Robert Lane Greene

What makes books about the decline of traditional grammar and usage so popular? Books like Lynne Truss' Eats, Shoots & Leaves lament the downfall of traditional punctuation standards and promise a return to good old days gone by. But there never was a golden age of language, because language itself ...

From English teachers to grammar grouches, people have been complaining for generations that the English language is going down the drain. As they see it, our vocabularies are shrinking, our grammar is abysmal, and we’ve all but forgotten about how to punctuate (?!). Carol Shaffer is one of those grammar grouches. A former teacher, she’s also the founder of the website Grammarpolice.com, which has been pointing out language usage errors for fifteen years. Robert Lane Greene has a different perspective. The author of the new book, “You Are What You Speak,” he thinks what some people see as errors are in fact evolution.

Belgium has been without a government since June. And there’s a movement afoot to split Belgium apart, into the Dutch-speaking Flanders region and French-speaking Wallonia. Journalist Robert Lane Greene of the Economist joins us for today’s Underreported.