True fact. It’s one page of directions on the archwiki and the only place you have to deviate is in selecting bootloader and network. Not exactly a 5D rubix cube.
What you say is true for passed down spoken language because errors like the ones we are talking about are transparent. Once you can write it down, the rules are evident and persistent. Nobody has to own them to say that as we transcribe language X these are the rules for conjugation, pluralization, etc. you can break them if you want, but as you say nobody owns the language: you need not be accommodated in your mistakes. Spoken language can change and the rules can follow, but being shit at writing (even if lots of people have the same problem) isn’t something written language must accommodate.
I mean, sort of, I guess. I also read “Frindle” in school.
There is nothing wrong with a descriptive approach to spoken language, but what I see you arguing is that written language should be treated the same way. This increases complexity in written language for no reason other than to protect mistakes in literacy.
There’s real value in preserving spelling (it often contains etymologically relevant information to the current or past meaning of the word) and also grammatical structure. If the sound of two samples is indistinguishable, why make it harder to teach or to infer meaning from by accepting spurious representations as correct?
When you write it down, you gotta follow the rules, yo.
Speaking is sort of a different animal. “Should of” is a malapropism that is a homophone for “should’ve”. There is no transformation of language from that, it’s just an error. If you accept an alternate written version though, you’re creating an alternate conjugation for the conditional perfect tense. There’s no reason for this at all: it’s accommodating failings of literacy by adding complexity to language rules for one, and creating a new (and faulty) evolution point for two.
It’s like saying “oh, the speed limit is 55, but everyone drives 60, so let’s make the law so the police can’t ticket you unless you go over 60 since 55 or 60 is correct”. What does it mean when you see a sign that says 25 now? You can accept that people break the rules, but that doesn’t mean we should change the rules to describe the situation in every circumstance.
Your phone auto correct has a preference as well it seems.
I mean sure, linguistic descriptivism is relevant for the evolution of language. However, why study language at all if that’s the sum-total of your perspective on language? We could all just speak however we want as long as we are understood… except then we end up with an uncountable number of dialects and creoles a la mainland china. This is also how you end up with linguistic rules that are basically impossible to teach I suspect.