Slashdot Mirror
Why There Is No Such Thing as 'Proper English'
Pikoro writes: A recent article in the Wall Street Journal explains why the concept of a "proper" English isn't realistic. Quoting: "It's a perpetual lament: The purity of the English language is under assault. These days we are told that our ever-texting teenagers can't express themselves in grammatical sentences. The media delight in publicizing ostensibly incorrect usage. ... As children, we all have the instinct to acquire a set of rules and to apply them. ... We know that a certain practice is a rule of grammar because it’s how we see and hear people use the language. ... That’s how scholarly linguists work. Instead of having some rule book of what is “correct” usage, they examine the evidence of how native and fluent nonnative speakers do in fact use the language. Whatever is in general use in a language (not any use, but general use) is for that reason grammatically correct. The grammatical rules invoked by pedants aren’t real rules of grammar at all. They are, at best, just stylistic conventions.
However, it has nothing to do with purity. English is famously a language which mugs other languages for their vocabulary. But just because it is impure and inconsistent doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Why would they? They term "lingua franca" (italian for "language of the Frankish") originated during the renaissance to describe a "universal" language spoken throughout the mediterranean and used for commerce and trade. It is composed of mostly Italian (80%) with some greek, portuguese, arabic, spanish, old french, occitan. In this context, the term "Franca" (Frankish) does not describe "France". The term "Franca" was used by Greeks, Arabs and others to describe Western Europe.
Should be: Why They're Ain't Any Such Thing as "Proper English."
Author has apparently never heard of Strunk & White.
It's a bit of a conflict of interest for a writer to say there are "no rules", when in fact there are. And English doesn't actually change anywhere near as fast as many of these folks claim. Fads come and go, while the underlying rules persist, generation after generation.
If that were not true, you would not be able to make sense of Shakespeare today. But you can, except for the occasional stray word. You still get the meaning.
Before a bunch of French speaking Vikings invaded in 1066, before Nordic speaking Vikings degraded the language.
THAT is proper English!
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
Nowadays, it's very likely someone using somewhat broken English on the internet simply doesn't speak it as a primary language. The way I figure it, I'm pretty sure their command of my language is a heck of a lot more impressive than my command of theirs. If I'm conversing with someone and they apologize for their poor English, I'll often pull out this quip to reassure them that not everyone is so shallow as to nitpick about stuff like that.
Sure, we all laughed at "all your base are belong to us", but there's a difference between chuckling at some examples of Engrish versus some sort of language snobbery. I suppose the Japanese or Chinese version of those sorts of jokes are when Westerners get kanji tattoos that don't quite mean what they thought. I think it's fine as long as it doesn't get mean-spirited or personal.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.