Faith in these half-remembered and poorly formed “rules” has become just that: a strong belief or trust in something that you can’t explain or prove. Saying “For which room are these the keys?” is demonstrably not the only natural way to formulate this question.

We love rules! We want rules. We want stability and predictability in our language. The historic inferiority complex with regard to Latin is often expressed in a palpable masochism on the part of English speakers, who want to be spanked when they transgress.