6 ms·

Every time I read something like this, I remember that there is truly no correct way to say something - all that matters is that your intended audience understa

by jp0001 1y ago

Every time I read something like this, I remember that there is truly no correct way to say something - all that matters is that your intended audience understands it, eventually.

bjackman 1y ago
Yep "correctness" only exists contextually. A language teacher can say "no that's wrong" with the implied meaning of "that doesnt follow the patterns of the dialect I'm teaching you". Ditto for newspaper editors and their house style. But in 99% of situations no such context exists and "that's grammatically incorrect" is a bullshit statement. In the UK when someone "corrects" language what they are very often doing is engaging in class signalling. It's widely done and widely accepted but personally I think it's pointless and somewhat toxic. (Note many languages have government-sanctioned standard forms of the language, but what I said is still true there too. Nobody speaks that dialect and nobody should be expected to. It's just a "reference implementation".)
- Swizec 1y ago
  > Note many languages have government-sanctioned standard forms of the language, but what I said is still true there too. Nobody speaks that dialect and nobody should be expected to. It's just a "reference implementation". Many of those languages have mutually unintelligible dialects. The reference implementation exists to patch communication when you run into trouble with people who aren’t from your village. Even American English has this. People from Appalachia register switch to more standard English when they’re not home, for example. Or a high schooler will tamper their slang when talking to grandma. You could also argue international business English is a contrived dialect used primarily by ESL speakers. It definitely has many differences from any English spoken natively at home.
  - bjackman 1y ago
    Yes I experience this regularly with Hochdeutsch and I stand by my point. You still don't speak the language exactly as specified and it's still nonsensical to "correct" someone's grammar/pronunciation if you understood them.
- School-Cotton 1y ago
  > In the UK when someone "corrects" language what they are very often doing is engaging in class signalling. Same is true in the US, though ethnicity is in the mix too. White and black Americans are historically distinct cultural groups which speak different dialects (though obviously, since the end of slavery and segregation the groups are mixing more and more). It is no coincidence that varieties spoken by white people ended up as the “standard”.
- windward 1y ago
  >But in 99% of situations no such context exists Only the ones where your manner of speaking doesn't influence how the recipient thinks of you. Good luck.
- vehemenz 1y ago
  I don't think all correction is merely class signaling. Sometimes it's teaching others how to properly class signal, which is slightly less cynical. We all judge others based on the grammatical or spelling errors that others make. At least being aware of them gives you a chance to choose which ones you care about.
physarum_salad 1y ago
Yes and constantly obstructing communication is annoying and boring! Imagine sitting listening to a lecture on quantum effects in biology or something similarly fascinating and someone in the audience obstructs because the lecturer said paetent not patent (or vice versa). Tediomania is awful..feel bad for those affected.
- tux1968 1y ago
  > Tediomania is awful..feel bad for those affected. Ellipses are properly written as three dots.
  - physarum_salad 1y ago
    Anything over one dot communicates the idea effectively.. the difference between two or three dots is irrelevant... Ellipses look like squares......... Close up they are circles....
    - layer8 1y ago
      That’s not true. With two dots, it can as plausibly be a typo of a single dot. In fact, in your GP post I was assuming that you hit the dot key a second time instead of the space key by mistake, and ignored the resulting lack of auto-capitalization. (Granted, the fact that ellipses are usually separated by a space from what follows also played a role.)
      - physarum_salad 1y ago
        This is tedium... what was the original message about? Can't remember now!
jfengel 1y ago
As far as grammar is concerned, yes, that's true. But register also matters. A communication is about much more than the surface meaning. It conveys a lot about the relationship between speaker and listener. Some languages formalize that grammatically, but it's present in myriad other ways. Adhering to the arbitrary rules of correctness is one. Saying "try and" in a resume cover letter probably conveys a message of slackness and over-familiarity. Which might be a deliberate choice, but you're better off if you at least know you're making it.
- lblume 1y ago
  I fail to imagine how one could use "try and" in a resume, without actively trying to.
gwd 1y ago
> I remember that there is truly no correct way to say something Weirdly, that's not what this says. It specifically says you can't say this: > * John will both try and kill mosquitos. or > * I tried and finished the assignment or > * Try always and tell the truth What I'd say instead is: If native speakers say something, then it's grammatically correct. What you were taught is the "prescribed grammar" or "prestige grammar". Also, grammar is voted on by speakers of a language. I'm generally against making fun of people for deviating from the prestige grammar; but I will "vote against" using the word "literally" to mean "figuratively" as long as I can.
