this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2024
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Science Memes

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Linguistic Perscriptivists (mander.xyz)
submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago (1 children)

"Hard to understand?" Is a question more complex than it might appear on the surface. There are obvious examples of ambiguity in speech which lead to complete misunderstanding.

But "hard to understand?" may also satisfy the criteria of "effort to understand". Just because a message was understood does not mean the audience was able to hear it effortlessly. And that boils down to consideration.

It's a two way street. Correcting mistakes because of apparent lack of effort is probably not warranted, but a speaker is not entitled to a happy audience either

As with many online feuds, I think a lot of these problems typically arise because of a lack of operating under the assumption others are acting in good faith.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

If course, ultimately language is about (efficient) communication. And as long as that is satisfied, grammar is secondary. Like if there is ambiguity, asking for clarification is very much not pedantic

There is of course some nuance and leeway, but I still think it's fairly obvious where the line goes

But ultimately, yes, language is nuanced and constantly evolving, it's very neat though

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

See, I could understand you just find despite you writing "If course", but if you try to say to me that is not a mistake simply because I could understand you, I cannot at all agree with your logic of what makes it the language "correct".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

I never said it makes the language "correct", more that language is fluid and there's no need to correct people

Unless a typo or spelling mistake is so common it becomes widely used, it's fair to say it's just a mistake