Literally No One Likes a Grammar Cop | Otherwords
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- Опубліковано 21 вер 2022
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Besides being annoying, what if the grammar police are actually... wrong?
Otherwords is a PBS web series on Storied that digs deep into this quintessential human trait of language and fınds the fascinating, thought-provoking, and funny stories behind the words and sounds we take for granted. Incorporating the fıelds of biology, history, cultural studies, literature, and more, linguistics has something for everyone and offers a unique perspective on what it means to be human.
Host: Erica Brozovsky, Ph.D.
Creator/Director: Andrew Matthews & Katie Graham
Writer: Andrew Matthews
Producer: Katie Graham
Editor/Animation: Andrew Matthews
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Director of Programming for PBS: Gabrielle Ewing
Assistant Director of Programming for PBS: John Campbell
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Music from APM Music
Otherwords is produced by Spotzen for PBS.
© 2022 PBS. All rights reserved.
"Grammar Nazis are literally the worst."
"No, literal Nazis are literally the worst."
Nazis, really???
It's true
Actually they're subjectively the worst.
Oh Lord...
@@pakde8002 Literal Nazis are objectively the worst.
President Obama wasn't a language slouch either. Oh, and he also is a lawyer with an expertise in Constitutional Law, so the look on his face said it all. *_Really, we're going to argue linguistics right NOW? With ME?_*
I think he liked it. You can see the gears working in his mind. Like he was thinking, “I mean he’s not wrong but sheesh!”
Hahaha. This comment made me laugh out loud
@ghost mall Because it was.
@@marmac83 Pfft, No it wasn't? Some of you people are just looking for excuses to call everything racist.
Dude was known for this kind of behaviour LONG before he was swearing Obama into office.
So you're telling me, had Obama been white, changing the sentence order wouldn't have been racist. Now that Obama is black, it is suddenly racist, regardless of the fact that he would have, and even HAS been pulling these kinds of stunts regardless of skin colour?
It's important to stamp out racism, but this kind of ridiculous nitpicking furthers it's existence rather than eliminating it.
That's exactly what I thought. Obama knew it wasn't verbatim from the constitution, so he looked puzzled. He didn't just flub bc of a brain fart. Pretty low down of that dude not to tell anyone he was gonna do that.
I was literally just explaining this to my ESL students -- English grammar is confusing and all over the place; as long as you're getting your message across as you intended, grammar can take a hike. Language is for communicating and if you're not doing that because you're worried about getting some rules wrong then it defeats the purpose.
This concept was actually parodied in a Powerpuff Girls episode. Mojo Jojo was sentenced to community service, which turned out to be teaching an English class. If you’ve ever seen the show, you know the way he speaks doesn’t line up with any easily identifiable dialect of English, and all of his students ended up speaking in the same way :-)
I think this is great advice for daily life, and I tell this to my foreign friends/colleagues every time they express doubt on their abilities to speak English well.
Actually, if you veer too far from standard grammar, people have a habit of not understanding you.
@@Hallows4 us education hiring unqualified people to teach? sounds about right lmao
@@marmac83 maybe stupid people do, but not anyone remotely intelligent.
Ok, the editors were killing it in the intro. I hope they got some bonus pay or extra vacation time for that one.
Yeah, sure XD
I used to be a grammar cop of sorts when I taught English as a foreign language. My students were the only people I have ever met who appreciated having their grammar corrected.
I truly am thankful for someone pointing out mistakes I make, so I don't leave some comment that makes me look like a damned idiot. 🤨 And no, English is my first language, thank you.
hey :b:eter pronounce whomst've
@@MaryAnnNytowl There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting your spoken dialect to take on some of the exactitude of Standard English. The problem comes when people feel they have the right to call other people's speech "wrong" or a "mistake." It would be better to call it "unconventional" or non-standard. Better yet, why don't we all stop trying to shame other people's chosen dialects and listen to them instead. If you don't understand an unconventional word or phrase, politely ask about it and increase your own understanding of your language.
I appreciate it too. She's talking nonsense.
@@PoetGormanBut there are mistakes. Otherwise we would just speak whatever we want. Yet we need rules. I know they are trying to change that but I gasp in horror at the thought that Ebonics would be accepted in school. Sorry it's just wrong no matter what she says.
I am in a linguistics class for my degree and this channel just makes me happy because it's a fun way to review what I am learning!
This is totally unsolicited but if you haven't done so, I highly recommend checking out the Crash Course series on Linguistics. It's not quite as in-depth as some of their other series but as a fellow linguist I found it great!
Now that's a great attitude, Kristen. It is always good to make everything a learning experience. You go!
I used to be a grammar cop-until I took Linguistics in university. Now I see how ridiculous it is to police how people speak. The only reason one way of communicating is considered “more correct” is invariably because it’s how the rich happen to speak. I believe that educating people on the study of how languages operate-and have always operated-is the best way to drive grammar cops to extinction. Huzzah! 🎉
#DefundTheGrammarPolice
Same tbh. My mom is a huge grammar cop and I stopped really caring about how "weird' my speech was after a while. I took some anthropological linguistic courses and now I think the so-called "errors" are simply a very interesting or unique utterance. My speech is fine, I stutter a bit and sometimes I try to word things a little uniquely, and that's okay!
The only thing i keep judging people for is how they write "should of", they're natively speaking english ffs
@@rexa2851 I find those "mistakes" are almost uniquely made by native speakers. ESL speakers rarely make them, probably because they learn "grammar rules" first and use written English more than spoken English. It'd be interesting if some linguist could analyze and explain that.
