this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 83 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 78 points 3 months ago (4 children)

The same rules apply to gods, according to Terry Pratchet

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 3 months ago (3 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (7 children)

Académie Française: <<Ahem -- pardon et moi?>>

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 3 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (2 children)

What if people understand you, but they think you're stupid?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago

Congratulations! You did the best you could...

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 3 months ago (8 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago (10 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 3 months ago

Just going to share this little gem again...

img

[–] [email protected] 33 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I love militant descriptivists

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago

we love you too

[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago

You just described 90% of Lemmy users.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 months ago (13 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago (11 children)

I've noticed a tendency of people to combine words that are frequently seen together: "alot", "aswell", "noone", etc.

Some of these catch on, like "nevertheless" and "whatsoever". Maybe eventually "alot" and "noone" will become standard English, too.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago

The way alot, aswell and noone are combining is expected given how many other words we don't bat an eye at went the same way. "another" is the perfect example, it's just "an other" combined.

It's sort of the reverse of what happened to words like apron and newt.

The division and bracketing of phrases changes over time.

"An apron" is the modern usage of the word "napron", and a newt was originally called an eute. The grammatical need for "a" and/or "an" resulted in the root word being rebracketed and changed.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago

It's all connected. :)

[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 months ago (4 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Ow. What did I do to you?!

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

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)

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (5 children)

orientated

Is this common in American English? I don't think I've ever seen the word oriented double handled like that. Irregardless, it slew me

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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"

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (3 children)

most often it's said to dismiss people. AAVE gets a lot of that. but it's used to mock and dismiss young people too by the "back in my day" crew.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Great post, I offer my most enthusiastic contrafribularities.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (4 children)

"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.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 months ago

Cromulent, by the by, was added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary in September 2023.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (5 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago

Descriptivists will never haltodulate the hatsrglabatude of us prescriptivists.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago

Gen Z slang really pushes my descriptivist tolerance.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago

ITT we fight against the evil descriptivist windmills

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Studies linguistics, but not grammar.

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