It all depends. Is the word actually misspelled or is it the language in evolution? For example, I like spellings such as “tho” and even “nite”, etc.
English was on it’s way to regularizing pluralization, getting rid of silliness like “geese” and “mice” (which may be on it way out again) when the language-nazis stepped in and killed the evolution. Now I hear “Octopi” by the same idiots that complain about apostrophes. Apostrophes should be used only when needed for clarity, then ignored the rest of the time.
Many of the “rules” that are often complained about on these boards are merely pedantic pettifogging by anal-retentive “experts” that want to appear superior by demanding others follow “rules” that are no such thing.
That, forgive me, is crap. We all make grammatical mistakes. The issue is whether we care that we’ve made them. It’s not a matter of self-righteousness; it’s a matter of caring about accuracy. I daresay there is some discipline/endeavor hobby of your own where you similarly care about things being just so–a certain way.
You grossly misunderstand the motivation for advocating for proper language usage. And just because you don’t care about language doesn’t make those who do “anal-retentive.”
You also grossly misunderstand how common usage comes about and how it evolves. There are no “language-nazis,” as you put it, only the slowly evolving consensus of the community of users of a particular language. What is nongrammatical today may become grammatical through common usage, and even vice versa.
Yet those who are most educated about etymology, morphology, and syntax (i.e., professional linguists) are also those who are least sympathetic to this kind of hand-wringing. What does that say?
But your post makes it clear i got the "pedantic pettifogging by anal-retentive “experts” that want to appear superior" right. I got the motivation- you want to appear superior, everyone who doesnt use language the way you have decided it is supposed to be used is guilty of “gross misunderstanding”. I understand perfectly, dude.
Of course language is supposed to evolve thru usage. But “language nazis” try to stop every change, mostly by saying “that is against the rules” (there are no “rules” for the English language, unlike in France) while looking down their nose at the offender.
I do care about the language. I want it to be allowed to evolve naturally.
It’s a balancing act. We must let it evolve, but not go completely out of control or else we won’t be able to understand each other. It’s like raising a child.
A balancing act requiring no trammels. Undue burdens will not be preserved in language, whether said burdens are placed on the recipient or the transmitter.
gamerunknown is saying it doesn’t take any special effort to perform this balancing act, and in particular, there’s no need to explicitly outlaw certain usages. People will figure it out on their own; no one naturally adopts a manner of speech which is cumbersome (either on the speaking or the listening end), at least not for very long.
In every single one of these, you are wrong, because words may have multiple “parts of speech”, and, indeed, it is extraordinarily common for a word originating as one “part of speech” to develop a sympathetic sense as another.
It is also common for the same word to have multiple variants in a particular part of speech, often with different connotations. Thus, “cite” and “citation” can both be nouns, “service” and “serve” can both be verbs, and “reveal” and “revelation” can both be nouns.
I think I’ve brought this book up before but I really think it’s worthwhile to read The Fight For English: How Language Pundits Ate, Shot and Left as an after dinner mint to Truss and other language mavens. Looking at the prices on amazon though, you may want to check it out of the library, geeze. It’s good but I don’t know if it’s 40 bucks good.
