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There is no such thing as improper use. There is only real language as spoken by native speakers.
No fancy-pants academician has the right to dictate to people what is wrong and what is right.
Eiyuu to Kenja no Tensei Kon ~Katsute no Koutekishu to Kon'yakushite Saikyou Fuufu ni Narimashita~ - Vol. 3 Ch. 13 - The princess challenges The Hero…
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No fancy-pants academician has the right to dictate to people what is wrong and what is right.
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For anyone wondering where the linguistic sidequest going on came from, I'm fairly certain that the offending section of the chapter is on Page 37 (The other image is from the online version of the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English):
Oeconomist is noting this improper usage (improper based on the formal usage and grammar rules as prescribed), however simultaneously only provided inherently different examples of improper usage (as they were each written with the speaker as the one being recommended), making it harder to follow their point in making the comment
The simplest fix here would be as follows:
(although I personally dislike this, it is the proper usage (descriptive linguistics my beloved))
Also, if we're already going to be pedants anyway, "that's" is a contraction of "that is," meaning the first sentence reads "that is also Chris!" Given that they are speaking about a past event, this should also be changed, providing us with the following end result:
After making this comment, I realized that you can also just remove "her" entirely, like this:
This is by far the best one imo
Oeconomist is noting this improper usage (improper based on the formal usage and grammar rules as prescribed), however simultaneously only provided inherently different examples of improper usage (as they were each written with the speaker as the one being recommended), making it harder to follow their point in making the comment
The simplest fix here would be as follows:
(although I personally dislike this, it is the proper usage (descriptive linguistics my beloved))
Also, if we're already going to be pedants anyway, "that's" is a contraction of "that is," meaning the first sentence reads "that is also Chris!" Given that they are speaking about a past event, this should also be changed, providing us with the following end result:
After making this comment, I realized that you can also just remove "her" entirely, like this:
This is by far the best one imo
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You can spent all your magic? So it didn't regenerate over time? Well,.next chap would probably answer my question.
God fucking damn it can I never escape??
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Your confusion of commonality with correctness leads you to errors in both of two directions. Errors may be common, and forms may be correct yet uncommon. I noted at the outset that two of the correct forms were unusual. All that you've exhibited is that one form is less common than an error.
Scanlators should only use common errors exactly when translating the dialogue of characters to whom errors would be fitting.
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My problem is incompetent folk jumping-in to fuck things up when I try to help-out translators, and then belligerent ignoramuses getting work-up at anyone caring about stuff that they don't know.
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Nope. Language is usable exactly and only because rules make it interpretable.
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You made things needlessly difficult by acting like a stuck-up cunt, but nobody's perfect ¯\(ツ)/¯
It sounds like you're being pedantic for the sake of being pedantic; languages are fluid things that evolve as the cultures of those who speak it evolve. This includes those native speakers as well as those who are not native speakers. People invent new uses for words that get added to modern dictionaries all the time. Foreign words get added to a language all the time. Rather than calling out something for being grammatically incorrect, it's generally more helpful to phrase it in terms of sounding awkward.
Combine that with you calling out non-native speakers, you sound absolutely zenophobic. The fact that you keep handling any criticism really poorly, you sound like you sound like an arrogant prick rather than trying to actually help out translators.
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No, you only saw me as a stuck-up cunt because I simplly and directly told you what you did wrong, whereas you felt entitled to deference.
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Sorry for the essay, I realise that the point I'm trying to make was also said by @flannan and @Hrien but hopefully this is a little more convincing.
Another example is the rule that if you're talking about an action that happened in the past, you have to put the verb in past tense. So for example, "Yesterday I baked a cake" is correct, while "Yesterday I bake a cake" isn't (despite being perfectly understandable). I imagine both of the above "rules" I listed are blindingly obvious though, to the point that you might not even think of them as rules, but they certainly are rules that every proficient speaker of English would follow.
But where do these rules of English come from? As a native English speaker, I certainly didn't learn those rules of English grammar from a textbook or a dictionary, or a kindergarten teacher. And neither did any of my other classmates, but yet we still follow the two rules above all the time. What happened, of course, is that we learnt the rules of English as we learnt the language from our parents, our teachers, and our surroundings. (You could even say that learning the language is the same as learning the rules.) And similarly, our parents, and the people of the previous generation, they learnt English from the generation before as well. And so on, all the way back through the history of English.
