Comment on Can't wait.
ByteJunk@lemmy.world 1 day agoYou didn’t address a single thing from the original post.
It was highlighting how English is a very quirky language. You can explain it, obviously there are reasons why, but it doesn’t change the factual observation that English is a uniquely inconsistent language.
Most languages have some sort of academic body that dictates the correct usage of the language, and occasionally push for adjustments that resolve these inconsistencies. English does not, it’s a crowd sourced effort with the results being what we see today.
Many countries and languages share similar backgrounds to English - invasion by foreign peoples, large migrations, etc - yet they’ve settled most of their background into a consistent ruleset - there’s always exceptions and irregularities, but not to the level of English.
One of the largest sources of inconsistencies was the “Great Vowel Shift”, along with the invention of the printing press at roughly the same time, which standardized a spelling that didn’t reflect the massive ongoing changes in pronunciation.
This is a fascinating topic, but accusing others of ignorance for pointing out something that is a fact, is in itself ignorance.
Gorilladrums@lemmy.world 1 day ago
This is complete nonsense. All languages are organic and evolve naturally. There’s no academic body that controls any langauge, that’s not how languages work. What exists is institutional bodies that try to break down and explain languages into rules and patterns, they don’t actually dictate the direction of the language. English also has such institutions by the way. This idea that English is uniquely inconsistent or uncontrolled is not true. Arabic, for example, is just as quirky, inconsistent, and uncontrolled. That’s just human speech.
ByteJunk@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
You’re just elaborating and expanding on a part of what I said, while being an abrasive jerk, and ignoring everything else that didn’t suit your argument.
To the point in question, I never said academies invent the future of a language, only that they gatekeep the rules, which can include pushback against popular usage (the french academy is notorious for being very against english neologisms).
There have been cases where the changes are very substantial, like the Portuguese and French changes that happened (coincidentally) in 1990, for example, that push the languages in certain directions.
Take a cup of tea and relax a bit, and try not to argue the voices in your head.