葛传曾对H. W. Fowler的著作The King’s English(《纯正之英语》)和A Dictionary of Modern English Usage(《现代英语惯用法词典》)两书提出意见。为此,H. W. Fowler专门致信葛传,并被收入葛传于上世纪30年代选注的Present-Day English Prose (Book One) 一书。H. W. Fowler这样评价葛传的英语:“I find no difficulty in believing that you will attain, if you have not already attained, your ambition of writing English as no other Chinese can; for your letter is in faultless English, and, long as it is, nowhere betrays, as nearly all foreigners’ letters do by some trifling lapse in idiom, that its writer is not an Englishman. I receive many letters in English from foreigners, but do not remember ever having had occasion to say this before. If this statement can serve you in any way, you are free to make use of it.”。除了对葛传的“无懈可击的英语”大加赞赏之外,75岁高龄的H. W. Fowler还谦虚地表示葛传对The King’s English一书所提的意见尖锐而中肯,承认该书由于写作时间较早,并未严格遵守《现代英语惯用法词典》所述语法规则,应以后者为准。
我自己与葛传先生有过一次书信往还。一九八二年,我首次访问美国,主人(一位美籍菲律宾人)设宴款待,上菜后,主人问我味道如何,我说“It’s not bad”。主人品尝后亦认为不错,回答说“Yes”。我大惑不解,因为在中国自学英语的人,对“Yes”和“No”的使用特别敏感,他既然同意我说的“It’s not bad”,按照中国教科书的说法,本应用“No”回答才是。我当时就此向主人请教,他想了一会之后,仍坚持说:“应该用‘Yes’。”回国后,我冒昧用英语给葛传先生写了一封信,就这个问题和另一个问题向他讨教。葛先生不嫌我浅薄,立即用英语给我这个素未谋面的自学者回信。当时物质匮乏,信是用圆珠笔写在一张从拍纸簿撕下来的小纸片上的。信云:
24 June 1982
Dear Comrade Deng,
Though I can produce no evidence, I feel that the “Yes” as a reply to your “It’s not bad” is correct. “Not bad” is almost a fixed phrase = “quite good” or “fairly good” and is different from “not clever”, “not happy”, “not a boy” etc, all of which are semantically opposed to “clever”, “happy”, “boy”.
“…so what did it matter if she was married or not?” is now very common, if still condemned by some people. After all, what is condemned actually exists. Incidentally, “so what did it matter if or not she was married” would sound worse, though it is not impossible in informal style. Certainly it is more condemned than “if…or not”.
You might say I seem to be non-committal. But usage is something that one often has to be non-committal about.