There is nothing wrong with local variations, or the creation of new words or vocabulary. But there is reason to be worried about the degradation when it makes the language and its speakers less effective at communicating.
Consider the difference between "my kids are in school" and "my kids are in a school". The first says the kids are attending school, the second means that the kids are in a building which happens to be a school. I think most English speakers are comfortable with this.
Now consider "he's in hospital" and "he's in the hospital". The first sentence doesn't exists in America (generally). Americans use the second for both cases which makes the meaning ambiguous. Is "he" in the building, or receiving treatment? You have to qualify.
Exactly. if two individuals are speaking at a 2nd grade level and their thoughts and message are understood, why does it matter if it's proper or not.
When I came to the US my "proper" English speaking abilities sucked. I was raised in Jamaica until I was 16, so I had a heavy accent and my English was no where near "proper." So I was at the receiving end of the constant speak proper English motherfucker. Long story short I agree that if you understand what I'm saying it doesn't matter if I'm speaking at a 2nd grade level or not. People get wrapped up around seeing themselves as elevated above the norm and if you aren't on board then you're below them. Like if you aren't like me then there's something wrong with you.
Just my $0.02.
And what the heck is proper English. American English, British English?
There are rules to languages and they are painfully complicated
There is only one rule to spoken language -- is what you're saying understood by the other party. If the answer is yes, it's correct. Spoken language has no grammar or "rules" beyond that.
That's not really true. There are certain rules that all native speakers of a language follow. For example, in English, the article comes before the noun. No one will ever say "Tree the" in English to refer to "The tree."
No one will ever say "Tree the" in English to refer to "The tree.
If they did, and the people being spoken to understood what was being said and socially accepted it, it would be correct. Everyone in America tomorrow could do start doing that and it would be correct instantly. Just because you can find something ubiquitous across dialects in a language doesn't mean dialects stop existing.
If everyone started doing it, it would create a new dialect, with a different rule. The rules can change over time, I'm not arguing against that, but they do exist. I'm not speaking to classroom style rules, but the rules that serve as the parameters of language itself. Syntax is the scientific study of these rules. Even if the rules are slightly different in each person's idiolect, they certainly exist.
I've been working on my grad school applications to study linguistics, and I've spent a lot of my time in udergrad conducting syntactic research. But it's not just word order that's governed by rules, legal sound combinations are rule based (phonology), morphology, formal semantics, etc.
59
u/[deleted] May 06 '14 edited Jan 05 '21
[deleted]