The Grammar of Love

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I have a friend from Spain who's extremely punctilious about Spanish grammar. She lives here in Mexico and I've actually seen her wince when she hears something said incorrectly (just as an Englishman may wince when hearing an Americanism). She'll say, "No, its not said like that, rather . . ." Apparently she makes these comments for my benefit so that as a foreigner I learn to speak correctly. But I tell her that language is a living phenomenon, it changes and evolves depending on context and use. The point of language is communication, I tell her, so if you understand variant uses then there is no pragmatic difference between your Spanish and Mexican Spanish. But she still insists that the Spaniards have it right. Ok, whatever.

Now on the one hand this is an attitude that is easily revealed to be chauvinistic and elitist, and thus easily refuted. On the other hand, I began to think about grammatical tolerance as a metaphor for love and fidelity. I hope to express this idea in a poem but I still haven't figured out how. For the time being I'll express it here more prosaically. The points of comparison in the poem would be "linguistic communication:love" and "grammatical tolerance:infidelity". We can tolerate variations in the grammar of a language without the latter ceasing to function. We continue to communicate. The question is if, in the same sense, we can tolerate change in the grammar of love. What happens when one violates the strict rules of the dynamic of a relationship? What happens when one is no longer faithful to these rules? Can a couple tolerate infidelity and continue loving just as in language we tolerate changes in grammar without thereby ceasing to communicate? How much can we tolerate? At what point do we stop understanding the other? At what point does the grammar of love, if pushed far enough, begin to dissolve into a cacophony of isolated emotions?
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