It was a sad day for the English language when the word 'snuck' kind of sneaked into it through the back door. I mean, come on .....

English, like other languages, continues to evolve, just as it has done for hundreds of years.

'Text speak' and sloppy e-mails have damaged written English beyond repair, and 'street-talk' has made things even worse. So what of the 'wannabe grammarians' that continually pull our forum remarks to pieces just so they can make themselves appear more noetic?

The truth is, hundreds of new words are created every year, and some (like snuck), find themselves entering the dictionary. Did you ever make an online friend whom you have never met? Congratulations ! - you now have an 'e-quaintance'. Did you eat your lunch in the office? 'Al-desko' perhaps?

'Was that a back-handed compliment or a 'complisult'?' - 'I've bought a new apartment in a 'residustrial' area' - 'The weather is 'drizzmal' today'

Some of these words will hang around and make it into the dictionary, others won't.

A couple of days ago good old M-W's 'word-of-the-day' popped up in my inbox. 'Irregardless'. During my half-a-century or so living on this planet, I must confess to obviously leading a very sheltered life, since I had never even heard that word before.

To a NES, it should be blindingly obvious that although wrong, it's easy to see that it's a combination of 'regardless' and 'irrespective' in much the same way as words such as 'drizzmal', 'residustrial' and 'complisult' are simply word combinations that automatically give the NES a somewhat obvious meaning.

Does having a chat with someone, that just involves 'small-talk', mean that you are having a 'nonversation'?

Then there are the 'rules' of grammar. When I was a kid, beginning a sentence with a preposition was 'illegal'. How dare you start a sentence with the word 'And'.....yet who says it's wrong? Our teachers? There's nothing in the 'Laws of the English Language' to say that it's 'wrong', but we were strictly forbidden to use 'and' in this way.

Yesterday a Chinese -teacher colleague asked me if 'a couple' is singular or plural. 'Of course it is singular', was my reply, but she then went on to ask if it's 'the couple have arrived' or the couple has arrived'. Again, I pointed out the obvious but she further confused herself with 'a couple of people has arrived, or have arrived'. I went through it with her step-by-step until she finally understood, but then I started thinking about it even more.

Forgetting the grammar 'rules' for a moment, what actually sounds better....'A couple has arrived' or 'A couple have arrived'?

I guess the answer to that question is where you come from and whether you are a NES or not.

(Talking of which, is it 'a NES' or 'an NES'? - both can be correct)

Of course, some things are just plain 'wrong' - (what about 'Theiyr're' for instance, lol), but the fact that English is such a wonderful and varied language means we can play around with it, argue about it, and have fun with it.

For example, I love to play little 'jokes on ESL students with questions like, 'How can you throw an egg on a concrete floor without breaking it?' I usually let them ponder for a while before telling them 'an egg cannot break a concrete floor', and whilst simple 'jokes' such as this may give rise to moans and groans from NES, to ESL students they can be a critical part of mastering what is arguably one of the most difficult languages to grasp.

As for the word 'snuck' - what is it supposed to be? Is it supposed to be a past-tense of 'sneak' or a stand-alone verb as in 'snucked' or 'snucking'?

Then there's the strange word 'unuseful'. We know that it's not a 'real word' - or is it?

The likes of Ms Amused and the good Doc for instance, could no doubt give us heaps of reasons as to why it's 'wrong', but what is a 'word' supposed to do? Words communicate meaning - end of !

If something is 'unuseful' then it's not 'useful' - the meaning is blindingly obvious - or at least it should be!

If you are in China then just type it into a search engine and see how many pages come up..........hundreds!

In it's primitive 'definition', language is nothing other than a 'means of communication' and if certain 'academic, wannabee grammarians' want to berate certain posters for missing out a comma or some such pedantic nonsense then so be it, but a hundred years from now, who will care?