• ameancow@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    And yet we still can’t get anyone to use “they’re” “their” and “there” properly.

    • krunklom@lemmy.zip
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      3 days ago

      Reddit used to be full of grammar nazis.

      You’d make a mistake and someone would point it out and you’d fix it.

      Now barely intelligible run-on sentences are upvoted ad nauseum.

      I’m sure if you wanted to you could actually chart the rise in stupidity.

      At the end of the day people make mistakes. This is normal. It doesn’t make someone stupid if they make a mistake or don’t know the proper way to write something. What IS stupid is the pushback against writing anything correctly, the refusal to admit a mistake, and the widespread disinterest in there being a correct way of doing anything.

      • KSP Atlas@sopuli.xyz
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        2 days ago

        Lemmy is an informal place, if people understand you fine it’s fine

        What do you like actually get out of following rules if they don’t increase understandability

      • lemmyknow@lemmy.today
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        3 days ago

        the proper way to write something

        a correct way of doing anything

        If there are correct ways, there are incorrect ways. Now, with all the variation in between different countries’ use of a common language, which is the correct? Surely the US way of spelling things is the wrong way, with their Zs and whatnot. And their use of the wrong measurement units, what a shame.

        Or maybe, maybe there isn’t just one way to do things and people can do it differently. Perhaps AAVE isn’t incorrect — but rather different. And Jamaican Patwah — which may seem like “broken English” — is in fact its own valid thing

        • ben@lemmy.zip
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          3 days ago

          There’s a difference between dialects and different spellings of the same words and just flat out using the incorrect word for the meaning you’re trying to convey.

          • lemmyknow@lemmy.today
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            3 days ago

            Isn’t meaning derived from the usage, though? If people start using a word to mean a different thing, the meaning changes, no? Communication depends on the interpretation of the listener, and the intention of the speaker. Communication works when the listener understands a meaning intended by the speaker. Otherwise, the message hasn’t properly been communicated. Just look at words like “goat.” It can mean an animal, yes. But when I ponder whether a quirked up white boy bussing it down sexual style is goated with the sauce, I am not wondering whether said boy has become a literal animal.

            Words are inert. They’re just symbols.

            • KSP Atlas@sopuli.xyz
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              2 days ago

              EXACTLY this is what I’m thinking

              I can understand using formal language in formal places but lemmy generally isn’t super formal

              I think with the rise of the internet informal writing has gotten significantly more common, which is leading to changes in the written language

              For a long time stuff like slang has generally been limited to speech, transcriptions of speech and quotations, but with messaging and internet, it’s common to write in the same register as you speak

        • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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          2 days ago

          Wait what’s the thing about Z’s? The main dialect difference I notice is the lack of French-style u’s like color vs. colour.

      • itslola@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Pique vs peak. Discrete vs discreet. Pallet vs palette vs palate. The list is endless, and I’ve been seeing it more and more frequently, even from “journalists” published in major newspapers.

        The other day I saw someone put a comma after “dear” in the salutation “Dear [name],”.

        • BananaIsABerry@lemmy.zip
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          3 days ago

          Some of these could probably be consolidated into a single spelling if we’re going to be pronouncing them the same. English could do with some simplification in some places.

          The vocative comma is an interesting one, I wonder if you’re seeing people omit it because so many business correspondence omits it.

          For example, I absolutely hate the phrase “Good morning, everyone.” The comma between morning and everyone seems unnecessary. It’s not how anyone would say the phrase out loud. The only pause in the phrase would occur after “everyone”, not before it.

      • reptar@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        I concluded the difference in how I say (English, US) woman and women makes no fucking sense.

    • blinfabian@feddit.nl
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      3 days ago

      i literally pronounce these differently (theyr, thare and thère). how can someone even misspell them??