Entry tags:
languagemorphs
I was in a discussion the other day on Mastodon with ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophia_sol and some other people about language.
Soph was pointing out that they're hearing and seeing a lot of people using the pronoun "I" instead of "me" in situations like, "They gave it to Mary and I." Which is, from a prescriptivist perspective, wrong! And it sounds wrong to my ears. But I hear people using it all the time (I would say especially in the southern US), to the point that I think we're somewhere on the slope that leads to it being a widely accepted alternate use.
We ended up talking about how I am now a descriptivist (I care about how language is actually used by actual people to communicate with other actual people) and not a prescriptivist (I no longer care much about what's in the grammar books or what is technically correct), but there's a big caveat to that. What I care about is can your audience understand you? The more narrow and niche your audience is, the more out there you can be with your grammar and syntax. The wider, more diverse, and less personal your audience is, the more you need to at least try to hew towards the standard rules. So there's a huge difference in what I say to friends on Tumblr (I love to speak internet! It makes me happy!) and how I would communicate the exact same thing if I was, say, writing a letter to the editor.
Right now, we're in transition times where people still can use literally...er, literally and you can mostly tell whether someone is by tone, context, etc. We're also at the beginning of that transition period with the use of "me" in plural forms in situations like objects of prepositions, etc. People will still keep pushing back against that, but imo, once I start to notice something, it's probably too late to turn that train back around. Because of inertia, it'll keep chugging in the same direction despite all the grammarians running after it telling it to turn around. *sigh* The way words are used always trumps the way words are supposed to be used. (And of course there's loads of class and race stuff going on in all of this that makes it all complicated, but that's the subject of another post.)
Still, just because I think it's more useful to talk about what language does than what language should be doesn't mean I don't have opinions! There are language shifts that I can't do anything about, but that I still dislike. (And others that I like--I think we're finally reaching the point where the singular they is being more widely accepting, which is great since we've only been using it for centuries and centuries!)
So I was thinking about which grammar or words that have changed and which ones bother me the most. My selection for biggest loss: literally, which I see used as an intensifier ("It was literally so cold outside!" and even--in extreme cases--like, "It was literally a million degrees outside!" when they mean...figuratively) to the extent that I think the word's literal meaning is totally lost (thankfully, the adjectival form seems okay). Which I think is a big loss, because in a world of increasing lies and misinformation, we really need words that emphasize veracity and reality.
What shifts in language are you seeing? How do you feel about them?
sophia_sol and some other people about language.Soph was pointing out that they're hearing and seeing a lot of people using the pronoun "I" instead of "me" in situations like, "They gave it to Mary and I." Which is, from a prescriptivist perspective, wrong! And it sounds wrong to my ears. But I hear people using it all the time (I would say especially in the southern US), to the point that I think we're somewhere on the slope that leads to it being a widely accepted alternate use.
We ended up talking about how I am now a descriptivist (I care about how language is actually used by actual people to communicate with other actual people) and not a prescriptivist (I no longer care much about what's in the grammar books or what is technically correct), but there's a big caveat to that. What I care about is can your audience understand you? The more narrow and niche your audience is, the more out there you can be with your grammar and syntax. The wider, more diverse, and less personal your audience is, the more you need to at least try to hew towards the standard rules. So there's a huge difference in what I say to friends on Tumblr (I love to speak internet! It makes me happy!) and how I would communicate the exact same thing if I was, say, writing a letter to the editor.
Right now, we're in transition times where people still can use literally...er, literally and you can mostly tell whether someone is by tone, context, etc. We're also at the beginning of that transition period with the use of "me" in plural forms in situations like objects of prepositions, etc. People will still keep pushing back against that, but imo, once I start to notice something, it's probably too late to turn that train back around. Because of inertia, it'll keep chugging in the same direction despite all the grammarians running after it telling it to turn around. *sigh* The way words are used always trumps the way words are supposed to be used. (And of course there's loads of class and race stuff going on in all of this that makes it all complicated, but that's the subject of another post.)
Still, just because I think it's more useful to talk about what language does than what language should be doesn't mean I don't have opinions! There are language shifts that I can't do anything about, but that I still dislike. (And others that I like--I think we're finally reaching the point where the singular they is being more widely accepting, which is great since we've only been using it for centuries and centuries!)
So I was thinking about which grammar or words that have changed and which ones bother me the most. My selection for biggest loss: literally, which I see used as an intensifier ("It was literally so cold outside!" and even--in extreme cases--like, "It was literally a million degrees outside!" when they mean...figuratively) to the extent that I think the word's literal meaning is totally lost (thankfully, the adjectival form seems okay). Which I think is a big loss, because in a world of increasing lies and misinformation, we really need words that emphasize veracity and reality.
What shifts in language are you seeing? How do you feel about them?
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The thing that is most surprising is that people still use the special spelling for the past tense - "I laid on the beach towel."
Yeah, that is surprising!
