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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   4451 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 19, 2023

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Devil's advocate time. I think there's an is/ought conflation here. Is it the case that languages change, meaning that "Me got a burger" could one day be accepted as "normal?" Yes. But whether that's a good thing, or whether something is lost by those changes, are different questions.

I'm very sensitive to correct grammar usage and accurate diction (by writing this, I have now guaranteed that there will be at least one egregious mistake in this comment). I use both as indicators of conscientiousness, and as a conscientious person myself, I give greater weight and credence to the words of people who can follow grammatical rules and use words correctly. I think it's good to have grammatical rules and "correct" definitions for words for this reason, even if they're just conventions and there's no platonic world of word meanings we can appeal to. to which we can appeal.

Another, narrower argument is that the trend in English evolution seems to be towards simplification. As pointed out elsewhere, English used to have cases. We express the same meanings without cases today, though probably less precisely. And although we have added many words to our language, I'd wager they're mostly describing new things, and at the same time we have lost many colorful synonyms and their subtle shades of meaning.

There's also what appears to me to be an egalitarian pressure (that may not be unique to English, I'm not sure) where rhetoric has gotten simpler and coarser over time. Compare American political speeches written around the 1860s, with those written in the first half of the 20th century, with those written in the second half, with those written today. The only reliable source of eloquence in American government today seems to be our higher courts. Some of our Supreme court justices are still a pleasure to read.

Edit: Found and corrected four mistakes.

Generally, complaints over grammar or language use are held up as examples or causes of society degrading. Pointing out that language changes isn’t so much about is/ought, as it is to say that this change isn’t new.

I agree that grasp of the rules is an indication of conscientiousness, but you also have to acknowledge that those rules are arbitrary. I would dress nice when showing up for a date to signal my competence as a mate, but I also know that the specific character of my clothes is arbitrary. Chances are my grandparents would find jeans and a henley vastly too casual, but it works today.

If I had to be held to a standard, I would say that the only way a language could get worse is if it somehow lost the ability to express certain ideas or concepts. But as far as I can tell any idea can be expressed in every language, so that seems unlikely to happen.

Another, narrower argument is that the trend in English evolution seems to be towards simplification. As pointed out elsewhere, English used to have cases. We express the same meanings without cases today, though probably less precisely.

IIRC old and Middle English had word order rules of their own that were different from modern English rules and in practice a lot of the cases were pronounced the same anyways.

And although we have added many words to our language, I'd wager they're mostly describing new things, and at the same time we have lost many colorful synonyms and their subtle shades of meaning.

My impression is that it’s actually the opposite case, and modern English actually has a meaningfully richer vocabulary- hence why the King James Bible and Shakespeare use a relatively smaller lexicon- with words generally having more specific meanings and far fewer awkward phrases and calques(eg orange used to be called ‘red-yellow’ until the word was borrowed from Dutch, ‘evil’ used to be a generic antonym of good whereas it now has a specificity towards the moral valence, ‘happy’ used to mean any of a half dozen related concepts).

I mean, you're always going to have the prestige dialect of a language, spoken by the powerful and well connected...and then other separate dialects.

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