- leeoniya 1y ago
  > but I will "vote against" using the word "literally" to mean "figuratively" as long as I can. https://imgur.com/QBTlxf7 https://imgur.com/QBTlxf7
  - MengerSponge 1y ago
    A real flammable/inflammable moment
- strken 1y ago
  > If native speakers say something, then it's grammatically correct. In their dialect, sure. In any given dialect, who knows? Any speaker of a dialect that isn't West Coast American has likely watched actors who live in Los Angeles try, and fail, to speak their dialect.
  - School-Cotton 1y ago
    Of course. Just like what I’m writing now isn’t grammatically correct Spanish or Chinese.
    - strken 1y ago
      Well, no, but I can't understand 99% of Spanish and Chinese using my knowledge of my native English dialect, so I'm not going to lecture Spanish or Chinese speakers on correct grammar. My point was that differences between dialects drive a lot of arguments about grammar. If I'm annoyed about the phrase "could care less" then that originates in my native dialect not allowing it. Not being part of the prestige grammar is secondary, as is whether the phrase makes any logical sense.
throwanem 1y ago
Sure, but you do still have to try and get your point across.
omnicognate 1y ago
That depends on the purpose of your writing.
mikewarot 1y ago
As a EE wannabe, I see everything in terms of impedance matching. It's all a very high dimension matching problem we tend to get good at, in order to survive.
da_chicken 1y ago
I've thought a lot about this one. It really is the message that matters, not the grammar. It's the song, not the notes. It's also that language is pretty inherently a very fuzzy, ambiguous, and imprecise thing. If I say, "I've left my cup on the table," then you know what I mean even though you've never seen my cup nor my table. Everyone reading that sentence is equally convinced that it's quite concrete, even though everyone is also imagining a completely different cup on a completely different table. Even more fascinating, it's likely that nobody that ever reads this post will have met me in person. We have not specifically agreed in advance what our words mean, merely relied upon collective agreement based solely on historic usage. Honestly, the idea that two people who have never met, never seen each other, maybe never even lived in the same hemisphere, might speak the same language and be able to converse freely is an astonishing feat of magic.
godelski 1y ago
I think of language like a lossy encoder-decoder system. You compress/encode your thoughts into words. The the listener/reader decompresses/decodes your words into thoughts. As long as we don't think thoughts and words are the same thing, then yeah, you're right. I think this also helps with communication in general because it forces you to think more about what someone is saying. There's no way you can put all your thoughts into words. Decoding is highly affected by prior knowledge, culture, and all that jazz. It's why you can make a confusing array of unintelligible noises and gestures at a friend and they'll understand but everyone else around is left confused. I think this also explains a lot of fights on the internet, as it is easy to misinterpret and with no perfect encoding it's hard to write to an audience of everyone.
quotemstr 1y ago
> there is truly no correct way to say something Yes, there is. Linguistic descriptivism is a stale 1960s academic fad wrapped up in a revolutionary energy that's dead and cringe now. Like that era's other insane postmodernisms, it rejects reality and reality has rejected it right back. "Truly", we understand each other better and communicate faster when draw speech from a a collection of words, idioms, and grammatical constructions familiar to the listener. This linguistic inventory is not natural. It must be taught. Errors must he corrected, not validated. Not every utterance from someone's mouth has equal merit.
- interestica 1y ago
  > "Truly", we understand each other better and communicate faster ~when we out speech draws from a a collection of words~, idioms, and grammatical constructions familiar to the listener. This linguistic inventory is not natural. It must be taught. Errors must he corrected, not validated. Not every utterance from someone's mouth has equal merit. It’s okay. I still understood you.
- School-Cotton 1y ago
  Sorry, but you are completely misunderstanding what “descriptivism” means, why it’s the viewpoint taken in serious linguistics, and how common it is there (i.e. absolutely 100% universal among everyone who studies language scientifically).
  - quotemstr 1y ago
    > absolutely 100% universal among everyone who studies language scientifically They are all wrong.
    - School-Cotton 1y ago
      Well, why? The point of science is to understand natural phenomena, not to pass value judgments on them. Biologists’ job is not to decide which out of dogs and cats is “correct”. Why should linguistics be any different?
    - deleted 1y ago
interestica 1y ago
https://www.bbc.com/pidgin https://www.bbc.com/pidgin
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
octo888 1y ago
I think we can all agree of "5 items or fewer" though right (jk)

by jp0001 1y ago

Every time I read something like this, I remember that there is truly no correct way to say something - all that matters is that your intended audience understands it, eventually.

