LITERALLY everyone!
Well. Sort of.
Some terminology is better defined by how the relevant experts use it. It’s singular and precise definition is required for any useful dialogue. If 99% of people call a kidney a liver but doctors call it a kidney its a kidney.
Some terminology evolves and is used differently by different groups. Sometimes the more illiterate group flattens the language by removing nuance or even entirely removing a concept from a language with no replacement. Arguably both definitions may be common usage but one is worse and using it means you are.
Some word usage just becomes so common everyone even generational gaps understand it. If you talk to an 18 or a 65 year old and say the word blowjob, they both know what you mean, yet they aren’t out their blowing on dicks or trying to force air up urethras… Hopefully…
I’ve allready to rite we’ll, but than my conscious sad, “For get the rules,” so I let my lose ideals led me. I’m two stubborn to accept that I should of staid in school.
I think I had a stroke reading this.
Yes, but you understood it eventually, so you can’t criticize it.
What if I told you that if everyone uses a word the “wrong” way, in slightly different ways, it’s wrong?
even worse, everyone spells that word wrong
“Everyone” meaning the social media someone and their social set get their info and cues from, not the rest of the people around them.
“Everyone” meaning folks off-line who you feel the urge to keep correcting because you got hounded by grammar nazis on the internet and now the “correct” meaning is branded into your skull.
“aks” will always grate, don’t care how ‘popular’ it is
But do you mean literally everyone or literally everyone?
If it is not literally everyone, it still might be correct in the way that using a word for (one of) its jargon meaning(s) is correct. So, correct in context.
When using words to convey information to an audience to whom you might not be able to clarify, it is useful to use words for the meanings listed in common dictionar(y/ies) (“correctly”) so that the audience can resolve confusions through those dictionaries.
I think they were joking about the fact that the meaning of ‘literally’ has changed in the common vernacular to mean ‘figuratively’
I mean this i show it literally works, right?
As somebody who still insists that emo means Rites of Spring and not Paramore, no.
What if I told you memes were supposed to be funny rather than excusing ignorance?
ok here’s three examples of exactly what the meme is referring to:
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“Awful” originally meant “awe-inspiring” or “full of awe,” but frequent use to mean “very bad” eventually became the standard modern meaning.
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“Peruse” traditionally meant “to read carefully,” but common casual use to mean “to skim or browse” has become widespread enough that dictionaries now record both senses.
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“Nimrod” started as the name of a skilled biblical hunter, but repeated ironic use as an insult (for example, in cartoons… “Bugs Bunny”) led to its accepted modern sense of “fool” or “idiot.”
Language changes. Words mean what we say they mean since its all made up anyway.
The word that always comes to mind is ‘literally’ which has come to mean ‘figuratively, but with emphasis’ and it drives me nuts - because it removes the word we have to say ‘this is a thing that you might assume is figurative, but it’s not, it actually happened’.
I was going to be that one in my list but I literally hate using the word …. 😉
These are your examples, not OPs. Your examples have no bearing on what OP may or may not have meant.
The content implies to me that OP have themselves been criticized and since your examples are all relatively antiquated I’m going to assume OP didn’t mean them. Because who alive is out there saying “nimrod was actually pretty skilled” on lemmy?
The other alternative which is even worse is that OP literally just means language changes and this isn’t in response to anything at all, it’s just a pointless generic post restating a truism. But I choose not to believe that one either, although it seems to be the interpretation you’ve espoused.
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¿ Por Que No Los Dos ?
Dos is fine but I really just want it to be funny
Ignorance of what? It seems that if you’re using a word the same way your sub culture uses a word, it’s correct. Or rather that words can only be used correctly within a context.
That’s the beauty of this terrible, terrible post: by not being remotely specific we can all imagine what word OP might be thinking of and imagine for ourselves whether it’s justified.
So perhaps a better phrasing would be “memes are supposed to be funny, not generic rage bait”
Memes are supposed to be funny
That’s not true, which is exactly why this is a good meme. The word meme was originally coined as a conceptual analogue to the word "gene*. Ideas spread and evolve, just like genes. Only in the last 15 years or so has it come to mean internet joke, and this is the direct result of people using the word in a different way than it was intended to be used. It doesn’t matter what word the OP had in mind when they made this meme (though gif is the most likely candidate), it’s accurate and relevant.
Right, so memes are supposed to be funny cause they are internet jokes.