@@rexa2851 I see a lot of that, particularly in comments on UA-cam and other social media sites. I think at least part of the time, it's a question of people dictating into their phones. The phone doesn't recognize the difference. Other times, I, like you, want to fight that change.
@@dragoness777 My mum was the same. Every time I wrote an essay, out came the dreaded red pen, with which she generally eviscerated my writing. At least I always got good grades on my essays?
I think policing grammar is silly, especially online, but I can see an argument that “proper” English should be taught because that’s how laws are written. I hope that changes some day, because the law should be accessible to *everyone*, but for right now, that’s how it be.
This was cathartic to watch; as a student of linguistics, the dichotomy of prescriptivism vs descriptivism has been a difficult concept to explain to family and friends who believe in the righteous validity of Standard English to categorize [discriminate] speakers/ human beings. I would love to learn even more about the sociolinguistic implications and historial background of using language as a tool of social discrimination. Love Other Words!!!!
Same. I just got my masters in linguistics and it's hard for my family non linguist friends to get
"Ditto"
I just read Wordslut and it focuses on how English is sexist at a systematic level and how it got that way. It also uses some examples from other languages to show how language in general reinforces stereotypes in many ways.
Definitely recommend.
bruh
Thanks. You summed up what I wanted to say very well. I like linguistics and also understand that language throughout history evolves and English is/was a sticky ball rolled across almost every other European language picking up words and even phrases along the way! (Sorry for the run-on sentence. lol) 😅
My 10th grade English teacher said: "I don't care how you talk, as long as you know you're doing it wrong."
The most common zero copula has to be "Where you at?" That question has no verb! I imagine that phrasing arose because "where" and "where're" sound indistinct.
Inclined to agree with that last part given the similar structure in phrases like "What we eating?". It'd be even easier to slur the *are" into oblivion next to a similar sound.
Doesn't it have an implied conjugation of 'to be'?
Where 'are' you at.
Which could be 'Where are you?'
If you mangle you're enunciation you get Wer'r you..
Which feels like it needs a harder ending sound.. hence 'Wher'r you at?'.
I never correct spelling or grammar mistakes in comments unless doing so would cure someone of an obviously long held mistake, English is their second language or my favorite, when some troll is marginalizing another's otherwise good comment based on a mistake in grammar when their criticism also contains a mistake. I love that.
Dismissing not marginalising
...What?
I tend to hold fire, unless it's a troll being nasty, dishonest or vicious. That's when I open the flood gates and let them have it.
@@TheRealPingu same thing
Hey, I did that last one recently! I don’t usually, but I was feeling cranky, the person was especially obnoxious, and it was surprisingly satisfying. 😁
I actually *have* had someone thank me for correcting her and ask me to continue to do so. She was a student from China, and knew that if she wanted to be able to become a teaching assistant in grad school, she'd have to be able to pass a test proving she spoke English well enough to communicate clearly to her students. At a large university with students from many different backgrounds, speaking many different first languages or dialects, it was necessary to adopt one language, standard English, as the *lingua franca* for everyone to communicate in, and requiring teachers to all be fluent enough to make themselves understood in the same language meant that students only had to learn one language, not a dozen.
We taught each other a lot of other things, too. She expressed frustration that most Americans couldn’t tell at a glance who was Chinese vs Japanese vs Vietnamese. I asked her if *she* could tell an Italian from a Swede, and she exclaimed in surprise, "There's a difference??"
LOL! The "There's a difference??" cracked me up 🤣🤣🤣
A Ghanaian classmate in grad school once used "all of you look so much alike" when talking about his mostly white American peers. He was just used to the facial differences most commonly used to distinguish among Central West Africans.
I love when people correct me. Stronger memories are formed in the moment so that I am not as prone to forget the lesson.
In high school, one of my classes had a sub in MATH who went on a rant after she asked a question and several students raised their hands and said, "Me! Me!" about how it's grammatically incorrect. The entire class came to a silent agreement to screw up English as much as possible for the rest of the class, and when the Math teacher asked for an explanation the next day, one student volunteered that it's math class, not English class.
Good 👍 and they were there to learn Math!
So you crawl around and lie and the floor because it's not PE class?
@@1IGG ok troll whatever
@@1IGG what does that have to do with a PE class? In fact, crawling around sounds like an excellent PE class activity. Think of all the muscle groups that are engaged, the coordination required to do it well, the vastly shifted perspective you have to deal with.
Um... I don't actually know what goes on in the heads of PE teachers so...
I feel as though one could argue that the students are saying "pick me!"
That section on AAE made me flashback to how Hawai'i grappled with Hawaiian Creole English aka Pidgin during the 70s and 80s. A lot of us learned to code-switch, Standard English in the classroom, HCE on the playground, and HCE/mother tongue at home.
It was still a problem when No Child Left Behind was first implemented. My ling prof went to a school in Hawai'i that scored the lowest out of the whole country. Turns out, the kids spoke HCE at home and everyone just expected them to magically know Standard English when they arrived at school.
"Everyone but her won an award" vs "Everyone but she won an award." I think I would just write around that and say "She was the only one who didn't win an award."
yeah i didnt find either intelligible either.
Yet the last one is wordy, long, and clumsy. I would bet 90+% of the time this is expressed in spoken English, one of the first two would be used, probably the first by myself.
"She won an award." "Marvin and she each won an award." "Everyone but she won an award." It's just not that difficult.
I feel this message, especially on any social media platform.
If it's not an official or professional statement, then no one need concern themselves over anyone's grammar.
