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It's language evolving. When the misspellings/misinterpretations of "a napron" and "an eekname" became common enough we got "an apron" and "a nickname". If any
by lillesvin 9y ago
It's language evolving. When the misspellings/misinterpretations of "a napron" and "an eekname" became common enough we got "an apron" and "a nickname".
If anyone — especially native speakers and others with a high degree of mastery of English — claims to have difficulty understanding "I'd of stayed home" then they're most likely being deliberately obtuse or needlessly contrarian.
- zdkl 9y agoOr you know, we like to read sentences without getting cerebral SEGFAULTs
- axus 9y agoI'd hate to loose a common language standard, though.
- thaumaturgy 9y ago> loose Intentionally funny, or irony?
- SerLava 9y agoI think the word you're looking for is "at" As in "I would at stayed home." or "I at good grammar."
- barrkel 9y agoThe reason English speakers understand it is because "I would have" when contracted to the maximum "I'd've" sounds like "I'd of". The fact that the two are effective homonyms doesn't make both spellings right. Rather, the "of" variant just looks a little bit ignorant. Not much, just a little.
- lillesvin 9y agoYes, the fact that they sound very much alike is exactly what's seeping into the written language, and as any linguist (like myself) will tell you, the written language is not what drives linguistic evolution, it's the spoken language. Writing commonly lags way behind, ergo the spoken language drives evolution of the written one, not vice versa.
- barrkel 9y agoThere's only a difference in the written word. In the spoken word, it's still "I'd've".
- lillesvin 9y agoYes, that's what I'm saying. They're pronounced the exact same and now the written language is starting to exhibit that very thing.
- barrkel 9y agoThe language isn't changing along your suggested dimension of change. People have been misspelling homonyms since the beginning of the written word. Variance in homonym spelling decreases over time, though. "I'd of" is no more likely to supplant "I'd've" than "their" is "they're" - i.e. it's just a weak signal that someone is ignorant.
- emodendroket 9y agoTwo things: 1. Examples like those involve changes in speech; there's no difference between the pronunciation of "of" and "'ve." 2. It hardly makes something correct just because you can understand it. I bet you can understand the intent of "the dog seems slieping," but it's also clearly not right.
- lillesvin 9y agoChanges in speech drives changes in writing — every linguist will tell you that (I should know, I am one). Writing is — and always has been — way behind speech in terms of innovation. Edit: Downvoting isn't going to change that. But you're welcome to show me an example of a linguist that claims that writing is the driving force in linguistic evolution.
- emodendroket 9y agoI completely agree, but I can't see how that contradicts anything I just said. Using "of" here is not an example of "language evolution" any more than confusing "to" and "too" is.
- JPLeRouzic 9y agoI am not a linguist but you are using "evolution" as having another meaning than LilleSvin. For you it is something which is positively improving as in the layman idea about Darwin's evolution theory and for LilleSvin "evolution" means exactly what it means in biology: Changes that are at a wide scale. For example in old Norse that was used on the north and east coasts of UK in 900 CE, "time" was not pronounced like "ta-ii-me" and the English word for "ship" was pronounced "skip", the more modern pronunciation happened after the great vocalic change, an evolution of the spoken dialect. There is nothing positive or negative in the great vocalic change, but it is an evolution of the language because after some time, most people spoke it that way, not anymore like old vikings did. (edited because I made many spelling errors)
- emodendroket 9y ago