OP did you put a typo in your title to bait the prescriptivists?
they make terrible linguists too.
They don’t.
Language requires intelligent design from intelligent people sometimes. When needed, prescriptivists in legion can make a literate civilization out of illiterate primitives.
The asinine and the arcane can both make learning unnecessarily difficult.
I knew after the first FOUR WORDS of your comment that you don’t know what you’re talking about. Language literally evolves organically, constantly.
You don’t consider the simplification of Chinese “language”, nor the ordering of Nynorsk, or the creation of the Korean alphabet.
You don’t think the efforts of thousands of teachers across a nation teaching the language prescriptively according to the designs of the state constitutes language. You seem to consider it forceful meddling in a natural evolution that should be left to just do what it does, unrestrained and undisturbed by judgmental nerds.
oof, no. “in legion”? lol wtf, do you think this is Warhammer or something?
we started speaking way before we started writing. literacy had been irrelevant in the evolution of a language. and even today it barely matters; thanks to the the current ubiquity of media and communication, people can start using a new word, or start pronouncing a word a different way, or spelling something a new way, and it can spread faster than it ever did before. some dickwad insisting that this is “incorrect” is not going to change anything if most people disagree.
speaking of which, why are you not speaking or spelling the way Shakespeare did? what are these newfangled bullshit words and spellings you’re using like some illiterate primitive?
I mean writing systems are not a part of the real spoken language and how it evolved. I think it’s fine to be prescriptivist about writing systems as many did not evolve naturally anyway, and many could be made far easier to learn and use. You shouldn’t mess with spoken language as that’s the part that did evolve naturally and is still subject to evolution. The focus though should always be on making these writing systems simpler and a better reflection of the spoken language. Hangul is a great example of prescriptivism over writing systems.
Yes and no but mostly no. Prescriptivists are are great when you need to build a general structure of a language, but language can and will evolve without any intelligent design by the people using it.
The primary purpose of language is to communicate ideas and most of the times the linguistic rules are not necessary to convey an idea.
Internal inconsistencies fester and degrade a language if the changes people like you defend are not only left unshamed, but even encouraged as “creative”.
I think there is a very fine line between prescribing language because of a world view that insists on conformity, and correcting grammer and vocabulary because being clear and understood is kinda the point of language.
I don’t think it’s that hard, the line is mainly “is this hard to understand?” If yes then correcting or discussing it is not prescriptivism, if no, then you’re just being pedantic
Just take texting or internet comments for example, how many are missing punctuation? How many are using slang terms or shortenings of words? How many are straight up omitting/skipping words? How many are making liberal use of language to either express themselves or have some emotional impact? Or just don’t put in the effort to do grammar
After all, I miss punctuation in this very comment as well, especially at the end of paragraphs, in addition to skipping words or making liberal use of language like “do grammar”. Is that grammatically correct? Absolutely not, but you understand what I mean
Assuming informal communication, of course. Formal communication is more about being proper, and ties into cultural norms of formality etc
“Hard to understand?” Is a question more complex than it might appear on the surface. There are obvious examples of ambiguity in speech which lead to complete misunderstanding.
But “hard to understand?” may also satisfy the criteria of “effort to understand”. Just because a message was understood does not mean the audience was able to hear it effortlessly. And that boils down to consideration.
It’s a two way street. Correcting mistakes because of apparent lack of effort is probably not warranted, but a speaker is not entitled to a happy audience either
As with many online feuds, I think a lot of these problems typically arise because of a lack of operating under the assumption others are acting in good faith.
If course, ultimately language is about (efficient) communication. And as long as that is satisfied, grammar is secondary. Like if there is ambiguity, asking for clarification is very much not pedantic
There is of course some nuance and leeway, but I still think it’s fairly obvious where the line goes
But ultimately, yes, language is nuanced and constantly evolving, it’s very neat though
I know this is, like, counter to your argument, which I fully agree with, but… I am triggered by the lack of periods at the end of your paragraphs.
However, when you put periods at the end of stuff like text messages, it sounds almost passive aggressive, doesn’t it?
It’s the difference between
“Okay”
And
“Okay.”
I agree completely and have nothing to add, but I felt compelled to put my username under both of yours.
Prescriptivists: don’t use that word, it’s not in the Dictionary. It doesn’t exist.
People working for Dictionary: new words? Yeah we pick whatever people say or write.
Yeah we pick whatever people say or write.
"The framework of the language says it shouldn’t be pluralized as a mass nouns, but Becky and the cool kids got everyone saying it so it’s now a word.
Calling someone a prescriptivist is a sad rebuttal to the worry that our language is evolving arbitrarily based on the whims of vapid influencers.
if you don’t want language to evolve based on the whims of vapid influencers, help steer society away from vapid influencers being influential rather than getting pissy about how people speak.
What you’re doing is very close to complaining about poor people speaking “lazily”, and telling them to try harder, because obviously you’re the shining example of enlightened correct speech.
You’ve got it backward. Successful modern influencers follow linguistic trends and reinforce them, but they typically do not invent them (see the litany of words from jersey shore that never made it into the greater american lexicon) even when they try. Typically, new words arise out of necessity, efficiency, or mutual enjoyment.
It boggles the mind to see how many armchair linguists come out of the woodwork for posts like these. As language evolves, we get new ways to express ourselves, but idiots that cannot possibly learn one new word stall that progress by just being stubborn. If anything, you should be more wary of people or groups preventing the use of new words, or re-prescribing existing words that are usually used one way popularly.
The ONLY valid goal with language is communication and understanding - couples develop words, workplaces develop words, gaming communities develop words, and all of these groups use either existing words to mean new things, or acronym words in new ways, or even make completely new words from brand names or nonsense. Prescriptivists cannot typically handle new jargon, regardless of its use, and this makes them a laughingstock in academia and online spaces alike.
If you can’t parse what’s being said, lurk more. The etymology of new words is just as valid as the etymology of ancient ones. It’s fine to take words on loan from another language regardless of grammatical correctness. The word “eyeball” came from “an influencer”.
Yeah, but loose instead of lose and too in place of to is annoying. As well as using apostrophe’s on word’s that end in S’s that aren’t possessive.
