Annual query - Wordsmith.org

Wordsmith.org

As each new year seems to generate lists of words and phrases that are apparently crimes against "proper" English, I will ask agaain a query that has not yet been answered. It is a question for the adamant prescriptivists, those who draw Nazca lines in the sands of our language, and insist that none may cross them (the lines or the authors thereof, it matters not).

I am currently reading a fascinating book on the circumstances and history of the period around the disappearance of Geoffrey Chaucer from the historical record. The book has a great many quotations from his works. All are presented in both the original and in Modern English. I'm grateful for this because even though I can actually manage to make sense of the original, the effort required is more than I'd choose to spend, since his English and mine are quite different animals. So here's the question:

Who gets to decide what are the inviolable rules of English? If breaking "the rules" is so heinous, and if new coinages and usages are invariably condemned as heretical, corruptions of the "purity" of the language, why don't all prescriptivists speak the language of Beowulf?

Ic ne wat.

On behalf of the adamant pre-: "drive" for a semiconductor-chip serially-addressed random-acess memory hanging from a belt loop by a keychain

For kicks, "Write-only memory"

Quote:

For kicks, "Write-only memory"

WOM was a joke back in the '70s.

Quote:

Ic ne wat.

As chuffed as I was to understand that on first glance, the real problem is that "they don't either", if the persistent unanswered status of this question is any guide.

Who gets to decide what are the inviolable rules of English?

Nobody. One can glean the grammatical rules of a language by observing and recording how users of that language acutally write and speak.

If breaking "the rules" is so heinous, and if new coinages and usages are invariably condemned as heretical, corruptions of the "purity" of the language, why don't all prescriptivists speak the language of Beowulf?

Or Proto-Indo-European or Neanderthalese? Because nobody who speaks Old English holds such views.

Quote:

Who gets to decide what are the inviolable rules of English?

Nobody. One can glean the grammatical rules of a language by observing and recording how users of that language acutally write and speak.

Preacher, meet choir. Thanks, though. That's kind of why I addressed the question to the "adamant prescriptivists", the kind who submit entries to that LSU list.

roflmao

After Fal's last followup I went back and re-read the q. Who gets to decide? Time's Man of the Year

When does the prescriptivist eventually accept a new usage in spite of his inclinations? After it has been around long enough to find its way into the very oldest editions of Merriam, Random, etc

As a former prescriptivist I used to rail against the idea of assigning a wildly divergent meaning to an old word, suggesting instead the coinage of a new one. When I realized mine was but a voice in the wilderness, however, I turned in my credentials

Quote:

After it has been around long enough to find its way into the very oldest editions of Merriam, Random, etc

I wonder what year it will be when "google" finds its way into the 1828 edition?

(^_^) j/k <runs and hides>

Myr: Don't know

But it has found its way as a verb into New Words and Senses of Webster's New Explorer Encyclopedic Dictionary

By a process of what I call "smearing," it will soon come to mean the use of any search engine, and eventually accessing the Internet for any purpose whatever

Language will continue to evolve while people live who speak it. As do manners. But I still appreciate seeing someone with what I consider good manners stand up to let my 82 year old mother sit down on the bus.
and if we like totally abandon all rulz we like you know get just the like the total blech and like feeble crapola and yada and stuff

Quote:

and if we like totally abandon all rulz we like you know get just the like the total blech and like feeble crapola and yada and stuff

I know exactly what you mean.

This thread has made me some moolah! I received an email from http://www.write-better-english.com asking for it to be added to my list of links. After enjoying the author's blog on style poitns, I agreed and signed up to the forums. My first post was the one I made to start this thread, and now it's won me $100AUD. So thanks, prescriptivists, for throwing some coin my way.

Ahem.

"This site is a FREE resource for anyone who wants to improve their written English ..."

[/prescriptivist]

Quote:

Ahem.

"This site is a FREE resource for anyone who wants to improve their written English ..."

[/prescriptivist]

Isn't it someone you know, who lives not too far from you, who is often pointing out the long history that "they/their" have as 3rd person singular gender neutral pronouns? Some fool or other, I believe?

Ywis leden neede multiplie,
And graunt mercy unto benyngne God!
If not for such avowtrie,
How clepeth we ye olde iPode?
with deep regret and apologies to Chaucer