Word Crimes

[Way_Moby]

People can speak however they want, and it really doesn't bother me as long as I understand what they're talking about. But if you want to communicate through writing, then you have to follow some basic rules, or your message will be unclear or even possibly the opposite of what you intended.

That's kind of my opinion about it. If people want to speak to me in a dialect or with a lot of slang, it isn't an issue until I can't understand them. And at that point, it's not really a 'bad' thing, just a communication hurdle to overcome.

However, writing is a different ballpark. I feel that, especially in academia, there is a need for rules and style in order for papers, books, presentations to be consistent. It's why having a lingua franca is a good idea on paper (and for the record, I'm in favor of making the scientific lingua franca "Latino sine flexione", that way, there's no "it's my native language, therefore, I'm better than you" thing going on). When two people are writing about the same topic, but the spelling, grammar, and punctuation are all over the place, it's hard to understand (easily!) what's going on. Having prescriptivist rules makes things easier for something like that.

In general, however, yeah, I get that languages change and that dialects, culture groups, and even socio-economic classes speak differently. But there are a lot of "correct" usages that I think everyone might have trouble with. But if, in writing, it helps maintain ease of reading, understandability, and consistency, I don't see it as an issue.

They have to be organized by someone. They have to be agreed upon by some group of people. That's how rules work.

You mean from birth? Or am I misunderstanding you?

Now to jump on the linguistics train. A spooky thing about linguistics is that it's provided solid evidence that grammatical rules are actually inherent in the human brain. [I'm probably going to procede and present a very shallow and uninformed discussion of this, though] For instance, children whose parents grow up speaking a pidgin language will take what they know and actually add rules to it--even without prompting to do so, or even explanation on what constitutes "good" grammar--creating creoles. It's hard to explain.

Basically, the nature of true grammar is still kind of a mystery. But it's actually a system that no one really agrees upon (initially, at least). It just comes into being (again, I'm doing a really bad job at explaining this).

Are there any linguists out there who can explain it better than I just tried?
Spooky.

[The Sporkman]

That's not what I asked. I asked if you're okay with it. If everyone starts using "could of" (and a LOT of people already do,) then are you okay with that being a "correct" way to say "could have" even though it is obviously a mistake?

I personally wouldn't use "could of" because it conflicts with the grammar and spelling rules I picked up from the people around me when I was a child, and my personal grammar is pretty solidified at this point (more on this further down). Growing up as a white, middle-class child in the Midwest, I'm fortunate enough that my native dialect is very close to the artificial standard used in academia and in the news media (also more on this further down). I don't have any problem if other people use that form in casual writing, if dictionaries start listing it as a common alternative, or if "could of" completely supplants "could've" in the artificial standards of future generations.

But will it be "correct" on a resume? In a college essay? And how do you determine if someone is just mistaken about how a word is spelled or if it's something that's "correct" where they come from?

Okay, as Way Moby already mentioned, an artificial standard lingua franca is a very useful and even necessary thing to have in academia, the mass media industry, and the business world in general for all the reasons you're thinking of; it promotes clarity and understanding among a large and diverse group of people. Standard American English is rapidly becoming the world's Esperanto, but it's not inherently superior to anyone's native manner of speaking or writing. There's such a thing as code switching. If you're going to a job interview, it would be wise for sociological reasons to speak, write, and dress in whatever way society has arbitrarily deemed fashionable at the moment, but nobody's morally or intellectually inferior for using a different system informally, in a YouTube comment, or among friends.

They have to be organized by someone. They have to be agreed upon by some group of people. That's how rules work.

People in the same community who grew up speaking the same dialect agree on the same rules without even trying. The children instinctively learn the rules of their parents, who learned them from their parents, and so on. No conscious governing body is needed to enforce those rules. Linguistic innovation often occurs from exposure to outside communities, which is why the dialects of small, isolated, rural towns are always the slowest to evolve and therefore the most grammatically conservative and archaic. There are rural communities in Virginia that speak a dialect very close to Colonial English. There are small towns in England and Scotland where people still use "thou" and "thee" as the second-person singular pronoun. In remote parts of Lithuania people speak a language very close to the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language that would have been spoken six to twelve thousand years ago. The fact that "grammar mistakes" and netspeak have become so prevalent in the digital age just goes to show how much the internet is connecting people of diverse backgrounds and shaping language.

You mean from birth? Or am I misunderstanding you?

Whether or not something like Chomsky's Universal Grammar (to which Moby alluded) actually exists, it is true that children begin acquiring their first language(s) in early infancy simply by listening and/or observing the people around them. Their brains are like sponges that instinctively soak up the grammar rules for whatever languages they're exposed to. As Moby mentioned, broken pidgin dialects solidify as grammatically consistent creoles in infant minds. Babies with deaf or mute parents babble with their hands as they begin to learn the rules of Sign Language. There are even a few people in the world who natively speak artificial fictional languages like Klingon and Elvish because of their parents' bizarre priorities.