Now, if none of us or our ancestors learnt English from textbooks, then how is it that our language lines up so well with the rules of grammar given in textbooks (e.g. ones for second language learners) and with the definitions given in dictionaries? Obviously, that's thinking about it the wrong way round. Rather than native speakers learning from books, it's the books that copy from the native speakers. The authors who wrote rules like "Whom is used to refer to the object of a verb" were observing how the word "whom" was used in native speech and writing.
While having a book as a reference to check the rules of grammar is often helpful, books suffer from a great flaw, which is that they cannot change with time. You see, English changes (and has changed) over time, since the English that children learn is never an exact copy of the English of their parents. This can be down to many factors, such as children wanting to sound different from the older generation to fit in better socially, or by non-native speakers carrying over features from their native language. Language change occurs even for scholarly English - try comparing a paper written now to one written 100 years ago. A book on grammar will be unable to adapt to changes in what is considered correct usage. (As an example, did you know that 300 years ago, "it's" (with an apostrophe) was considered the correct way to write the possessive form of "it"! See https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2022/11/it-is-or-it-has.html . It even lists a few examples of grammar guides that prescribe "it's" over "its".)
Nevertheless, there are many who follow the rules that dictionaries and grammar guides give, even as the rules become older and older. Eventually, some rules find themselves restricted to fewer and fewer contexts, until they are only used by the most formal or pedantic. For example, the usage of "whom" is rapidly dwindling, and nowadays guides and dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster state that "it is perfectly standard to use 'who'" even in cases where "whom may be technically correct", in reflection of how it is actually used now.
The fact is that the process of researching and writing a dictionary or grammar guide is slow, so a book can never hope to be truly up-to-date, even at the moment it is first published. So the only way to truly know whether something is grammatically correct is to ask a number of native English speakers. Of course, most native English speakers are not consciously aware of all the thousands of rules that make up their understanding of the English language, so it becomes a question of whether something "sounds natural" to them.
"The cat bites the mouse" sounds natural. "Yesterday I bake a cake" doesn't sound natural. And to me, and evidently to many others from as far back as the 1800s all the way up to the current thread we're in, "Recommend me a book" sounds natural.
Edit: I've highlighted the changes I made in green. For what the original content was, please see below.
I absolutely agree that "there is no such thing as improper use" is false, and that there are rules of English. For example, there's the rule of SVO order, which says that the subject goes before the verb and the object goes after the verb in a sentence. So "The cat bites the mouse" would be correct, whereas "Bites the mouse the cat" wouldn't.
Another example is the rule that if you're talking about an action that happened in the past, you have to put the verb in past tense. So for example, "Yesterday I baked a cake" is correct, while "Yesterday I bake a cake" isn't (despite being perfectly understandable). I imagine both of the above "rules" I listed are blindingly obvious though, to the point that you might not even think of them as rules, but they certainly are rules that every proficient speaker of English would follow.
But where do these rules of English come from? As a native English speaker, I certainly didn't learn those rules of English grammar from a textbook or a dictionary, or a kindergarten teacher. And neither did any of my other classmates, but yet we still follow the two rules above all the time. What happened, of course, is that we learnt the rules of English as we learnt the language from our parents, our teachers, and our surroundings. (You could even say that learning the language is the same as learning the rules.) And similarly, our parents, and the people of the previous generation, they learnt English from the generation before as well. And so on, all the way back through the history of English.
Now, if none of us or our ancestors learnt English from textbooks, then how is it that our language lines up so well with the rules of grammar given in textbooks (e.g. ones for second language learners) and with the definitions given in dictionaries? Obviously, that's thinking about it the wrong way round. Rather than native speakers learning from books, it's the books that copy from the native speakers. The authors who wrote rules like "Whom is used to refer to the object of a verb" were observing how the word "whom" was used in native speech and writing.
While having a book as a reference to check the rules of grammar is often helpful, books suffer from a great flaw, which is that they cannot change with time. You see, English changes (and has changed) over time, since the English that children learn is never an exact copy of the English of their parents. This can be down to many factors, such as children wanting to sound different from the older generation to fit in better socially, or by non-native speakers carrying over features from their native language. Language change occurs even for scholarly English - try comparing a paper written now to one written 100 years ago. A book on grammar will be unable to adapt to changes in what is considered correct usage. (As an example, did you know that 300 years ago, "it's" (with an apostrophe) was considered the correct way to write the possessive form of "it"! See https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2022/11/it-is-or-it-has.html . It even lists a few examples of grammar guides that prescribe "it's" over "its".)
