Ritalin InviteesDec 12, 2024

I love English. It's a trash fire disguised as a language and I'm here for all of it. However, I really need to be better about people not speaking it "correctly." It's a goddamn trash fire. Of course people don't speak it correctly. I'm pretty sure there's no correct way to speak it. And that's leaving out all the racism and classism which goes into "grammatical perfection."

English isn't Latin. It's a glorious clusterfuck of stolen parts bolted onto a bastard chassis and powered entirely by the burning of dictionaries. There is no way that it should be the lingua franca of international affairs, and yet it is. Speak it any way you want. English doesn't give a fuck. English will take your error and turn it into a part of itself. English drinks prescriptivist tears like fine wine. Contribute to the delinquency of English any way you can.

Show threadOggieDec 12, 2024

@intransitivelie
One amazing thing about English is even broken, wrongly tensed badly phrased things are still comprehensible.

I think that's why it works as a lingua franca. You just shove a verb in there, a few nouns, and you can usually puzzle out reasonable meanings and inferences.

Show threadRitalin InviteesDec 12, 2024
@Oggie
English is a terrible language to have to learn, but it tolerates errors pretty well, I think you're right there. It's basically a creole of a bunch of different languages already, which helps too. I do wonder what the world would be like if accidents of history had gone different ways and speakers of some other language had dominated the world. Would that language have become as tolerant of error, or is that a feature of English even without having to serve as a lingua franca? Linguistic nature vs. nurture, I guess.
Show threadOf Bookish ThingsDec 15, 2024
@intransitivelie @Oggie
The transformation of a language's syntax, semantics, phonology, and morphology over time is a normal process. Remember, the Romance Languages all came from the Latin of the Roman Empire. Lingua Franca was the language of the Franks, that becomes the trade language amongst speakers of different languages.
Given sufficient time, without technological reinforcement, all the dialects of English, would go the way Latin turned into the Romance languages. Only common spelling and grammar rules are keeping the transformation from happening.
It is likely that a new global form of English will become dominate in the future, it will depend on which English-speaking region becomes politically, economically, and culturally dominant. The current political changes in the United States could be the needed inflection point.
Show threadRitalin Invitees
@JPK_elmediat @Oggie
Latin doesn't seem to have been as good at absorption as English is, but it remains to be seen, I suppose. It might be that English remains a big tent rather than fragmenting under the strain of containing multitudes, as Latin did. I'm not holding my breath for the matter to be resolved though. The fact that I can still read English which was written 500 years ago and that English dialects across the globe remain mutually comprehensible suggests to me that we've got a while to wait. Colonialism is a hell of a drug.
Dec 15, 2024 at 2:00amWeb
Show threadOf Bookish ThingsDec 15, 2024
@intransitivelie @Oggie Gutenberg's printing press was a game changer. Mass-produced print materials, pamphlets, broadsheets & newspapers, and then novels created consistency in spelling & grammar, and the potential for wider literacy. Combine that with English's unique hybrid history, that made it more accommodating when adding foreign vocabulary, placed it at an advantage.
If various English-speaking countries decided to use a spelling system that reflected their pronunciation, the communication walls would go up quickly.
If American states grow more fragmented, a war of words could go "crazy dialects". 🥴
Show threadRitalin InviteesDec 15, 2024
@JPK_elmediat @Oggie
I think the internet might have something to contribute to whatever happens too. It's not that I don't think it'll ever happen, just that I don't know if it'll happen suddenly or soon. But we'll know when it does.