Most of it? That's just not true at all, unless you're using a different list than Harold Bloom. Or you're using commas wrong, and your sentence doesn't mean what you intended it to.

I should have used "or" instead of "and." I didn't mean that the Western canon is mostly comprised of Bronze-Age oral epics. I am surprised, though, that Bloom's list doesn't contain the works of Homer or indeed any other Greco-Roman figure. I was a Classics major in college, so I have my own particular biases, but I'd think a complete list would include Homer, Euripides, Sophocles, Herodotus, Plato, Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, Sappho and others who influenced the likes of Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Dickinson, Goethe, Freud, and Joyce. I would probably also include the Epic of Gilgamesh and other ancient Mesopotamian traditions that likely influenced the likes of Homer and Hesiod. But that's just me, I guess.

[Skippy]

I personally wouldn't use "could of" because it conflicts with the grammar and spelling rules I picked up from the people around me when I was a child, and my personal grammar is pretty solidified at this point (more on this further down).

"Could of" is 100% wrong. It's a misunderstanding of the spoken contraction "could've." It's not a regional colloquialism. It's not the product of some unique dialect. It's a mistake that is now being propagated because decscriptivists have decided it's wrong to correct people.

artificial standard used in academia and in the news media

As opposed to what? All standards are artificial. Do you want no standards at all?

an artificial standard lingua franca is a very useful and even necessary thing to have in academia, the mass media industry, and the business world in general for all the reasons you're thinking of; it promotes clarity and understanding among a large and diverse group of people.

Right. That's exactly what I've been saying.

Standard American English is rapidly becoming the world's Esperanto, but it's not inherently superior to anyone's native manner of speaking or writing.

Who said anything about being superior? To communicate effectively, you have to agree to use the same rules everyone else is using. Of course those rules can evolve, but accepting rampant misuse is not the same thing as evolution.

but nobody's morally or intellectually inferior for using a different system informally, in a YouTube comment, or among friends.

Not if they're doing so willfully. But if someone writes "i b gr8 4 dis J O B" on their McDonald's application because that's how they write their racist comments on YouTube, then wouldn't you agree there's a problem?

The children instinctively learn the rules of their parents, who learned them from their parents

...who were corrected and instructed by teachers, professors, other adults, reading literature and newspapers, etc. etc.

The fact that "grammar mistakes" and netspeak have become so prevalent in the digital age just goes to show how much the internet is connecting people of diverse backgrounds and shaping language.

Or it shows how little people care about using language effectively. There's a difference between ending sentences with prepositions and using apostrophes in plurals. One is simply discarding an archaic rule that has no impact on coherence. The other is being too lazy to learn why the rules exist in the first place.

it is true that children begin acquiring their first language(s) in early infancy simply by listening and/or observing the people around them. Their brains are like sponges that instinctively soak up the grammar rules for whatever languages they're exposed to.

Of course. You do realize that the other people they are picking those rules up from were taught the rules, right?

As Moby mentioned, broken pidgin dialects solidify as grammatically consistent creoles in infant minds. Babies with deaf or mute parents babble with their hands as they begin to learn the rules of Sign Language. There are even a few people in the world who natively speak artificial fictional languages like Klingon and Elvish because of their parents' bizarre priorities.

None of that contradicts anything I've said.

I should have used "or" instead of "and."

That's right, you should have. Rules are important in order to communicate effectively. In fact, most classic literature was composed under the influence of some sort of rules regarding grammar. That doesn't mean that oral storytelling is invalid, but there are some major differences between oral and written communication that make adherence to grammar rules less necessary in the former vs. the latter.

[The Sporkman]

"Could of" is 100% wrong. It's a misunderstanding of the spoken contraction "could've." It's not a regional colloquialism. It's not the product of some unique dialect. It's a mistake that is now being propagated because decscriptivists have decided it's wrong to correct people.

"Could" is 100% wrong. It's an ignorant misspelling of "coud." The silent "l" was never historically pronounced, and was only added in the mistaken attempt to normalize the word's spelling with "would" and "should," which were historically pronounced as they are spelled.

As opposed to what? All standards are artificial. Do you want no standards at all?

I already said that standards are extremely useful and even necessary. We probably couldn't get away without them in this increasing connected and globalized age.

Who said anything about being superior? To communicate effectively, you have to agree to use the same rules everyone else is using. Of course those rules can evolve, but accepting rampant misuse is not the same thing as evolution.

When a particular misuse becomes more common than the old rule, it becomes the new rule. See the "coud/could" example above. That's evolution.

