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Common errors vs language evolution | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 3834 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes  Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 1 of 72 11 November 2013 at 8:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi all,
I don't know if you guys already had a discussion based on this topic, in case you can close this thread. In another thread, talking about Italian language, an user kindly explained me that some advices based on commonly spoken Italian actually violate the standard Italian grammar. I recognize that, as Italian and by listening a lot of Italian people of mixed proveniences and cultural levels, most Italians are not completely aware of what is the standard Italian grammar. This is not, in any case, a thread about Italian language, in which I think that this situation is not isolated with this language (but it's of course, the language I know more, since I'm native). My question is: where the common mistakes stop to be 'ignorance' or language corruption and start to become language evolution? The magnificent language of Dante Alighieri for example comes from what once was the language of poor and ignorant people, opposed to Latin that was the language of noble, smart and rich people. Hope this thread can be interesting also for someone of you! Edited by tristano on 11 November 2013 at 8:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6943 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 2 of 72 11 November 2013 at 8:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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From my point of view, a mistake becomes part of evolution when that mistake becomes accepted by the relevant speech community (with or without some body of prescriptivists or a language academy/planning authority) and ceases to be proscribed.
See the following for related discussion: Annoying mistakes in your native language Pronunciation mistakes that irritate you When does a mistake become standard usage? Non-Errors 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4455 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 3 of 72 11 November 2013 at 11:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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But many ''mistakes'' are the result of the spoken usage keeping the linguistically older form.
At least in Brazilian Portuguese: 1) Me ligue mais tarde!, Me chamo João. (instead of Ligue-me mais tarde!, Chamo-me João) absolute proclises (regardless of ''connecting'' words) is a rule in medieval Portuguese and in modern spoken Brazilian Portuguese but it is incorrect in written Brazilian Portuguese because the Portuguese grammar is Portugal-centric and does not give a damn about 200 millions of Brazilians. 2) Cheguei em casa, Vou lá em casa, Fui em Madri using the preposition EM with words of movement (like chegar, ir,...) is another relict in spoken Brazilian Portuguese. It's a feature of old Portuguese and of Latin too (as in IN URBEM IRE). Current grammar allows EM to be used with verbs of movement only in the set phrase IR DE BAR EM BAR because IR DE BAR EM BAR is used in Portugal, and IR NUM BAR or CHEGAR NUM BAR are not. So, in this case again, official grammar only respects the usage of 10% of Portuguese speakers, neglecting 200 millions of Brazilians. ''Language evolotion'' can be frozen, that's why we get diglossic languages (like Tamil or Arabic) and semi-diglossic languages (like Swiss German, Brazilian Portuguese, Finnish, Czech). In Chennai, Casablanca, Zürich, Rio, Helsinki, Prag people write very different from the way they talk. But in their culture it is kind of normal for a written language to be so different from the spoken one. In US English, Northern German, Croatian, northern Castillian Spanish many can write ''the way they talk'' because there is a neutral style which can work perfectly in both informal/spoken and in semiformal/written communication. I don't think diglossic situations are good, some sociolinguists called them ''schyzoglossic''. People in the US don't give a fuss about IT'S ME/IT'S I, WHOM, SHAN'T... In some countries there are active campaigns against the colloquial usage, for example in Brazil, professors like Pasquale and Sacconi try to impose the Portugal-centric written form on people (to be used in any situation, including the most colloquial ones) while Brazilian forms are called ''ugly, low, to be corrected'' etc... Would Americans tolerate professors who gave lectures on, or made commercials like ''Do not say IT'S ME, it is ignorant, prefer IT IS I. Do not use WHO DID YOU INVITE? say WHOM DID YOU INVITE?'' etc. Google ''preconceito lingüístico'' on on-going campaign against the colloquial usage of Brazil by normative grammarians. (It's good there are linguists documenting this campaign, because, many people out of Brazil wouldn't believe that this is actually happening). Further reading> ''Language policy in Brazil: monolingualism and linguistic prejudice'' http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FB%3ALPOL.00000177 23.72533.fd Edited by Medulin on 11 November 2013 at 11:56pm 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4452 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 4 of 72 12 November 2013 at 1:02am | IP Logged | ||
Dante's "common" language stopped being common a few hundred years after he'd written it down. Just like Shakespeare, it's a tad hard to read these days. Actually, it's probably quite a bit harder than Shakespeare, but easier than Chaucer. The mistakes that you refer to in the other thread are mistakes today. If they survive, then in a generation or two they'll become the new standard. As far as I know, this is normal in any language. Various bits of grammar get kicked about in the hurly burly of daily life and become slightly damaged. Those bits of damage sometimes survive and sometimes don't. At any moment you can point to some piece of grammar that is generally accepted to be correct and yet is frequently mangled in daily conversation. "Should of" for "should've" in English, a missing article in Italian (from your other thread). When the vast majority of speakers accept the "corrupt" form then it's well on the way to appearing in the next edition of your favourite grammar book. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6384 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 5 of 72 12 November 2013 at 1:35am | IP Logged | ||
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| MixedUpCody Senior Member United States Joined 5043 days ago 144 posts - 280 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 6 of 72 12 November 2013 at 3:06am | IP Logged | ||
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Linguistically speaking, mistakes are something that a speaker would say accidentally: a slip of the tongue. If you asked that speaker if they meant to say that, they would say "oops, that was a mistake." The types of mistakes that you refer to as ignorance are actually a lack of willingness to conform to the hegemonic privilege of the ruling class. There is a continuum of languages with a wide degree of differences that range from slight, to barely mutually intelligible. The only thing that makes a certain dialect "standard" is that people with political and economic power inevitably decide that their dialect is "correct" and that all other dialects are deviations from said standard. Perhaps this can be useful, but it is important to note that it is arbitrary and could have just as easily have gone differently had history unfolded in a different way.
That being said, every generation acquires language in a slightly different way, and that is, scientifically speaking, language evolution. Your question was probably more aimed at when self-proclaimed prescriptivists will declare a certain usage to be acceptable, to which the answer is most likely when the old guard passes away, and people who have grown up speaking a formally stigmatized variant come into power, and decide that their manner of speaking is "correct". Of course it could be argued that this type of prescriptivism has its uses. For instance, it makes sense to have a standard for L2 learners to aim for. But to say that native speakers are wrong simply they speak a different dialect than that which is prestigious is just bigoted. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 5848 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 7 of 72 13 November 2013 at 5:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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I find Medulin's post very interesting. I googled "preconceito linguístico" and found many examples.
Please bear in mind that the Portuguese are also not very happy about this situation: the Orthographical Agreement of 1990 has met with a lot of resistance here (most educated people never adhered to it). I am very sympathetic with the Brazilians' plight. I've read a lot in this forum that made me realise the problems they must have at school. But it's up to them to change the situation, if they so wish. Edited by Luso on 13 November 2013 at 5:54pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4021 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 8 of 72 13 November 2013 at 6:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's hard to say if errors are leading to evolution or to degradation, you need to see the whole picture.
Only one thing comes up to my mind right now, and this is the scandal about the gender of adapted words in Russian. Some people wasn't able to understand that coffee should be male because of this word's origin and they kept on treating the word as if it was neuter. Eventually some top cats decided that coffee and some other words will have both male and neuter gender, keeping the same meaning in both genders. In the beginning it was funny, but then we realized that this could be just a beginning of something very bad. I think this is the sample of clear degradation. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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