When you read texts of an ancient language than span several centuries, and the language itself stays the same, it’s a strong indicator the language was no longer spoken.
Living languages always change. Only dead languages stay the same.
Living languages always change. Only dead languages stay the same.
Though this is right right, our understanding of aspects of said languages can change (pronunciation f.i.).
I think the words “pious cunt “ has been with us for quite sometime.
Given our thoughts are largely impacted by the vocabulary we know, being able to come up with new words can be considered a super power!
Descriptivists will never haltodulate the hatsrglabatude of us prescriptivists.
Some people think god is an English teacher and his cock is a huge red pen.
*God is an English teacher, His cock is a red pen
Capitals for deities.
End prescriptuhvist speling! We haf nuthing to loose butt hour wigly red underlyns!
Ow. What did I do to you?!
If you think that’s bad, never try reading FEERSUM ENDJINN.
I prefer Excession. There’s no amount of minds talking or new names of minds that is too much for me.
This reads like it was written by an ork from Warhammer 40k
undalihnz
Would you look at the time? Loose butt hour.
That hurt to read… Kudos!
“That’s not a word” only applies to scrabble and boggle. Fuck any other context.
And Wordle
One thing I learned: fuck dictionaries. Be creative. Invent words if you need them. As long as it’s understandable, that’s all fine.
While, at the same time, don’t be mad at people that don’t understand the word you used because they lack the context. Be educational, don’t gatekeep.
Except if you’re talking about Turkish, TDK dictates what words are real, how they’re written, what they mean and other grammar and writing rules.
Several languages have this. Spanish has the Real Academia Española (RAE) and French has something similar.
But they’re not generally in much of a different position than a dictionary is. If the people start using the language in new ways they have little recourse other than to accept it and amend their rules. If they refuse they’ll look antiquated and people start to question their influence.
They certainly do have influence of course, but the ultimate authority is the people who speak the language in the end.
People always think the académie française is antiquated because it doesn’t like new anglicisms (old ones are fine though) and sometimes invents words. But in general language standardisation will always be seen as antiquated because it needs to lag behind at least a decade, otherwise things get standardised that are just a fad or where no general consensus has been found.
Literal grammar police? What are the consequences for breaking word laws?
Someone links to the TDK website to prove you wrong :p
It’s most relevant to most people in university entrance exams where they ask you edge cases sometimes, but otherwise just annoying that it exists
Die Schläge werden so lange fortgesetzt, bis sich die Moral verbessert.
Do they monitor your private messages and fine you for typos or do they just codify the language which is taught in schools and used by the authorities? If it’s anything like German language regulation then it’s the latter and the way people actually talk and write slowly is adapted by the language regulations.
I think the French have something similar, but that’s the state imposing hard lines on fluid cultural stuff
I’ve always been a big advocate of the idea that the only part of communication that matters is communication. If people understand you then congrats you’ve successfully languaged
What if people understand you, but they think you’re stupid?
That’s their problem. I always assume the stupid people are the ones that are so inflexible and uncreative, that they don’t understand that language is entirely an amorphous flexible human creation.
Congratulations! You did the best you could…
The flip side of that is that if the words you’re using are wutdownrerary, you should be told to stop using those words because by using them you make communication harder.
Does “glizzy” (e.g. hotdog) fit under this classification?
glizzy
I’ve never heard that term, and wouldn’t know what it meant.
I literally gave the definition
But there is no single word in modern English for “the day after tomorrow” or “the day before yesterday”.
In other languages, maybe. But not in English.
Another good one is differentiating listener inclusive and exclusive "we"s.
Spanish has “antier” for the second one.
Also a fun one “Estrenar”, which can mean something like “try for the first time”. So you might say “I tried out my bike for the first time the day before yesterday” in English, you could simply say “Estrené mi bicicleta antier” in Spanish
OTOH, at least the word for tomorrow isn’t also the word for morning.
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Definitely both exist in Japanese and they are used fairly frequently.
一昨日 day before yesterday 昨日 yesterday 今日 today 明日 tomorrow 明後日 day after tomorrow
I never learnt them and don’t remember seeing them, but that’s neat :)
Just make one and see if it sticks. Then there will be
“Overmorrow” is the word for the day after tomorrow, and “ereyesterday” is the word for the day before yesterday, though both are obviously archaic and not really used (you perhaps might see them in fiction or historical work, though).
Be the change you want to see in the word.
as has already been said, overmorrow is already mostly a thing and is completely cromulent, and i propose taking the swedish “förrgår” and bringing it in as something like “foremorrow” which sounds reasonably cromulent to my ear, might confuse people a little bit but the “fore” bit is a pretty big hint as to what it means.
Overmorrow?
Tomomorrow?
Yestesterday?
I like “Yestesterday”
But that isn’t modern English.
Because we mainly just call that “Tuesday”
I thought you couldn’t be snob and captain obvious at the same time, but here we are.
On the other hand, with your degree in linguistics are you granted a special permission to use random capitals?
