamonds).
Although there is quite a high-luck element in drawing the right cards for melds at the right times, it combines some of the best facets of card games, namely hand management, observation and odds assessment.
Peter Richards, Walsall, West Mids
QUESTION Where did the term ‘think tank’ come from?
Today the term ‘think tank’ refers to any number of public institutions that advise government, military and corporate bodies, usually on the possible socio-economic consequences of political decisions.
Such institutions have their origins in the 19th century: the Royal United Services Institute was founded in 1831 by the Duke of Wellington; its original objective was to study naval and military science.
On the other hand, the UK’s first political think tank was the Fabian Society, founded in London in 1884.
Its purpose was to advance social justice, equality and public ownership through intellectual debate and research. The term ‘think tank’ itself, in this sense, was coined much later.
It was originally a colloquialism for a brain: ‘A statistician asserts that 20 princes and princesses of the reigning families of Europe have been treated for mental disorders.
The 19th century has been very severe upon the royal think-tank.’ (New York World, 1889).
‘Brain trust’ appeared in the early 1900s with a similar meaning to the modern definition of think tank, and some sources suggest that think tank was Second World War slang, although there is no specific reference to this.
Despite a host of think tanks appearing in the interwar period, for example the Council on Foreign Relations (1921) and Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs (1920), the actual term think tank was not used in this way until 1959: ‘Even the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton
does not quite meet the bill, nor does the ‘think tank’, the Center for
Behavioral Sciences at Palo Alto.’ (Times Literary Supplement).
Jill Hughes, Tamworth, Staffs