Not if they're doing so willfully. But if someone writes "i b gr8 4 dis J O B" on their McDonald's application because that's how they write their racist comments on YouTube, then wouldn't you agree there's a problem?

Knowing the standard is an important job skill in our society. You probably won't be hired if you don't know it. Problems do arise when the standard form and the vernacular form become too different from one another and are no longer mutually intelligible. Historically this problem has been solved by replacing the artificially archaic standard with a new standard that is closer to the vernacular. An artificial dialect very close to Ancient Greek and no longer mutually intelligible with Modern Greek was the official standard language of Greece until 1976, when a standardized Demotic Greek based on the modern vernacular was adopted. Things aren't that bad in the English-speaking world currently, but they could conceivably get that way, depending on how conservative and prescriptive we are about our standards. The vernacular will always continue to evolve even if the standard stays the same.

...who were corrected and instructed by teachers, professors, other adults, reading literature and newspapers, etc. etc.

Children have to be taught the standard by teachers if it differs significantly from their native dialect. They learn the native dialect on their own.

Or it shows how little people care about using language effectively. There's a difference between ending sentences with prepositions and using apostrophes in plurals. One is simply discarding an archaic rule that has no impact on coherence. The other is being too lazy to learn why the rules exist in the first place.

Language is effective if it's understood. The difference between disregarding an archaic, obsolete rule and breaking an important, necessary rule is frequency and time.

Of course. You do realize that the other people they are picking those rules up from were taught the rules, right?

They learned those rules on their own. They didn't have to be taught them.

None of that contradicts anything I've said.

Those are all examples of children learning the rules of their native languages purely through listening and observation without having to be taught anything.

That's right, you should have. Rules are important in order to communicate effectively. In fact, most classic literature was composed under the influence of some sort of rules regarding grammar. That doesn't mean that oral storytelling is invalid, but there are some major differences between oral and written communication that make adherence to grammar rules less necessary in the former vs. the latter.

I made a legitimate mistake (one of word choice rather than grammar) and corrected myself when I saw it was causing confusion. People are fallible and make typos, slips-of-tongue, etc. all the time. That has nothing to do with your point.

Chaucer and Shakespeare are notorious for spelling the exact same words a multitude of different ways, sometimes even within the same sentences. The great poets and philosophers of Greece and Rome wrote without a formalized system of spelling and absolutely no system of capitalization, punctuation, or word spacing. When these people wrote, they were just doing their best to sound out the words that came to them according to the personal, inherently understood rules of their own native spoken languages.

People writing in their own native language are mostly employing the rules deeply ingrained in their brains that they began instinctively learning from infancy. The only way a person can write something that violates their personal internal grammar rules is if they write something that doesn't even make sense to them. Language indubitably hippopotamus aboard green defenestrates. What the heck does that mean? I don't know. It's a completely ungrammatical word salad. But if someone writes, "i b gr8 4 dis J O B," they understand what they're saying, and you do too because you're familiar with the variant (but not necessarily incorrect) grammar rules and spelling conventions they're employing. The job they're applying for might require a familiarity with and willingness to use the standard, but that doesn't make what they're saying or how they're saying it ungrammatical.

[TMBJon]

"Could" is 100% wrong. It's an ignorant misspelling of "coud." The silent "l" was never historically pronounced

smdh...

[The Sporkman]

"Could" is 100% wrong. It's an ignorant misspelling of "coud." The silent "l" was never historically pronounced

smdh...

My point is valid. Spelling changes in ways that violate or conflict with a word's etymological roots all the time. Spelling "'ve" as "of" because it sounds like the preposition "of" isn't any different from spelling "coud" as "could" because it sounds like "would" and "should."

Edit: I should point out that spelling does not change a word's grammatical role or etymological history. "əv" is still a contracted from of the auxiliary verb "have" whether it's spelled "'ve," "of," or any other way. Making it both a homophone and a homograph with the preposition "əv" doesn't make the two words functional equivalents. "'s," the contracted form of "is," is not the same morpheme as the possessive marker "'s" (originally a contraction of the genitive noun ending "-es"), even though they are spelled and pronounced the same way.

[Skippy]

"Could" is 100% wrong. It's an ignorant misspelling of "coud." The silent "l" was never historically pronounced, and was only added in the mistaken attempt to normalize the word's spelling with "would" and "should," which were historically pronounced as they are spelled.

An "attempt to normalize" is not a mistake. But nice try.

I already said that standards are extremely useful and even necessary. We probably couldn't get away without them in this increasing connected and globalized age.

My main point was that you insist on calling them "artificial" in a derogatory way, even though you then admit their usefulness and necessity.

When a particular misuse becomes more common than the old rule, it becomes the new rule. See the "coud/could" example above. That's evolution.

