I've always said the dictionary is a follower not a leader, by the time a word gets added to the dictionary it's already established widespread usage

The same rules apply to gods, according to Terry Pratchet

Gonna go on Countdown with the line “Dictionaries aren’t rule books, they’re record books” and fight Susie Dent.

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

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.

Just going to share this little gem again...

I love militant descriptivists

One thing I learned as an information technology engineer: language is a tool for communication. As long as the sender can send its message unobstructed and as long as the receiver receives and understands the message as intended, the information transmission can be considered a successs.

As a l33+ |><|@z0r, I'm here to criticize your command of the English language.

And still I maintain that "alot" is not a word.

I dig the variety of topics on this comm, and I super appreciate how it doesn't get STEMlordy at all.

End prescriptuhvist speling! We haf nuthing to loose butt hour wigly red underlyns!

That said I feel like when people are referring to whether or not something "is a word" they're referring to whether not is has seen historical/widespread usage, not "has somebody ever just decided it meant something, somewhere, at some point"

While that's correct and all, it still irks me when somebody uses a word that has a shorter, older variant. (Gives side-eye to orientated)

Great post, I offer my most enthusiastic contrafribularities.

Gronk. Now bleet glanmar.

"a language that doesn't adapt to an ever changing society is bound to be lost", sure, but adapt too quickly and you lose the ability to communicate between groups of people.

There needs to be some compromise where new words are adopted, and changed words are accepted, without flooding the language with garbage. For example, English should still be taught in schools, and English teachers should still have the freedom of correcting the writing kids produce, and taking points off for "mistakes".

Like, if you go pure descriptivist, "it's" and "its" can now mean the same thing. There is no ability to distinguish between their, they're and there. A business email describing a product as "cheugy, no cap" is perfectly acceptable and it's up to the reader to figure it out, because every word is a real word and perfectly valid, and every grammar deviation is acceptable because languages evolve.

Even on social media, I think it's fair to push back on "mistakes" that make it hard to understand something. An error that might take a poster 1 second to fix, might cost the world minutes, as thousands of people each take a few seconds to puzzle out what the OP meant to write.

Languages are about communication, and that can suffer whether the language police are too rigid and forbid any deviation, are too easily bribed and allow for anything.

I'm old enough to have noticed that a huge amount of language has changed in American English in the Westcoast at least. It's pretty remarkable even myself and other middle aged people I know have changed their word use and slang.

Descriptivists will never haltodulate the hatsrglabatude of us prescriptivists.

ferpectly cromulent!

"That's not a word" only applies to scrabble and boggle. Fuck any other context.

Skibidi rizz

Studies linguistics, but not grammar.