bjackman 1y ago

Yep "correctness" only exists contextually. A language teacher can say "no that's wrong" with the implied meaning of "that doesnt follow the patterns of the dialect I'm teaching you". Ditto for newspaper editors and their house style. But in 99% of situations no such context exists and "that's grammatically incorrect" is a bullshit statement. In the UK when someone "corrects" language what they are very often doing is engaging in class signalling. It's widely done and widely accepted but personally I think it's pointless and somewhat toxic. (Note many languages have government-sanctioned standard forms of the language, but what I said is still true there too. Nobody speaks that dialect and nobody should be expected to. It's just a "reference implementation".)

Swizec 1y ago
> Note many languages have government-sanctioned standard forms of the language, but what I said is still true there too. Nobody speaks that dialect and nobody should be expected to. It's just a "reference implementation". Many of those languages have mutually unintelligible dialects. The reference implementation exists to patch communication when you run into trouble with people who aren’t from your village. Even American English has this. People from Appalachia register switch to more standard English when they’re not home, for example. Or a high schooler will tamper their slang when talking to grandma. You could also argue international business English is a contrived dialect used primarily by ESL speakers. It definitely has many differences from any English spoken natively at home.
- bjackman 1y ago
  Yes I experience this regularly with Hochdeutsch and I stand by my point. You still don't speak the language exactly as specified and it's still nonsensical to "correct" someone's grammar/pronunciation if you understood them.
School-Cotton 1y ago
> In the UK when someone "corrects" language what they are very often doing is engaging in class signalling. Same is true in the US, though ethnicity is in the mix too. White and black Americans are historically distinct cultural groups which speak different dialects (though obviously, since the end of slavery and segregation the groups are mixing more and more). It is no coincidence that varieties spoken by white people ended up as the “standard”.
windward 1y ago
>But in 99% of situations no such context exists Only the ones where your manner of speaking doesn't influence how the recipient thinks of you. Good luck.
vehemenz 1y ago
I don't think all correction is merely class signaling. Sometimes it's teaching others how to properly class signal, which is slightly less cynical. We all judge others based on the grammatical or spelling errors that others make. At least being aware of them gives you a chance to choose which ones you care about.

physarum_salad 1y ago

Yes and constantly obstructing communication is annoying and boring! Imagine sitting listening to a lecture on quantum effects in biology or something similarly fascinating and someone in the audience obstructs because the lecturer said paetent not patent (or vice versa). Tediomania is awful..feel bad for those affected.

tux1968 1y ago
> Tediomania is awful..feel bad for those affected. Ellipses are properly written as three dots.
- physarum_salad 1y ago
  Anything over one dot communicates the idea effectively.. the difference between two or three dots is irrelevant... Ellipses look like squares......... Close up they are circles....
  - layer8 1y ago
    That’s not true. With two dots, it can as plausibly be a typo of a single dot. In fact, in your GP post I was assuming that you hit the dot key a second time instead of the space key by mistake, and ignored the resulting lack of auto-capitalization. (Granted, the fact that ellipses are usually separated by a space from what follows also played a role.)
    - physarum_salad 1y ago
      This is tedium... what was the original message about? Can't remember now!

jfengel 1y ago

As far as grammar is concerned, yes, that's true. But register also matters. A communication is about much more than the surface meaning. It conveys a lot about the relationship between speaker and listener. Some languages formalize that grammatically, but it's present in myriad other ways. Adhering to the arbitrary rules of correctness is one. Saying "try and" in a resume cover letter probably conveys a message of slackness and over-familiarity. Which might be a deliberate choice, but you're better off if you at least know you're making it.

lblume 1y ago
I fail to imagine how one could use "try and" in a resume, without actively trying to.

gwd 1y ago

> I remember that there is truly no correct way to say something Weirdly, that's not what this says. It specifically says you can't say this: > * John will both try and kill mosquitos. or > * I tried and finished the assignment or > * Try always and tell the truth What I'd say instead is: If native speakers say something, then it's grammatically correct. What you were taught is the "prescribed grammar" or "prestige grammar". Also, grammar is voted on by speakers of a language. I'm generally against making fun of people for deviating from the prestige grammar; but I will "vote against" using the word "literally" to mean "figuratively" as long as I can.

