Quote:
Originally Posted by boxcorner
We should celebrate the fact that English is not cast in stone. I am glad that English doesn't have an equivalent to the Académie française. Consequently, English has been free to evolve and expand. Surely the rules that govern it need to evolve too, to keep pace. My guess is that the rules will always lag behind somewhat. I guess there will always be people like me who deplore some of the changes and welcome others. Clearly, standards are important, but they need to adapt with the times. For example, consider the changes in the way people are addressed in business correspondence. The trend has been from formal to informal. Also, open punctuation is increasingly being accepted as the norm. However, there was a time when there were few standards, for example in the way words were spelled. Imagine how difficult learning, or teaching it, must have been back in those times. |
I made the point in another thread about something quite different, but it's germane here: there are rules which are prescriptive - which tell you what you and shouldn't do, and rules which are descriptive - which describe what is actually going on. Many of the grammar police seem to think that only the first sort apply to language, and grammar in particular, but in fact a grammar of a language is a description of the regularities present in a language and, as such, will always be a snapshot of how the language works at the time when the grammar was written. A language will always have a grammar, but it may not be the one you were taught donkey's years ago, or the one you think it should have. But that's language for you - damn nerve if you ask me - only way there seems to be of stopping such changes is to stop using the language, (as I wrote that last sentence it was constructed as an observation rather than a piece of advice, but on reflection...)