When I was 8th grade, I was paired with a girl I didn't get along with for an English assignment and we got into some heated argument. So we went to the teacher and I was like "Rebecca and me are having all these problems blah blah blah...". He listened to my whole schpeil, then said "Rebecca and I". And made me say the whole thing again
Yep. This sort of thing has actually affected the language. Many people nowadays automatically say, "Rebecca and I are having problems." But they also say, "The man gave a gift to Rebecca and I." There's even a song called "For You and I", whose last line are those very words. So grammar cops have some influence; just not the sort of influence they intend.
@@LVWelch Yup, "hypercorrections". Trying to follow these kinds of arbitrary, imposed-from-above rules often leads to them.
Though the song example can also be the writer bending the lyrics to fit the song's rhyme and meter.
I'm a linguist and I approve this message 👍🏼
I can’t tell you how much I needed to hear this. Someone once pointed out the split infinitive in Star Trek and it’s been driving me nuts for assorted reasons. I feel like a weight has been lifted from my mind…❤
A simple online search would've uncovered that myth. Most of the times people take one thing they hear as gospel and like with actual gospel they don't do their own research.
@@smurfyday That’s very true. He was an English teacher, so I just kinda took it at face value. Part of it, too, is it doesn’t rise to the importance of “actual complaint,” more like a passing irritation you kinda forget about until the next time it bothers you. Still, food for thought.
One holdover I still have in speech is when someone calls and asks for me, I’ll say, “This is he.” For some reason, even though it sounds archaic, it still sounds pleasant to me. Lol. But I don’t say, “It is I” ever. Lol.
My brain has literally expanded after watching these series of videos
Dude, you might wanna go to the hospital. That's a pretty serious condition. 😂
PBS sure has gone down hill haven't they?
thats called Encephalitis, you need a doctor!
Sounds painful 😁
Lol same 😂
My sister is an absolute grammar cop - necessity of being a bankruptcy lawyer - and when I sent her the link for this video, she flippantly refused to even watch it. She was trying to be funny (unsuccessfully), but she's always had difficulty seeing beyond her own perceptions, and her attitude honestly makes me roll my eyes sometimes.
Listen to your sister
"She was trying to be funny (unsuccessfully)," hahaha
most narcs are like that and most lawyers are narcs.
@@KittySnicker lawyers are the lowerst of the low. Noone shold be like them.
To be fair, legal cases _have_ been won and lost by the exact wording and punctuation of a law or a contract -- and how it "should" be interpreted vs how its author probably _meant_ to be interpreted.
But on the other hand, legalese is _not_ normal conversational English.
The backlash against ‘Jennifer and me’ has become so strong that now people are saying ‘Jennifer and I’ even when it's _not_ the subject of the sentence! I especially notice this in period pieces, when writers give this overcorrection to upper-class characters who would never have used it in real life.
Yeah- overcorrections are the only occasion when I get grammar cop-ish because as I see it they’re trying to police themselves and screwing up at it instead of just doing what they will
@@voidify3 similarly, once I realised how annoying I am, I started to only grammar cop a grammar cop. I love pointing out how valid the "wrong" grammar was in the first place 🤭
This was informative and eye-opening. Looking forward to more like this.
On a side note, as I'm learning German I've found that thinking about the ambiguity of a sentence is more helpful to me than the strict grammar rules. Beyond this, I'm fascinated by the contextual knowledge one needs to understand a given sentence. E.g, "Am Freitag chomi nach Zöri". It wasn't in a book and required cultural experience to understand. Even in English: "Yeah, nah." I imagine someone reading that and thinking that it's completely ambiguous.
As a native German speaker I am curious if your example might be from a Swiss-ish context? I've never seen "komme ich" written as "chomi" anywhere (or is that a transcription?)
@@nyarparablepsis872 Yeah, that is definitely not German (as spoken in Germany or Austria). Probably Swiss German dialect.
@@1IGG Pretty sure you're right, I've seen "kurz" written as "churz" in Schwyzertüütsch. I'd guess Zöri is Zürich. It is worth noting though that since dialectical Swiss German is almost entirely a spoken language, it isn't usually considered to have orthographic standardization. It always annoyed my Swiss friend whenever I told him that I understood our Dutch friends speaking standard Dutch better than him speaking dialect. XD
@@mattkuhn6634 That's because Dutch is a version of Low German, and if you live in the northwest, it's fairly close to the Plattdeutsch dialect you'll likely have grown up with. I know that's the case for me.
@@dhindaravrel8712 Not necessary, my mother grew up in an area close to the border and grew up speaking Platt as her first language. She says it is easy to talk to older people or those that speak the more regional form of dutch, but standard Dutch is a lot harder to talk in. But then she can still understand it a lot better than me and I at least learn to understand her kind of Platt even if I didn't speak it myself because my grandparents could only speak Platt (but they understand Hochdeutsch) and my mother and her siblings would always speak it with each other
Okay, I’ll cop (see what I did there?) to channeling Stannis Baratheon in my own personal grammar reflex regarding the use of “fewer” and “less.” But like him, I mostly just satisfy myself with muttering “fewer” under my breath when it comes up, and refrain from actively correcting anyone. At least I’m getting better!
Wonderful video! I’m glad in recent years to see this topic discussed more and more, increasing the understanding of language as a living thing that inevitably changes and grows. Thanks!
I usually don't care about using less instead of fewer but I was a bit confused when a rail UA-camr praised railways for using less discrete vehicles than a highway. I was imagining fuzzy trains until I realized he meant fewer discrete vehicles.
