7 ms·

If enough people are making the same mistake, won't it eventually stop being a mistake?

__MatrixMan__ 3y ago
Depends on the mistake, some constructions just fail to do what the author wanted them to. Those are unlikely to catch on.
sph 3y ago
Not until my dying breath. The English language is a mess because of its haphazard evolution mostly driven by immigration over centuries. Which is what bugs me about native grammar mistakes: only native people make them. No one that has learned English as second language could ever construct "could of" as it makes no sense. And the act of being defiant is very very different than being definite about something. Yet people get this wrong all the time, as if they never learned grammar at school, or let alone read ONE book. (My pet peeve is native speakers unable to pronounce "aesthetics" correctly. Drives me nuts. )
- VelesDude 3y ago
  I do see where you are coming from but alas, language is an ever moving democracy. As much as many would like to define it in certain terms - it is largely beyond control. This is why the English of Shakespeare doesn't hold up today because we are constantly adding and changing these things in a wonderfully organic fashion. It just makes it difficult to define. The question is should we define it or is it like catching the wind with a net? Another example is the word Monetize. It used to mean to turn a item into a form of money like currency. Almost nobody uses it like this nowadays. Decimate is another one.
  - curtisblaine 3y ago
    Decimate meaning "kinda reduce the number" instead of "kill one person in 10"? I think it's been used with the first meaning in every language (including latin ones) for a long while.
- curtisblaine 3y ago
  > Which is what bugs me about native grammar mistakes: only native people make them Why does it bug you? They are different classes of mistakes but both have driven the language over the centuries. Why are native mistakes wrong but immigrant mistakes good?
  - sph 3y ago
    Because in my limited experience (I am fluent in only two other languages apart from English), "native grammar mistakes" only happen to native English speakers. For example, I know Italian and French, yet I cannot think of any weird misspelling only native Italian or French speakers do. I always wondered if it's because of education or how grammar is taught in Anglosaxon countries that is ultimately the root cause of these errors. It is a peculiar phenomenon.
    - glandium 3y ago
      I'm French. I can't list them off the top of my head right this moment, but there definitely are annoying errors that natives do that are in the same category as "could of".
- nottorp 3y ago
  > The English language is a mess because of its haphazard evolution mostly driven by immigration over centuries. No. Every language evolves, even those in countries with zero to very little immigration. Usually towards simplification. I've lived enough to notice my native Romanian getting 'dumbed down' and we can count immigrants here on just a few hands. However, in the 2000s I've ran across a collection of 1920s articles written by someone complaining romanian is changing and getting dumbed down. His examples of correct language felt overcomplicated and pointless, and his examples of 1920s dumbed down were academy style in the 2000s :) > Which is what bugs me about native grammar mistakes: only native people make them. No one that has learned English as second language could ever construct "could of" as it makes no sense. And the act of being defiant is very very different than being definite about something. Yet people get this wrong all the time, as if they never learned grammar at school, or let alone read ONE book. Agree with that one though :)
  - sph 3y ago
    Every language evolves. English evolved haphazardly, and gained all its rules, inconsistent pronunciation, and exceptions because of its very history and immigration by Angles, Saxons, Celts, Franks, Vikings in a period where a reference text like the King James bible didn't exist yet. At least that's how I understand it.
keiferski 3y ago
If everyone started putting ketchup into their coffee, would that make it a good thing? Some notions of quality are not dependent on their popularity.
- VelesDude 3y ago
  I would have considered the use of the Ad populum falacy more for use in terms of testable facts rather than opinions. Is quality of language and taste opinion or fact? I could see the debate being vigorous on that one.
  - keiferski 3y ago
    It’s a big debate indeed and I don’t want to get into it here, but I think I come down on the side of, “some standards are not purely popularity contests, but are based on other things.” There are a lot of reasons I think this way, but even if someone doesn’t agree, I do think a purely consequentialist approach is illustrative. Would we have better food if the top chefs in the world designed our meals, or if the entire population voted on them? For some topics (including the arts) I think a purely subjective approach has worse outcomes.
- dgellow 3y ago
  You can make a really ugly, low quality change to a language, wait for a new generation to grow up with it and it will now be accepted as perfectly fine. There isn’t any objective notion of quality here
  - keiferski 3y ago
    That doesn’t imply it’s perfectly fine, it might just mean that the arbiters have lost their ability to detect quality. Which is exactly what I think has happened.
    - dgellow 3y ago
      What you call signs of quality are cultural signifiers. My native language is French, a language that has an actual gatekeeping administration (English doesn’t). The french I grew up with(not in the country of France) may be considered lower quality by some people because they aren’t used to it, but really what they mean is that I express a different set of cultural signifiers they are used to. Unsurprisingly signs of language qualities have a tendency to reinforce the language spoken by people in power.
kynetic 3y ago
Literally, yes.