leeoniya 1y ago
> but I will "vote against" using the word "literally" to mean "figuratively" as long as I can. https://imgur.com/QBTlxf7 https://imgur.com/QBTlxf7
- MengerSponge 1y ago
  A real flammable/inflammable moment
strken 1y ago
> If native speakers say something, then it's grammatically correct. In their dialect, sure. In any given dialect, who knows? Any speaker of a dialect that isn't West Coast American has likely watched actors who live in Los Angeles try, and fail, to speak their dialect.
- School-Cotton 1y ago
  Of course. Just like what I’m writing now isn’t grammatically correct Spanish or Chinese.
  - strken 1y ago
    Well, no, but I can't understand 99% of Spanish and Chinese using my knowledge of my native English dialect, so I'm not going to lecture Spanish or Chinese speakers on correct grammar. My point was that differences between dialects drive a lot of arguments about grammar. If I'm annoyed about the phrase "could care less" then that originates in my native dialect not allowing it. Not being part of the prestige grammar is secondary, as is whether the phrase makes any logical sense.

throwanem 1y ago

Sure, but you do still have to try and get your point across.

omnicognate 1y ago

That depends on the purpose of your writing.

mikewarot 1y ago

As a EE wannabe, I see everything in terms of impedance matching. It's all a very high dimension matching problem we tend to get good at, in order to survive.

da_chicken 1y ago

I've thought a lot about this one. It really is the message that matters, not the grammar. It's the song, not the notes. It's also that language is pretty inherently a very fuzzy, ambiguous, and imprecise thing. If I say, "I've left my cup on the table," then you know what I mean even though you've never seen my cup nor my table. Everyone reading that sentence is equally convinced that it's quite concrete, even though everyone is also imagining a completely different cup on a completely different table. Even more fascinating, it's likely that nobody that ever reads this post will have met me in person. We have not specifically agreed in advance what our words mean, merely relied upon collective agreement based solely on historic usage. Honestly, the idea that two people who have never met, never seen each other, maybe never even lived in the same hemisphere, might speak the same language and be able to converse freely is an astonishing feat of magic.

godelski 1y ago

I think of language like a lossy encoder-decoder system. You compress/encode your thoughts into words. The the listener/reader decompresses/decodes your words into thoughts. As long as we don't think thoughts and words are the same thing, then yeah, you're right. I think this also helps with communication in general because it forces you to think more about what someone is saying. There's no way you can put all your thoughts into words. Decoding is highly affected by prior knowledge, culture, and all that jazz. It's why you can make a confusing array of unintelligible noises and gestures at a friend and they'll understand but everyone else around is left confused. I think this also explains a lot of fights on the internet, as it is easy to misinterpret and with no perfect encoding it's hard to write to an audience of everyone.

quotemstr 1y ago

> there is truly no correct way to say something Yes, there is. Linguistic descriptivism is a stale 1960s academic fad wrapped up in a revolutionary energy that's dead and cringe now. Like that era's other insane postmodernisms, it rejects reality and reality has rejected it right back. "Truly", we understand each other better and communicate faster when draw speech from a a collection of words, idioms, and grammatical constructions familiar to the listener. This linguistic inventory is not natural. It must be taught. Errors must he corrected, not validated. Not every utterance from someone's mouth has equal merit.

interestica 1y ago
> "Truly", we understand each other better and communicate faster ~when we out speech draws from a a collection of words~, idioms, and grammatical constructions familiar to the listener. This linguistic inventory is not natural. It must be taught. Errors must he corrected, not validated. Not every utterance from someone's mouth has equal merit. It’s okay. I still understood you.
School-Cotton 1y ago
Sorry, but you are completely misunderstanding what “descriptivism” means, why it’s the viewpoint taken in serious linguistics, and how common it is there (i.e. absolutely 100% universal among everyone who studies language scientifically).
- quotemstr 1y ago
  > absolutely 100% universal among everyone who studies language scientifically They are all wrong.
  - School-Cotton 1y ago
    Well, why? The point of science is to understand natural phenomena, not to pass value judgments on them. Biologists’ job is not to decide which out of dogs and cats is “correct”. Why should linguistics be any different?
  - deleted 1y ago

interestica 1y ago

https://www.bbc.com/pidgin https://www.bbc.com/pidgin

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

octo888 1y ago

I think we can all agree of "5 items or fewer" though right (jk)