@@FranziskaNagel445 "fuzzy trains" 😂
Not knowing when to use "less" and when to use "fewer" will make you fail English classes in 6th grade in Germany or Austria. But the native speakers obviously couldn't care less. Plus, most of them will say "I could care less" 😂
One of the things that always gets me is when people use “there’s” followed by a plural noun instead of “there’re”. “There’s” is a conjunction for the phrases verb “there is” which is only used with singular subjects.
When I was in elementary school, the teachers worked very hard to eliminate all traces of "Dutchified" accent and usage from us. (Like "ch" for "j": Chust a minute now once. Or "ain't" which is not just a contraction for "am not", but also as a way to elicit agreement, much like the Hochdeutsch "nicht wahr".)
So imagine the surprise when this Pennsylvania Dutchman gets to college in St. Louis: everyone else is speaking their local dialects in both intonation and construction, while I'm speaking "broadcast standard".
I decided Dutchified English was chust fine, even though I mostly use broadcast standard.
The other main advantage of standard English is to enable communication between dialects. Not that this is anything like a standard, but for an example, even though different regions of the US disagree on what is the proper word for "carbonated beverages" most people will recognize "soda" even if their regional variety of English would prefer "pop" or "coke."
I also had a thought on the use of "literally." Besides being an ironic intensifier, I think it's also the case that some words that used to be metaphors are now literal. Like "My mind was literally blown!" Sure, a blown mind seems like a metaphor, but I think maybe these days "blown" is something a mind can literally be.
'Soda' is a great example. Ask people in some other parts of the world to bring you one and you might end up with a bottle of sparkling water, instead.
@@theprofessionalfence-sitter To be fair, I do think there might still be parts of the US where that would be true but yes, I still think it's an example that resonates.
I actually looked into this. We called them Soda because of the carbonated sodium they used to have. This stopped int he 80's/90's, so Pop was technically the correct word to use(cans and bottles still made the 'pop' sound when openen.)
But the last few years, a new style of carbonation is being used and Pop is now also out of date for the newest flavours of Pepsi/Coke.
@@kyleellis1825 nope. It's regional. The Midwest still uses "pop". The coasts, "soda". And down south, they'll ask which flavor of coke y'all want. Lexical differences happen within the US due to its enormity
@@LindaC616 The regional words came about because of how the drink as created at different times. Both Soda and Pop are scientifically outdated but will still be used because of habit.
Neither one is actually correct when talking about the new Coke Starlight (or the Pepsi one made the same way)
Soda came about because of the soium that used to be used (stopped in the late 80's). Pop was technically the "correct" scientific word to describe the drinks until very recently. But Soda was correct longer.
You're right they are regional words. But I'm right in why they became regional words and the actual history/science behind them.
my father constantly comments on what he perceives as people doing things incorrectly, grammar being only one of which. he's utterly insufferable.
I don't hate grammar cops, but I need them to be respectful. I do love correct grammar.
i have neurological issues that affects on my ability to handle language and anything related to it, so i intentionally choose to ignore many "rules" to make writing and talking easier for me, while still making myself understood. so nothing is more annoying than people nitpicking on my mistakes. why it matters, when its not even a professional setting, and others still understand my message with no problem. not to mention that english is not even my native language, and is wildly different from my own native language, and people still act like i am inferior and stupid for not speaking or writing perfect english 😔
I'm a reformed (reforming...?) pedant. As I've gotten older, I have realised that being "unable" (which is, of course, "unwilling") to discern meaning based on perceived incorrectness, is very much a 'me' problem, and, if I *can* discern meaning then the "error" is irrelevant
🇧🇷 I’m Brazilian studying English and the “prepositions at the end of the phrase thing” is SO natural to my ears that I started to use - even sounding weird - in Portuguese (a Latin language). Exemple:
-In English: “This is a subject that I’m worried about”.
-In Portuguese: “Isso é um assunto o qual eu estou preocupado com”. And this is SO strange 😂
I prefer to be told when I make a mistake.
When I discover by myself that I had made a mistake and no-one mentioned it, that tells me that no-one cares enough about me to help me.
Exactly 💯
I think when you are learning a new language, it's definitely okay to make sure your grammar is correct. But when it comes to just speaking your language, we all take on different linguistics depending on who we are speaking with.
The only time it gets frustrating is when you are unable to understand what is being said.
grammando(noun): combination of "commando" and "grammar" to describe a person who constantly corrects others' grammar. Example: Grammandos at work.
This is fantastic and I'm adding it to my lexicon. Thank you!
I use Grammaphobes myself.
Communication comes down to the communicators’ understanding each other, not whether or not they express themselves in the exact same way.
You've convinced me of all those. Can you convince me of things like "off of", which is becoming the norm and seem to have come from other languages, and "should of", instead of "should've".
as long as you understand what they were trying to convey to you, there is no need to nitpick their grammar, spelling etc. *because you understood their intended meaning even if it wasnt correct* nobody will look at you after like "damn what a smart person, so cool".
as a non-native speaker, i actually want to be corrected (to improve my english). they literally help me learn free grammar in 1 sec. so i didn't know some people hate to be corrected.
maybe different country, different culture, different way of thinking. if you think it's an insult then it's an insult. if you don't think it is an insult then it's not
It’s actually because native speakers know that many of the things that are considered “errors” are trivial and not worth changing. Native speakers of any language will know about such nuances.
There's a big difference between correcting a non-native speaker, and "correcting" a native speaker. Imagine if someone told you that you're speaking your native language "wrong" because you weren't using the most prestigious variety.
