American English perhaps, “on accident” sounds absolutely absurd to most Brits.
Are you someone who thinks it doesn’t matter if someone mixes up they’re / their / there etc? These things do matter because if you don’t use them correctly people are more likely to misunderstand you.
All of my English teachers were “old” women by the way, nice attempt there to shoehorn in some baddies. Nothing worse than old men, am I right?
The whole point of language is communication and being able to understand others and make yourself understood.
Considering that, most English speaking people would have absolutely no problem understanding the meaning of this post so it’s really not that big of an issue.
However, you do have a point about encouraging the use of good English in the sense that it allows for less confusion, but maybe if you came across of less of a pedantic porcupine who cares more about making fun of others than trying to give useful information then more people would be willing to listen to you.
Just like you were trying to make that point Deceptichum was trying to point out that people use different forms of language in different settings such as being more informal and loose with grammar on the internet, for example. Using their/there/they’re is much less worse than saying on accident instead of by accident.
Stop promoting bad English. English has rules for a reason, you can’t just speak or write however you like, else we wouldn’t get graded in English class, now would we?
Language can evolve all at wants, but Americans are still wrong whenever they say it.
Language has to evolve into something, the Americans seem to be trying to make language evolve away from coherence. You’re probably the type that says using the word literally to mean figuratively is acceptable as well.
Funny how this canard is always directed towards the literate. It’s only ever allowed to evolve one way, usually with some vaguely political bias towards the youth/against anyone over the age of 25, or as some kind of act of pandering to the lower classes or some minority group (willfully ignoring that the spread is in large part attributable to multi-billion dollar media organisations, and far from organic).
I think you have it backwards, perhaps. Prescriptive is like when a doctor tells you what drugs to take via a prescription. That’s the old man one. (Although I think it’s quite often younger people who have recently had the idea of correct and incorrect useages of languages drilled into them!) Oh, either you edited your post, or I’m crazy. :)
Also, while too much prescriptivism is certainly obnoxious, not enough has its own problems. Language needs a certain amount of conformity to ensure were actually having a conversation about what we both think we’re having a conversation about.
Unilaterally occuring in the vicinity of another event at the same time: possibly by chance: -A/N short description of the sorry State of English. Vol. 3
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