Depends on the mistake, some constructions just fail to do what the author wanted them to. Those are unlikely to catch on.

sph 3y ago

Not until my dying breath. The English language is a mess because of its haphazard evolution mostly driven by immigration over centuries. Which is what bugs me about native grammar mistakes: only native people make them. No one that has learned English as second language could ever construct "could of" as it makes no sense. And the act of being defiant is very very different than being definite about something. Yet people get this wrong all the time, as if they never learned grammar at school, or let alone read ONE book. (My pet peeve is native speakers unable to pronounce "aesthetics" correctly. Drives me nuts. )

VelesDude 3y ago
I do see where you are coming from but alas, language is an ever moving democracy. As much as many would like to define it in certain terms - it is largely beyond control. This is why the English of Shakespeare doesn't hold up today because we are constantly adding and changing these things in a wonderfully organic fashion. It just makes it difficult to define. The question is should we define it or is it like catching the wind with a net? Another example is the word Monetize. It used to mean to turn a item into a form of money like currency. Almost nobody uses it like this nowadays. Decimate is another one.
- curtisblaine 3y ago
  Decimate meaning "kinda reduce the number" instead of "kill one person in 10"? I think it's been used with the first meaning in every language (including latin ones) for a long while.
curtisblaine 3y ago
> Which is what bugs me about native grammar mistakes: only native people make them Why does it bug you? They are different classes of mistakes but both have driven the language over the centuries. Why are native mistakes wrong but immigrant mistakes good?
- sph 3y ago
  Because in my limited experience (I am fluent in only two other languages apart from English), "native grammar mistakes" only happen to native English speakers. For example, I know Italian and French, yet I cannot think of any weird misspelling only native Italian or French speakers do. I always wondered if it's because of education or how grammar is taught in Anglosaxon countries that is ultimately the root cause of these errors. It is a peculiar phenomenon.
  - glandium 3y ago
    I'm French. I can't list them off the top of my head right this moment, but there definitely are annoying errors that natives do that are in the same category as "could of".
nottorp 3y ago
> The English language is a mess because of its haphazard evolution mostly driven by immigration over centuries. No. Every language evolves, even those in countries with zero to very little immigration. Usually towards simplification. I've lived enough to notice my native Romanian getting 'dumbed down' and we can count immigrants here on just a few hands. However, in the 2000s I've ran across a collection of 1920s articles written by someone complaining romanian is changing and getting dumbed down. His examples of correct language felt overcomplicated and pointless, and his examples of 1920s dumbed down were academy style in the 2000s :) > Which is what bugs me about native grammar mistakes: only native people make them. No one that has learned English as second language could ever construct "could of" as it makes no sense. And the act of being defiant is very very different than being definite about something. Yet people get this wrong all the time, as if they never learned grammar at school, or let alone read ONE book. Agree with that one though :)
- sph 3y ago
  Every language evolves. English evolved haphazardly, and gained all its rules, inconsistent pronunciation, and exceptions because of its very history and immigration by Angles, Saxons, Celts, Franks, Vikings in a period where a reference text like the King James bible didn't exist yet. At least that's how I understand it.

keiferski 3y ago

If everyone started putting ketchup into their coffee, would that make it a good thing? Some notions of quality are not dependent on their popularity.

VelesDude 3y ago
I would have considered the use of the Ad populum falacy more for use in terms of testable facts rather than opinions. Is quality of language and taste opinion or fact? I could see the debate being vigorous on that one.
- keiferski 3y ago
  It’s a big debate indeed and I don’t want to get into it here, but I think I come down on the side of, “some standards are not purely popularity contests, but are based on other things.” There are a lot of reasons I think this way, but even if someone doesn’t agree, I do think a purely consequentialist approach is illustrative. Would we have better food if the top chefs in the world designed our meals, or if the entire population voted on them? For some topics (including the arts) I think a purely subjective approach has worse outcomes.
dgellow 3y ago
You can make a really ugly, low quality change to a language, wait for a new generation to grow up with it and it will now be accepted as perfectly fine. There isn’t any objective notion of quality here
- keiferski 3y ago
  That doesn’t imply it’s perfectly fine, it might just mean that the arbiters have lost their ability to detect quality. Which is exactly what I think has happened.
  - dgellow 3y ago
    What you call signs of quality are cultural signifiers. My native language is French, a language that has an actual gatekeeping administration (English doesn’t). The french I grew up with(not in the country of France) may be considered lower quality by some people because they aren’t used to it, but really what they mean is that I express a different set of cultural signifiers they are used to. Unsurprisingly signs of language qualities have a tendency to reinforce the language spoken by people in power.

kynetic 3y ago

Literally, yes.