I used to be a pretty big pedant, then I took a semester of a lingusitcs program and the point was hammered home that language really is relative. Right/wrong h

I used to be a pretty big pedant, then I took a semester of a lingusitcs program and the point was hammered home that language really is relative. Right/wrong has very little place in the topic. I can't find the exact quote but in Manufacturing Consent, Chomsky makes some statement about how the ability for any person to speak, use, invent, modify, evolve language proves that everyone, not just a select few, are inherently creative and intelligent. We just don't always harness it. Of course, there are some limits to that statement (Chomsky would know that more than anyone else), but it rings true. The idioms and phrases that we deem correct today were incorrect at some point in the past and there are phrases that sound wrong now which will be perfectly natural in the future. Being a pedant is a waste of time, what's more: it stifles creativity. As a small example, I constantly see "bias" used in place of "biased" and "dominate" used in place of "dominant" online, usually in discussions about sports. I hate those uses every single time I see them (especially the latter because the spelling/sounds don't even match), but I've come to realize that language will often simplify itself and take shortcuts, and that may be what's happening here. What would be really interesting is to track the evolution of language, which you could do online very well, even perhaps arriving to the origin of certain words/phrases, etc. It's really a fascinating topic if you can let your own bias get out of the way.