Comment on Linguistic Perscriptivists

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dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

You can pick a word besides ”correct" but it means sort of the same thing either way: we are moving individual variations of language toward the collective standard.

Languages all have categories of words, general rules for how those categories are applied, exceptions to the rules, and idiomatic parts to name a few. Misconjugating a word is not evolution of language, it is a mistake. Mismatching count is also a mistake. Mixing direct and indirect object pronouns is a mistake. The risk is not “i don’t understand you”, it is rather that I did understand you, but what I understand is not what you mean. You can call it a “unique linguistic quirk”, but if it leads to people misunderstanding you it’s a mistake. And yeah, pushing mistakes under a rug of " it’s descriptivism" is just as gross as any allegory to runaway cell growth.

If everyone understands you and its not a perfectly grammatically correct construction and lots of people start to use it, sure this is evolution of language. Every deviation is not that.

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