I love militant descriptivists
we love you too
The problem is that people frequently use this type of argument when they are unable to spell or follow the basic rules of syntax and grammar instead of simply admitting they’re wrong.
Language does change, over time and across many cultures. It doesn’t mean that anything you write is automatically correct.
Wrong according to… who? Who is the authority? Who granted them that power? By what mechanism can one appeal their decision?
What is “correct”?
There are standards, but you can only really say something is “wrong” or “incorrect” in relation to a particular standard. You typically wouldn’t write “senator yeeted his hat lol fr” as a newspaper headline. That doesn’t follow the standards for that context. But that doesn’t mean it’s “wrong” in some universal sense.
Correct according to who? You? Lol
Fortunately, you are not the arbiter of the English language.
That’s what I was just saying to you, so I’m confused why you think that’s a rebuttal.
You said things people write aren’t automatically “correct” without defining what correct means.
I’m not surprised that you’re confused
You seem to be trying to be smug after you’ve communicated badly. Additionally, your understanding of how language works is not widely accepted.
The fact that you don’t understand your argument is facile and easily undermined only highlights your lack of understanding and maturity.
Your personal opinion doesn’t count as something being “widely accepted”.
You’ll be corrected by someone with enough education to believe they are correct. English speakers police the English language in a very unorganised way.
There are no appeals. Accept that you were wrong or find a reputable style guide or dictionary that supports your position and tell the person who corrected you to get lost.
New words happen, but if you can’t get the right spelling of “they’re” or “their”, “your”, “you’re” or “yaw”, “its” or “it’s”, etc or use a unique spelling of a word I can point out in a dictionary how you’re wrong
If you mismatch brackets or do odd punctuation I can point out how it looks bad or reads wrong
I’m a descriptivist but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t rules and that we can’t point out things still being wrong.
Descriptivism still describes rules as they’re used in the real world. Breaking those rules still subjects the speaker/writer to the consequences: being misunderstood, having the spoken or written sentence to simply be rejected or disregarded, etc.
“Colour” and “color” are both correct spellings of the word, because we are able to describe entire communities who spell things that way. “Culler” is not, because anyone who does spell it that way is immediately corrected, and their written spelling is rejected by the person who receives it. We can describe these rules of that interaction as descriptivists, and still conclude that something is wrong or incorrect.
“Culler” is not, because anyone who does spell it that way is immediately corrected, and their written spelling is rejected by the person who receives it. We can describe these rules of that interaction as descriptivists, and still conclude that something is wrong or incorrect.
Orthography isn’t really a part of grammar, so it’s easily possible for natives to make mistakes when writing that might make a word difficult to understand. It’s much harder for spoken language to be misunderstood among the population that a native grew up in, because the words they use don’t come out of nowhere (despite the old prescriptivist argument that you can even see in this thread saying “I’m just gonna call houses xytuis because any words are ok!”) Obviously now with mass communication people pick up language from all sorts of places, so you might have words be unrecognizable even within a locality.
Even so, an individual’s (native) idiolect can’t really be “wrong” to descriptivists in the way orthography can. It’d just be chalked up to differences from the local language or dialect.
It’s much harder for spoken language to be misunderstood among the population that a native grew up in,
Well, there’s still register switching, which is an important part of the study of linguistics. A native English speaker might freely switch between the different ways to say the same meaning, depending on context and audience (“sorry” versus “my bad” versus “apologies,” or “you’re welcome” versus “don’t mention it” versus “my pleasure”).
There are perceived formalities, common membership in different groups, unspoken social relationships and positions that are reflected in speech.
These systems can be described with rules, and we can recognize that sometimes one register is inappropriate or poorly fit for a particular situation, and that some registers have different rules of grammar.
It’s funny because a ton of these common errors are due in a huge part to the fact that we don’t use the native alphabet for English. Lots of stuff has to be transposed in creative ways to deal with the romanization of English.
Native alphabet?
The Latin alphabet is not the original alphabet system used for English. There are modern alternatives that have been suggested to help eliminate some of the confusion created by using a non native alphabet, the Shavian alphabet for instance would theoretically solve much of the issue.
It’s kind of what happens in other languages as well… English speakers like to quip that there are x number of dozens of ways to spell Mohammed. And for sure, in English, it probably feels that way. But there is actually only one proper way to spell it you just have to use the Arabic alphabet to do so.
https://www.daytranslations.com/blog/origin-english-alphabet/
Here is a decent explanation of some of the evolution behind the alphabet. It’s funny that a lot of what we consider special characters in modern typography are in fact actually original letters of the defunct alphabet systems. It’s been under our noses the whole time, we just don’t really teach that alot of these characters were once part of the working alphabet system. &, for instance… Was the last letter of the alphabet for some time. The story behind @ is even more interesting.
One who culls is a culler.
“Culler” is a word, but it certainly will not be received by a reader as the same word as “color.”
True. My brain brought forward a seal clubber.
My ex-wife was a word snob. I wish I’d seen this when I was married to her.