@@16poetisa if someone correct me because i weren't using the most prestigious variety, then i wouldn't care. except if i really wrong.
like "your" and "you're", the meaning of these 2 are completely different, if i'm a native speaker and i use those wrong, then no excuse
Okay, since you asked, it should be "If someone corrects me because I wasn't using…"
@@CritterKeeper01 i was taught "i" can go with "were". So that was a lie
When I learned the difference between a hypothesis and a theory I had the unfortunate impulse to correct people when they used "theory" informally. This wasn't out of malice or a sense of superiority, but was simply because I wanted to make sure we were all communicating our ideas clearly, and for whatever reason I was absolutely sure that there would be irreputable damage done as a consequence of using the word "theory" when "hypothesis" was more correct. It wasn't until someone clearly stated "Bruh: no one cares" that I realized I was unintentionally being a twit.
Thus, a hypothesis I have for why people feel inclined to correct someone else's grammar is that we (the grammar police) take it upon ourselves to learn and use Standard English rules to genuinely better ourselves, and seeing others not make the effort to learn/use those rules makes us feel like our efforts are being wasted. We deeply feel that learning the rules are important, and seeing someone not use the rules is a sign of ignorance, unintentional or otherwise, so we feel we are helping the offending party by informing them of the proper method for which they should communicate their ideas. More testing is needed.
Words can mean different things in different contexts. A link to a computer scientist, especially a web designer, is different from a URL. In everyday context, you'd be crazy (i.e. totally oblivious) to try to make the distinction.
Same with "hypothesis" and many other terms used in science or other fields.
Well english is my second language. I dont really mind when people make grammatical errors but there are few that needs to be corrected. For example "were/we're", "they/them", "your/you/you're" etc. It's annoying! Well im not that good too, but I just hate these particular mistakes (dont know why). Maybe because these are the simplest things we learnt back in school and yet some couldnt differentiate it (even native speakers). But idc much now, i guess. Live you life. Oopps. live your life.
I only do it when they try to say something like evolution is only a theory.
"seeing someone not use the rules is a sign of ignorance, unintentional or otherwise, so we feel we are helping the offending party by informing them of the proper method for which they should communicate their ideas"
It's just... extremely arrogant to tell other people that the way they speak *their own language* is wrong. To assume that a standard variety is the only "correct" way to speak, that people don't "follow the rules" out of ignorance and not because learning another dialect is hard, and that whatever someone has to say is only valid if they follow the "proper method".
@@Byakurenfan fr, people have used theory wrong for such a long time that they dont know what it actually means
8:35 Wait. Say that again! The part about, "If the point of language is to facilitate understanding and form social bonds"
After she used the "litterally" in the last video, I totally laughed. 🤣🤣
this is why i say perfect grammar is only necessary in academic and professional settings, and that anywhere else the only requirement is that i know what the other person is trying to say.
I don't remember what was the issue exactly, but once at my job (We speak spanish) someone was trying to convince us to use a certain word with the classic "The RAE says is this" and an actual Spaniard from Spain yelling back "The RAE can *** itself, they don't make the rules of language" which until this day to me is hilarious
I still think their are times when there valid in correcting people and they're mistakes
Its their not they're. That's as far as grammar police will go. I still dont know why so i start using their in all cases.
Lolololol
English is a language we only use in school, some work and online. My grammar is far from perfect but I am glad I don't see a lot of these grammar police in recent years. Usually, when I see them, it's when they try to pick apart an argument that isn't grammar related by using their grammar policing as a distraction, to appear funny, or just because they have nothing to relevant to add to the argument.
"You're grammar is terrible, therefore your argument and opinion is wrong :)" These people say, as they have no argument anymore so they try to make people feel shitty for not having the best grammar ever conceived :|
In Finland, the grammar police usually attack and intervenes in the conversation when a dialect or colloquial language of Finnish is used instead of the written language and standard language of Finnish, but the problem that the grammar police don't understand is that the written language and standard language of Finnish are artificial and too stiff and clumsy to use when speaking and that dialects and colloquialisms are not faulty or corrupt language that should be corrected.
I've definitely been warming up the idea of linguistic descriptivism over the years - language is bound to change, and it is more interesting and practical to observe its evolution than to keep it in stasis forever, and clarity of communication should be valued as the primary factor of language. Rules like "no split infinitives" don't really improve clarity of communication.
However, I can't help but be bothered when words/expressions change to mean their exact opposite. I have a really hard time accepting the modern usage of the word "literally", as it actually disturbs clarity of communication. I appreciate the original meaning of the term, e.g. "I went on a ziplining trip - it was tough at first, but I hung in there, literally" as opposed to the modern usage, e.g. "the job interview was tough, but I hung in there, literally". The modern usage as a generic intensifier has diminished the original meaning of the word, to the point where you will often have to ask to be sure about whether they are being literal or not - and isn't the first example more interesting? Where the word has a unique meaning, and is not just a generic intensifier that could be replaced with "really"?
The same goes for "I could care less". I know that everyone who uses this form actually mean that they couldn't care less, but it is confusing to someone who has never heard this usage before, as the expression makes no sense if you try to interpret its meaning.
Hi, Linguist here! Let's do a fun exercise: let's 'really' think about what the intensifiers "really", "truly" and "ver(il)y" originally meant, in their literal forms ;)
@@phirion6341 I know that they used to have more concrete meanings and weren't just "generic" intensifiers, but at least they didn't change to mean the exact opposite
@@mandel94 But "literally" didn't change to mean the opposite, did it? You don't use "literally" to mean "figuratively" (try switching these in your example), you use it as another intensifier similar to "really". And the original sense is still there if you need to use it, so the polysemy doesn't really impede communication imo.
God, I hate the misuse of 'literally' too!
