Natural but Ungrammatical or Grammatical but Unnatural

When coming to a crossroad, you have to make a choice. But, in writing, you can have the third possibility.

In writing, sometimes you will come to a situation of being natural but ungrammatical or grammatical but unnatural. What choice will you make? Read on and you will know the answer which is the best choice.






Below are extracts from Mrs Malaprop at work? under which title is a question and answer session in The Star's MIND OUR ENGLISH Section to illustrate the subject matter.

Question
WHICH of these sentences should be accepted?
A) The fish’s tail is hurt.
B) The fish tail is hurt.
C) The tail of the fish is hurt.

Answer
Although it is acceptable to say (A) since you are presumably talking about a living fish, and (C) is technically not incorrect, it is best and most natural to say “The fish has hurt its tail.”

Another Question
Over the last five days, my appreciation for nature grew stronger. Waking to beautiful birdsong and listening to the river water rushing by ___ awesome.
A) is
B) are
C) was
D) were

Answer
Strictly speaking, “were” is the correct answer there, since the narration is in the past and there are two activities that form the coordinated subjects of the sentence, i.e. “waking to beautiful birdsong” and “listening to the river water rushing by”. But to my ears, “was” sounds so much better.
We can argue that the two activities are part of one listening experience on waking up, but this could be better justified if we change the sentence to:
“Waking to beautiful birdsong and the sound of the river water rushing by was awesome."
Then there’ll be only one subject, i.e. “waking to .. .”