Hello everyone. It's LSA Dean Anne Curzan.
You've made it to the end of classes!
What a semester! But here we are, and you
have done something that no group of
University of Michigan students has ever
done before,
and we are very grateful for the
generosity and patience that you have
demonstrated as we have had this
disrupted, disruptive semester, and we've
all been figuring out how to teach and
learn online. I realize that right now
you are hunkering down to study for
exams, to write that final paper, and I
thought that maybe the nicest thing that
I could do this week was provide a
little diversion, a little linguistic
entertainment. So that's what I'm gonna
do--give you a little something to talk
about with the people you're hunkered
down with in your home or your apartment.
Maybe you've run out of things to talk
about. So here's a little something about
a change that's happening in the English
language right now, and it's about
whether you say "by" accident or "on"
accident.
Now if you're my age, which I'm not gonna
disclose, but you can guess. If you're my
age, all odds are that you say "by"
accident. But if you're under 25, which
many of you are, there is a reasonable
chance that you say "on" accident. As in, "I
did it on accident." Now to my ear, that
sounds very strange because I cannot say
"on" accident. But here's the thing: You're
gonna win. The "on" accident speakers, who
are younger, are going to outlast the "by"
accident speakers, and then "on" accident
will become completely standard. And it's
well on its way. Now why is it changing?
We don't know. Sometimes prepositions
just change. It could be because you have
"on" purpose, and so you get "on" accident. My
brother-in-law has decided he's going to
say "by" purpose just to be difficult. And
with that let me just end with a note
about
purpose because it lets me say that one
of the things that I really admire about
all of you is the ways in which you go
about your work in purposeful ways as
students and as agents of change out in
the world. Congratulations on being
almost finished with the semester. There
is nothing accidental about that. You
have worked very hard, and I am very
proud to have you as members of the LSA
community. Good luck as you finish the
semester, and I can hardly wait to see
you back on campus.