Poor vocabulary offends me more than poor grammar.
It just makes more sense with what is real vs tha fantasy in prescriptivists heads.
I speak my English the way I learned, then years later I found out I was speaking Texas English all along
i'm not a grammar cop but i do wish people use " their they're there" correctly
I *literally* laughed out loud when I saw that last blooper. 😆
Tell this to the french (primarily in Paris) regarding francophones in other regions of the world lol
I've tried.
For all my best intentions, I've found you can't teach the French anything about how to teach French.
I generally try to avoid correcting others' grammar precisely because it can be seen as elitist, grammar rules are there for clarity and as long as the person's speech is clear it shouldn't matter.
I only make an exception when it comes to major gaffs such as misused (or misheard) words, e.g. when one mistakes "could've" with "could of" because "could of" (which i was guilty of once-upon-a-time years ago and I'm glad to have corrected it). Same goes for misheard phrases such as "for all intense and purposes" (it's: 'intents and purposes'). These aren't so much broken rules but just outright words that are out of place. Even then I always try to do it as gently as possible (and if it's absolutely necessary).
I also hope this channel does a follow-up on generation differences in expression. There is a sedimentary difference in certain speech patterns between Millennials and non-Millenials. For example, I grew up saying/hearing: "by accident" -- as in "I broke the table leg by accident" but I've noticed that people 10 or more years younger than me now say "on accident" which just doesn't sound right to me but neither one is technically wrong. I'm curious how this change in language happened.
My brain understands that descriptivism is the academically appropriate approach to analyzing and understanding language use; however, my ears and heart are still frequently pained upon hearing certain patterns in modern spoken English which cause me to cringe as involuntarily as one would upon hearing nails against the chalkboard. In my effort to reconcile my brain with my ears and heart, I only ask my absolute closest friends, with whom I spend the most time, to please be mindful of these few pet peeves, and I just bite my tongue the rest of the time.
I also happen to live in a foreign country with a foreign language as of 15 yrs, and I even teach this language to native English speakers, so I have much empathy for people speaking a foreign language and how difficult it can be to always get the grammar right - I myself make small mistakes every day, even after working in this language for nearly 25 yrs! I tell all of my students that the most important objective is to communicate - and this can be achieved with broken grammar and hand waving if needed!
So, I'm aware of the dichotomy that exists within me...And I hope to one day be able to desensitized my involuntary cringe at my certain pet peeves (and yes, I have a few I've developed for my 2nd language too haha).
Thank you for your well-produced segment and humble reminder to lean more heavily into descriptivism!
Ah if only schools could of gotten used to it.
Language is a bit like the pirate code in pirates of the Caribbean, its more of a set of guidelines than a code per say 🤣
Wow. I literally was just corrected by the grammar police about 20 minutes before this video popped up in my feed. I'm saving this one to my favorites.
So... Which word crime were you guilty of? 😜
Wow! Not wow.
I think you meant figuratively.
@@MondeSerenaWilliams Not if it really was just 20 minutes before.
Loved the video. But we all have our quirks. I often communicate ironically/sarcastically, but using "literally" to mean "figuratively" sticks in my craw; I keep silent, but inwardly fume, and may be distracted from what is being said (as in, if recorded, needing to replay). I also quietly accept comments that someone my age should not be sarcastic (however phrased). We all have our quirks.
What other possible word could us "literally" users say, though? 😕 The fact that it's so... natural should speak to how useful it is.
@@RosheenQuynh correct word? Figuratively. Suitable word to express the point? Virtually, basically, almost.
The thing is that when "literally" is used as a hyperbole, I have never experienced a time when everyone wasn't able to pick up on the cue that it was being used hyperbolically.
@@mathewfinch 🤔 Fascinating
@@gregoryford2532 She didn't say "I _literally_ inwardly fume". The problem isn't with metaphors, it's with the _literal_ 😉reversal of the meaning of the word "literally". Yes, it's happened with other words, but that doesn't mean we have to like it.
The problem with never correcting anyone's grammar is that grammar can sometimes get so bad it obscures what is meant. In such cases, I think a correction should be pointed out.
No, that's just called the natural evolution of language. If someone is regularly being misunderstood, they'll pick up on that and change, or, if a large enough group of people speak the same as them that they're usually understood perfectly fine, that's just a dialect!
Every region has slightly different rules for grammar, things change over time. If they didn't, we'd all still be speaking proto Indo European, a language so old we don't even know what it sounded like
@@ellie8272 dhjsjsnsnannd iwbwbaghfie sjnsbww w
There you have to coddle me now and say I'm advancing language
@@ellie8272 you just gave a canned answer where it doesn’t apply. If a code cannot be decoded, then it’s bad code. If it works, then we can discuss its stylistic or sociological traits.
@@krokovay.marcell If you can correct someone's grammar, then you knew what they were trying to say.
you cant correct something you dont understand
also, if someone wants to speak with someone but is never understood, they'll either learn or not speak to you
there are cases where dilects get so bad that they're basically a different language
"Everyone but she won an award?" People find this to be natural? I find this very hard to believe.
I do ask people to correct my grammar because I personally want and like using more formal speech in many cases (although I am not going to talk to my friends as in the same wat I would write a scientific paper).
In my opinion language is a bit similar to D&D, there are official rules and they have a purpose and it is very useful to know them but ultimately you should be allowed to modify the way you use them to what is working best when you are having a session with your friends.
And most importantly: those rules might change over time, and that is perfectly fine.
Ooh, the language and DND comparison is amazing and I’m keeping that in my back pocket
My pet peeve is people using abbreviations that aren't universally understood.