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I think 'between you and I' is a special case because kids get corrected for using me as a subject pronoun ('you and me are going the park') because it's a natural grammar 'mistake' that kids make that is easy to recognize as a mistake. So people internalize that 'You and I' is correct and 'you and me' is wrong, and the 'I' construction ofteninstinctively *sounds* more 'correct' whether or not you have a great grasp on the prescriptive grammar.
Also, I'm not a linguist but I don't think there actually is a difference of meaning/clarity between subject and object pronouns in English so it truly doesn't matter. (EtA whereas if I am understanding this correctly, in a case based language system, the form of the pronoun you use tells you things about meaning -- in English, the prepositions + sentence structure do that work.)
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Just clarifying whether I've understood correctly: would "Mary and I went to the park" and "They gave it to Mary and me" be correct? Because I remember learning as a child that I shouldn't write "my mother and me" but instead "my mother and I" but I'm trying to remember the form of the rest of those sentences. Because I think, which of these is correct depends on the structure of the rest of the sentence, right?
But this is only a now thought. I've thought, all this time, that "this person and me" is the grammatically wrong but far more common usage than "this person and I" :O
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But it really depends on what part of speech the pronoun is. The easiest, most foolproof way to figure out whether to use me or I is to drop the other person and see what sounds right. You would never say, "He gave it to I," so it's never "He gave it to mother and I." Whereas you absolutely would say "I went to the park" and not "Me went to the park." (Unless you're Cookie Monster.)
It's "and [other person]" that confuses people!
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Yes, this confuses me! Thanks for the tip about dropping the other person to see what sounds right. I still get muddled trying that, but it helps.
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This bugs the crap out of me, to the point where when I see it in library books, I daydream about crossing it out with a pencil and correcting it (I have never actually done this). I recognize it's not going anywhere, though, unfortunately, and that it's the product of our school system probably not teaching grammar very well. Despite having many relatives who are grammar fanatics and corrected my siblings and me ad nauseam as children, I didn't *understand* English grammar until I took Latin in high school - LATIN! And I'm sure all of my Spanish grammar lessons before that helped! Unlike my actual grade school English lessons!
One shift I like that I think about a lot is using "impact" as a verb, which was technically not correct when I was in high school - it was only a noun.
Which I think is a big loss, because in a world of increasing lies and misinformation, we really need words that emphasize veracity and reality.
This this thisssssssss
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One shift I like that I think about a lot is using "impact" as a verb, which was technically not correct when I was in high school - it was only a noun.
Oooh, yeah, that's a major shift!
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I'm almost certain that the incorrect use of 'I' is down to hypercorrection (at least that's what my linguistics lecturer explained when I took classes on sociolinguistics as an undergrad): people have been told that it's wrong to use 'me' when the nominative case of the pronoun is correct, and have taken that to mean that 'me' should never be used. My mother drilled the correct cases for pronouns into us by telling us to say the sentence with the other person removed and see if sounded correct (so take out the 'Emily' from 'Emily and me went to the shops' and you get 'me went to the shops,' which obviously sounds wrong), and that was a really easy way to learn the distinction, but a lot of people wouldn't have been told that, and would just have come away thinking 'using me is always wrong.' (In general, my mother's approach to teaching us grammar and writing skills was to get us to read things aloud and see what they sounded like, e.g. reading parts of school essays back and seeing if individual sentences made sense and sounded good, which must have been very time-consuming but really did help a lot.)
The most grating language changes for me are things like business-speak being used in everyday contexts, and certain nouns being used as verbs — 'to gift' someone a present (rather than 'to give'), 'to medal' or 'to podium' (the Olympics commentators are the worst when it comes to this).
And although I've checked this comment several times, it is inevitable (given it is a comment about grammatical errors and prescriptivist linguistics) that there will be mistakes and typos!
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I'm almost certain that the incorrect use of 'I' is down to hypercorrection
Oh yes, I think there's no doubt this is where it comes from.
In general, my mother's approach to teaching us grammar and writing skills was to get us to read things aloud and see what they sounded like, e.g. reading parts of school essays back and seeing if individual sentences made sense and sounded good, which must have been very time-consuming but really did help a lot.
Good for her! That's impressive!
The most grating language changes for me are things like business-speak being used in everyday contexts
Yes, it's just so reflective of the way Anglophone culture has become soooo driven by the motivations of capitalism.
certain nouns being used as verbs — 'to gift' someone a present (rather than 'to give'), 'to medal' or 'to podium' (the Olympics commentators are the worst when it comes to this).
ME TOO. I mean, on one level, there's no particular reason why you can't verb a noun or noun a verb, but I do not like it! There's one on the tip of my tongue (it's not impact, but it's something like that) that just drives me bonkers.
And although I've checked this comment several times, it is inevitable (given it is a comment about grammatical errors and prescriptivist linguistics) that there will be mistakes and typos!
Hahaha!
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