Which is what bugs me about native grammar mistakes: only native people make them. No one that has learned English as second language could ever construct "could of" as it makes no sense. And the act of being defiant is very very different than being definite about something. Yet people get this wrong all the time, as if they never learned grammar at school, or let alone read ONE book.
(My pet peeve is native speakers unable to pronounce "aesthetics" correctly. Drives me nuts. )
This is why the English of Shakespeare doesn't hold up today because we are constantly adding and changing these things in a wonderfully organic fashion. It just makes it difficult to define.
The question is should we define it or is it like catching the wind with a net?
Another example is the word Monetize. It used to mean to turn a item into a form of money like currency. Almost nobody uses it like this nowadays. Decimate is another one.
Why does it bug you? They are different classes of mistakes but both have driven the language over the centuries. Why are native mistakes wrong but immigrant mistakes good?
For example, I know Italian and French, yet I cannot think of any weird misspelling only native Italian or French speakers do. I always wondered if it's because of education or how grammar is taught in Anglosaxon countries that is ultimately the root cause of these errors. It is a peculiar phenomenon.
No. Every language evolves, even those in countries with zero to very little immigration.
Usually towards simplification. I've lived enough to notice my native Romanian getting 'dumbed down' and we can count immigrants here on just a few hands.
However, in the 2000s I've ran across a collection of 1920s articles written by someone complaining romanian is changing and getting dumbed down. His examples of correct language felt overcomplicated and pointless, and his examples of 1920s dumbed down were academy style in the 2000s :)
> Which is what bugs me about native grammar mistakes: only native people make them. No one that has learned English as second language could ever construct "could of" as it makes no sense. And the act of being defiant is very very different than being definite about something. Yet people get this wrong all the time, as if they never learned grammar at school, or let alone read ONE book.
Agree with that one though :)
Some notions of quality are not dependent on their popularity.
Is quality of language and taste opinion or fact? I could see the debate being vigorous on that one.
Would we have better food if the top chefs in the world designed our meals, or if the entire population voted on them? For some topics (including the arts) I think a purely subjective approach has worse outcomes.