"Could" did evolve, but adding the "l" was not misuse. It was purposeful.

Things aren't that bad in the English-speaking world currently, but they could conceivably get that way, depending on how conservative and prescriptive we are about our standards. The vernacular will always continue to evolve even if the standard stays the same.

And this is where I think you misunderstand prescriptivists. We don't want to stop evolution and force everything to stay the same. But we do want to preserve the rules that foster clarity. "Could of" is a big problem because you can't just replace "have" with "of" and say that's the way it is now. "Have" (in this case) is part of the past participle form of a verb. So if we accept "I could of been a contender," we have to accept "I of been to the top of the mountain" as well. All because of a mistake in translating verbal communication to written form? No thanks.

Children have to be taught the standard by teachers if it differs significantly from their native dialect. They learn the native dialect on their own.

...from adults, who have most likely been instructed themselves by someone on how to speak the language, even if only indirectly. A language evolves because someone picks up a hard grey chunk and decides to call it a "rock." Then he gets everyone else to agree to "rock." Then they teach their children about "rock," even if that teaching is only done by consistently calling the grey chunks "rocks." And it works that way for everything from simple words to complex rules of syntax.

Or do you think a child can be completely isolated from society from birth and still emerge ten years later with a ten-year-old's grasp of the native dialect?

Language is effective if it's understood. The difference between disregarding an archaic, obsolete rule and breaking an important, necessary rule is frequency and time.

Well, if you're willing to be misunderstood for two hundred years until your rule-breaking manner of communication is the accepted standard, be my guest.

They learned those rules on their own. They didn't have to be taught them.

Those are all examples of children learning the rules of their native languages purely through listening and observation without having to be taught anything.

Listening and observing are ways of being taught. Just because the teacher is a passive participant, does not mean they aren't teaching.

I made a legitimate mistake (one of word choice rather than grammar) and corrected myself when I saw it was causing confusion. People are fallible and make typos, slips-of-tongue, etc. all the time. That has nothing to do with your point.

It does, actually. It shows how mistakes matter, how they can change the intended meaning of a message. If mistakes matter, then the rules must matter, because without the rules, there would be no mistakes.

Chaucer and Shakespeare are notorious for spelling the exact same words a multitude of different ways, sometimes even within the same sentences. The great poets and philosophers of Greece and Rome wrote without a formalized system of spelling and absolutely no system of capitalization, punctuation, or word spacing. When these people wrote, they were just doing their best to sound out the words that came to them according to the personal, inherently understood rules of their own native spoken languages.

And a great many people find those texts completely inaccessible for those very reasons.

People writing in their own native language are mostly employing the rules deeply ingrained in their brains that they began instinctively learning from infancy.

You make fine points here (although we clearly disagree on what constitutes teaching,) but again you're addressing the idea of "superiority" of languages, dialects, "personal grammar," etc. I admire your passion on this subject, but it has nothing to do with what we're talking about. I am not ascribing any superiority to any language or dialect. In interpersonal communication, the accepted standard of whatever shared language the people involved are using takes precedence over any "personal grammar" or whatever you want to call it. And that's all that I'm concerned with. That's all any prescriptivist is concerned with.

[Skippy]

My point is valid. Spelling changes in ways that violate or conflict with a word's etymological roots all the time. Spelling "'ve" as "of" because it sounds like the preposition "of" isn't any different from spelling "coud" as "could" because it sounds like "would" and "should."

Edit: I should point out that spelling does not change a word's grammatical role or etymological history. "əv" is still a contracted from of the auxiliary verb "have" whether it's spelled "'ve," "of," or any other way. Making it both a homophone and a homograph with the preposition "əv" doesn't make the two words functional equivalents. "'s," the contracted form of "is," is not the same morpheme as the possessive marker "'s" (originally a contraction of the genitive noun ending "-es"), even though they are spelled and pronounced the same way.

There are a lot of problems with what you're suggesting. For starters, "'ve" is not a word. It's part of a contraction of two words. Therefore, it does not actually have its own spelling. Accepting the single word "of" as a replacement for the word part "'ve" can only lead to confusion. Also, "'ve" is not always pronounced the same as "of." Therefore, the now acceptable "I of" in place of "I've" will not sound correct to the ear and will lead to further confusion over the usage of "of."

Your point about "'s" does not apply, because, again, it is not a stand-alone word. "Of," on the hand, is a stand-alone word and therefore a new definition of it would need to be accepted to allow it to act in the same manner as the suffix "'ve" (or the word "have") which, again, can only lead to confusion.

It's just not worth it for a mistake.

[MandatoryFun]

this thread has taken a turn for the wurst

[Kevbo1987]

this thread has taken a turn for the wurst

There's no like button in the app, but I would like this about 50 times if I could.