Languages are living things. And living things always change. Note the Great English Vowel Change. Even the Norwegian my Grandfather spoke and that I learned from him was virtually a dead language that modern Norwegians stopped using in the 1850s. And the English spoken in the UK is different than the American English I speak. Spanish spoken in Spain isn’t the same as someone from Mexico speaks.
And when conversing with someone, (in the language of your choice), the words you choose to use are defined by the context you use them in. Words can have multiple meanings, but it’s the context and tone clarifies those meanings. Consider all the meanings of the single word ‘fuck’.
But problems start with written words. And many people have poor written communication skills. It can be hard to parse meaning from poorly written words because there is little context and tone that comes through with a typed sentence.
We are all just baying at the moon like any pack. And hoping some understands us.
Written word is a facsimile of a facsimile of what we’re actually communicating. We go from nebulous thoughts, concepts not bound by language, to sounds that roughly convey those concepts, and then to squiggly lines that roughly convey those sounds, and then back up the chain in the other person. Really, it’s a miracle we understand each other at all.
I would say this is not universal. For some, the written word is the native “tongue”, conveying the actual, intended meaning. The written word allows the speaker the opportunity to evaluate and revise their language to match their intent, and the listener the opportunity to re-evaluate previously transmitted thoughts.
The oral variant is dependent on the real-time aptitude of the speaker to articulate their thoughts and message, and for the listener to extract that meaning from the same. For those of us handicapped in these traits, the spoken word is the poor facsimile for actual (written) communication.
There are those constraints around written/spoken word, for sure. I’m more referring to how close it is to the “raw” thought.
We evolved the ability to think. In order to allow our thoughts to reach others, we developed spoken word. In order to allow those spoken words to be passed through time, we developed written word. Each refers back to the previous “layer” of communication.
Even someone who has a speech impediment, for instance, is still using the same written language as someone else in the same culture. And that written language was developed specifically to try and evoke the words someone in the culture speaks.
Would’ve
Wouldn’t’ve
Wootnoofcootnoofshootnoof
18th century grammar nerds literally shitting and pissing and crying right now
Your right
“Can’t have your cake and eat it too”
vs.
“Can’t eat your cake and have it too”
Only one of these makes sense, but the other one is what’s been used for a long time now. If I have a cake, then I can definitely eat it, but if I eat it, then I can no longer have it.
Edit: I don’t mean to disagree with the simple fact that languages evolve over time. But having a majority dictate the meanings of words isn’t something I like. The example of “antisemitism” (a bunch of people are using the word to describe valid criticism of the state of israel) raised in an other comment here is also very relevant.
If I have a cake, then I can definitely eat it, but if I eat it, then I can no longer have it.
If you change “have” to “keep” it is clearer in both instances. The second interpretation is clearer because it puts the consumption verb first, which implies this action precedes the subsequent verb. But the underlying statement holds true in either instance.
The example of “antisemitism” (a bunch of people are using the word to describe valid criticism of the state of israel) raised in an other comment here is also very relevant.
The joke of “antisemitism” is that Semitic People include Arabs and modern day Ethiopians/Somalians, two groups who are very explicitly and unapologetically persecuted by the Israeli state government. They do not include Eastern European expats who came to the Levant by way of Philadelphia.
Modern Western media describes an antisemite as a kind of anti-white racist critical of other western Jewish people in elite social circles. But the actual historical antisemitism - the one Henry Ford railed against in The International Jew and spammed across post-WW1 Europe after getting his brain cooked by Protocols of the Elders of Zion - is rooted in Christian Nationalism and anti-Immigration conspiracy theories that fit far more neatly with post-9/11 anti-Muslim racism and Cold War hostility towards the Third World.
The manipulation of language in this instance is a very deliberate effort to judo-flip the very idea of bigotry. You turn social energy aimed at pursuing an equitable and egalitarian society into an excuse to segregate the population and persecute poor immigrants and minorities.
Singular “you” is grammatically incorrect. “You” is plural, “thee” and “thou” are singular.
What are you on about, “Y’all” is the plural of “you”
How many is everyone? Are we talking majority rules? Would you like to pit dialects against each other?
It makes little sense to think of language outside of communities, so if a speech community uses a word in a certain way then it’s correct in that context.
Of course, most states find it useful to establish an official variant. It is usually based on whatever the ruling class speaks, and is claimed to be ‘correct’, but there are no objective linguistic criteria which make it possible to say that Parisian French is more correct than e.g. Haitian French.