@@pakde8002 DND/D&D is Dungeons and Dragons. Have you been under a rock since the 80s or something?
@@Caterfree10 You're literally doing what the video talks about. Different people have different cultures/experiences and you're being low key racist.
Raciest over nowing what DND means??
my favourite response to split infinitives came from Douglas Adams, "to boldly split infinitives, where no infinitive had been split before
I have heard that "A language is a dialect with an army", although we might extend that to simply a language is a dialect with a power base.
This has nothing to do with grammar, but if I hear somebody say 'I could care less' or 'a whole another' or say 'instance' when they mean 'incident', I'm correcting.
"I could care less" is a statement of ironic truth, in the same vein as "this is not the most asinine comment I've read today."
@@akhragee ua-cam.com/video/om7O0MFkmpw/v-deo.html
Proud grammar cop here. I just don’t associate with stupid people.
I'm a native English speaker but spent most of my life outside North America and consistently defend people who say "oh, my English isn't so good". Like, it's not you, bud. English is a hopped up trade language McGuyver'd together from multiple other languages and most of our grammar is just ducttape. If I understood you, we're cool. And I never jump in with a correction unless someone asks me how to say something.
7:00 I think this is because her is actually correct. The full phrase would be “Everyone- having an exception of her- won an award.” Since ‘but’ is being used to modify everyone, the awardless feminine pronoun is the Object of the Noun phrase “Everyone but ___”, so the object form, her, is used.
As a native Spanish speaker, I actually do like other people correcting my grammar or orthography, because it helps me see mistakes and wrong things I didn't know.
Like "I wish I was there" it is, were? Won't has an apostrophe?, it is explosion and not explotion? So, as long if the one correcting you is polite, I think it is perfectly fine and I actually like it.
Feel free to fix any mistakes I made :)
The reason why you use “were” instead of was is because were is the past subjunctive form of to be in all conjugations
I am LITERALLY sending this to all my grammar cop friends
You forgot the dot at the end.
You have grammar cop friends?
To quote Winston Churchill, *"That is something up with which I can not put."* 😉
My favourite part about Linguistics is that you learn to accept all kinds of people, just being themselves.
I did linguistics as a major for 1 year of college before switching up. They tell you the whole descriptive vs proscriptive thing like week one. I wish more people knew that because it changed my perspective
@@Aloddff Well put and i couldn’t agree more.
Yeah agreed. Even just a 101 type of lesson as part of K-12 curricula would be useful, I think. There’s so much useful and important info that ends up only being taught in college bc k-12 only cares about standardized tests and it’s very frustrating.
well said!
Too bad Judge Roberts isn’t as big of a stickler for the Law as he is for grammar.
But...but... I'm a grammar cop. Nobody likes me?
We spend 12 years teaching kids the right way to speak and write English. Is it any surprise that some of them have trouble breaking the habit of looking for errors?
I’m from Texas, and it’s often hard for people to understand what I’m saying. I’ve slowly adopted a lot of new words and ways of speaking. I didn’t even notice it until I said “you guys” one day and I gasped.
Otherwrods is one of the best series PBS came up with. Dr. Erica, I hope that you won't get tired of doing the show. I learn so much from the show. Dr. Erica is also the best.
Man, people "correcting" the usage of literally are doing it so badly. "you mean figuratively?" No. Obivously not, did you think I meant "I'm figuratively starving to death"? clearly I didn't, no one needs to clarify they're not actually starving to death. What I'm doing is putting emphasis, like how you could say "I'm really stressed" without anyone thinking you were literally being crushed
I personally love responding to comments like "Your a idiot" with "*you're" lol
When a grammar cop says "You have bad grammer", so you hit them with the "grammar*"
This video is LITERALLY amazing.
This is the one personality of mine many, MANY friends hate. And the worse part is I can't stop it. So now I am really hesitant to tell my immediate officer that the "your here" in our office map is supposed to be "you're here". Also I feel like there is something wrong with this sentence.
Correct it with a marker 😎
@@peterpan408 I actually did days later. Nothing changed
Well, I guess I must not be either sensitive enough or spoiled enough, because I'm always thankful if someone points out a mistake in my grammar.
I find it's simple enough to get it right the first time, yeah.
I'm a little surprised you didn't cover "ain't" in this video. That was one that was a big no-no growing up, with parents and teachers.
When I proofread a document using the F7 key in Word it can be annoying. It checks not only spelling, also conciseness, formality, punctuation, and so on. Great work Erica. 👏👏
Unfortunately, whatever underlying computer magic is used to check for this fails consistently.
I'm a writing tutor, so it's my job, but only on paper. In real life, I'm not picky about it because I know how annoying it is.
I definitely agree with the general idea of this video. I have always said that grammar “rules” should really be interpreted as “style guides” with varying degrees of strictness. It is generally better to keep the verb infinitive together, but don’t do it if it makes it sound clunkier (“to boldly go where no one has gone before” does sound better than “to go, boldly, where no one has gone before”). The real purpose of grammar rules is to slow the evolution of language so that it doesn’t change too fast and doesn’t split off into 10 different languages every 100 years or so.
However, the example she gave of “Everyone but her won an award” was misleading, and a bit of a straw man argument, in my opinion. The reason “Everyone but she won an award” sounds more awkward is *not* because the subject has two components joined by a conjunction (she calls this “headless”) it’s because the conjunction in this case is the word “but.” “But” is not like “and” and “or” in that it doesn’t put its components on equal terms. With “but”, the second term is always contrasted from the first term (notice that “but” can only have 2 terms, while “and” and “or” can have as many as you like). “But” is really a synonym for “except” and “however” (I personally don’t think it should be considered a conjunction at all) and that changes the entire dynamic of that sentence. It is *not* awkward to say “Jennifer and I are going swimming” because the conjunction “and” puts both components on equal terms, unlike “but” which always excepts or excludes the second component.
