Grammar Hammer: Because

It’s the exchange that has befuddled small children forever:

Offspring: “Why?”

Parent: “Because.”

Sound familiar? I heard that a lot as a kid, and you probably did, too. But what about this one?

“I’m moving to Hawaii because winter.”

Did the conjunction “because” just become a preposition? When did that happen? I know I may miss things from time to time, like whatever new TV series everyone else is watching but me, but I think I’d remember if a word I have always used as a subordinating conjunction now takes on new life as a preposition. Not a compound preposition (“because of…”), but an outright preposition.

Is this just a fad? Will this eventually morph into what is considered acceptable vernacular (like saying someone graduated college, a topic I addressed last spring)? Or is this just meme-induced slang?

This is apparently a THING now. The “prepositional-because.” Linguists have named it the “because NOUN”. Neal Whitman, in a post for Grammar Girl, found an example from 2008 and described it as “putting hand waving into words.”

I’ve been pouring over articles this week, reading about my beloved home state of West Virginia cleaning up after a major chemical spill that hit the water supply of some 300,000 residents in nine counties. The overall population of the state of West Virginia in 2012 was 1.855 million, and this chemical spill affected 16% of the entire state’s population. For some perspective, the population of New York City in 2012 was 8.337 million – if something pollutes 16% of their water supply, we’re talking about 1.33 million people. Sixteen percent of a population without access to clean, potable water is a big deal, because human rights .

If you know me personally, you’ll be able infer my tone, my sense of humor (although chemical spills are never funny), and the implied “there’s-more-to-the-story-but-you-already-know-it”. If you don’t, the reasons behind the “because” are left solely to your interpretation.

Is this just the next step in the devolution of language? My sister recently rented the movie “Cloud Atlas.” She said she had to turn on the subtitles during the most futuristic part of the movie because the characters spoke in such abbreviated language. If you’ve seen the movie or read the book, you know what she’s talking about. I haven’t yet, so I’ll just take her word for it.

Internet memes aside, whether or not this continues as a trend, a fad, or a passing fancy remains to be seen. I’ve said before I’m a purist at heart and tend to cling to old-school rules when it comes to grammar. Maybe this will find its way into more than just the vernacular. Until then, I will keep my subordinating conjunctions and compound prepositions to myself because…

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