Science Memes

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Linguistics (mander.xyz)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I've seen descriptivists take the position that if enough people use a made up word it counts as communication, but the only people I've ever seen saying "well I'm gonna call a tree a xopo instead" are prescriptivists who don't understand descriptivism.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

There are so many specific technical things in my workplace that have words in the small group that cares about them.

They won't find their way into dictionaries, but they are meaningful and useful. Some words like that have leaked into popular speech; my work isn't the sort to have its gone grown words spread.

(My phone dislikes me pluralising "cares". I presume it was taught in America)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Yeah, basically if you say something and someone understands it you've successfully communicated. Dictionaries are always lagging behind popular usage.

In your phrase "group that cares", cares is 3rd person singular. There's no reason for a program to ever flag that as a spelling mistake so I'm not sure what's going on with that.