Were it not for her, everyone would've won an award.
(The passive-aggressive voice strikes again.)
Both are awkward to me, so maybe you can't anecdotally say they aren't.
I think the less awkward way to say it would be: everyone except for her won an award. could work without the "for" too
@@septanine5936 I think yours is the most correct revision, for clarity purposes.
@@septanine5936 absolutely. That’s why I don’t think “but” is a really acting as conjunction here, at all: it’s really a synonym for “except”.
"One ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end."-George Orwell, _Politics and the English Language_
When I was a fresh graduate, I had a colleague who would literally correct everything I said in English - grammar or pronunciation-. While she was a good friend of mine, I felt so embarrased to the point of I stopped speaking English with her at all. Fast forward several years, I won a scholarship to United States and had an internship as a journalist. I was surprised to find out native speakers didn't care about the mistakes as long as they could understand me. Those experiences boost my confidence as well as my skill.
The funny thing is after I've returned to my country, my so called 'grammar cop' colleague lost her confidence in English. She kept asking me to check on her grammar even though I told her that those mistakes were insignificant.
While I really appreciate people who point out my grammar mistakes, being corrected all the time is frustrating. Now, as an ESL teacher, I've learned to not embarrass my students while correcting them.
I don't police how people talk 1:21, I police how people speak LOL
amazing informative and entertaining video, as always keep up the fantastic work y'all ^^
In 1990 my college philosophy professor dropped that Captain Kirk correction of to go boldly and every time I watch the show I think about the sequence of the words.
The problem with "to go boldly" is that it changes the emphasis in how the phrase is performed. Assuming the same pause is placed in the middle of the two halves of the phrase that would put the emphasis on "boldly", but the vocal emphasis is on "go" instead because it's more important to say what they are doing than how they are doing it.
A rephrasing that keeps the same emphasis would be something like "Boldly, we *go*...where no man has gone before".
The point is cadence is often more important than order of phrasing.
@@BonaparteBardithion Right! It's basically a poem, so it's a bit pedantic to gripe about word order. Somebody get Whitman on the phone!
"Gonna miss ya, broski" sounds like a pretty great eulogy to me!
Excellent video, there is no right or wrong English, just different ways of talking and it needs to be respected.
I can get behind all of that except the "literally" issue. It just means its opposite now. Also, it is not a good idea for "inflammable" to mean "flammable."
As far as I know, non native speakers tend to use more the gramatically correct but clunky version of a sentence more than the contraption or mistaken one, because we learned to master the language perfectly, it being our second one. So basically, non native speakers of any language would be better than the natives themselves! 😂
Something I'm constantly corrected on is my singular use of the word data. I will regularly construct phrases like the "The data shows" and "the data is" indicating a singular body called data. I'm constantly told that Data is in fact plural, and I should say "The data show," and "The data are."
Growing up everyone around me used singular constructions for the word data, but I feel like around 2005, or 2010 I suddenly saw a discussion online about the proper verb conjugations to be used along side the noun data. I think at the time that I saw these discussions explaining that the Latin word data was the plural form of datum.
My first thought when I get corrected is, "just because that's how Latin worked, doesn't mean it works the same way in English." Also no one describes "a datum point" but they will say "a data point" which is a singular construction so whatever.
I think it's not plural exactly, but an uncountable noun; similar to water, sand, money and news.
The only grammar mistakes that get under my skin are the 'artificial' ones, like using "myself" instead of me, or "utilize" instead of use
This happens specifically in business language, but since middle class white guys say it, no one calls them on their crap
People don't really talk like that. It's just the speaker trying, and failing, to sound more intelligent than they really are.
Unless someone can make a >really< good argument why it should be allowed, this is a hill I'm willing to die on.
Utilize is perfectly synonymous with use, though I understand (and also laugh at) the first error you pointed out. Pretentiousness doesn't mean it's incorrect, just annoying 🙂
anticipate
Use could be 'yooze' or 'yoos'.
I specificity is needed, avoid use.
I totes got a jobby job in part when I made one of the interviewers laugh with a very local colloquialism I grew up with and then proceeded to say the projects i was genuinely most interested in. She was engaged enough to really listen.
It is very cool that we have so many tools to record language and see how it changes.
I learned english as a second language and was taught it as a 'foreign' language. Language taught that way is a simplified less nuanced version of it. At this point in my life it's my dominant language, it's the one I use to read and write. It organically became more complex and nuanced for me, some topics I only know well enough in english and cannot articulate well in my native language. But nuances of grammar AND punctuation are well over my head to pick up as an adult, because those were not taught to me at a time where they would organically stick. My native language grammar (one also notoriously snobbish for being used correctly or *else*) is equally bad, I was never great at it to begin with and used english early on as my 'playground', getting more information than provided in a textbook by feel, and always made a sport out of picking up on how people culture code it. It doesn't upset me to be corrected, but more often than not - they are correcting an intentional play :)
It's interesting how my much younger brother, who moved to an english speaking country at only 4 yrs old, also struggles at school. His english (absolutely a dominant language, he doesn't know how to read in our mother tongue at all) is simply 'not rich enough' for his teachers and it's really baffling to fix. Even if he chooses to speak it at home - the environment is not native and unless school can teach him, there's only so much that can be done about his experience. It feels unfair.