Nevertheless, there are many who follow the rules that dictionaries and grammar guides give, even as the rules become older and older. Eventually, some rules find themselves restricted to fewer and fewer contexts, until they are only used by the most formal or pedantic. For example, the usage of "whom" is rapidly dwindling, and nowadays guides and dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster state that "it is perfectly standard to use 'who'" even in cases where "whom may be technically correct", in reflection of how it is actually used now.
The fact is that the process of researching and writing a dictionary or grammar guide is slow, so a book can never hope to be truly up-to-date, even at the moment it is first published. So the only way to truly know whether something is grammatically correct is to ask a number of native English speakers. Of course, most native English speakers are not consciously aware of all the thousands of rules that make up their understanding of the English language, so it becomes a question of whether something "sounds natural" to them.
"The cat bites the mouse" sounds natural. "Yesterday I bake a cake" doesn't sound natural. And to me, and evidently to many others from as far back as the 1800s all the way up to the current thread we're in, "Recommend me a book" sounds natural.
Edit: I've highlighted the changes I made in green. For what the original content was, please see below.
Sorry for the essay, I realise that the point I'm trying to make was also said by @flannan and @Hrien but hopefully this is a little more convincing.
Another example is the rule that if you're talking about an action that happened in the past, you have to put the verb in past tense. So for example, "Yesterday I baked a cake" is correct, while "Yesterday I bake a cake" isn't (despite being perfectly understandable). I imagine both of the above "rules" I listed are blindingly obvious though, to the point that you might not even think of them as rules, but they certainly are rules that every proficient speaker of English would follow.
But where do these rules of English come from? As a native English speaker, I certainly didn't learn those rules of English grammar from a textbook or a dictionary, or a kindergarten teacher. And neither did any of my other classmates, but yet we still follow the above rules all the time. What happened, of course, is that we learnt the rules of English as we learnt the language from our parents, our teachers, and our surroundings. (You could even say that learning the language is the same as learning the rules.) And similarly, our parents, and the people of the previous generation, they learnt English from the generation before as well. And so on, all the way back through the history of English.
Now, if none of us or our ancestors learnt English from textbooks, then how is it that our language lines up so well with the rules of grammar given in textbooks (e.g. ones for second language learners) and with the definitions given in dictionaries? Obviously, that's thinking about it the wrong way round. Rather than native speakers learning from books, it's the books that copy from the native speakers. The authors who wrote rules like "Whom is used to refer to the object of a verb" were observing how the word "whom" was used in native speech and writing.
While having a book as a reference to check the rules of grammar is often helpful, books suffer from a great flaw, which is that they cannot change with time. You see, English changes (and has changed) over time, since the English that children learn is never an exact copy of the English of their parents. This can be down to many factors, such as children wanting to sound different from the older generation to fit in better socially, or by non-native speakers carrying over features from their native language. Language change occurs even for scholarly English - try comparing a paper written now to one written 100 years ago. A book on grammar will be unable to adapt to changes in what is considered correct usage. (As an example, did you know that 300 years ago, "it's" (with an apostrophe) was considered the correct way to write the possessive form of "it"! See https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2022/11/it-is-or-it-has.html . It even lists a few examples of grammar guides that prescribe "it's" over "its".)
Nevertheless, there are many who follow the rules that dictionaries and grammar guides give, even as the rules become older and older. Eventually, these rules find themselves restricted to fewer and fewer contexts, until they are only used by the most formal or pedantic. For example, the usage of "whom" is rapidly dwindling, and nowadays guides and dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster state that "it is perfectly standard to use 'who'" even in cases where "whom may be technically correct", in reflection of how it is actually used now.
The fact is that the process of researching and writing a dictionary or grammar guide is slow, so a book can never hope to be truly up-to-date, even at the moment it is first published. So the only way to truly know whether something is grammatically correct is to ask a number of native English speakers. Of course, most native English speakers are not consciously aware of all the thousands of rules that make up their understanding of the English language, so it becomes a question of whether something "sounds natural" to them.
"The cat bites the mouse" sounds natural. "Yesterday I bake a cake" doesn't sound natural. And to me, and evidently to many others from as far back as the 1800s all the way up to the current thread we're in, "Recommend me a book" sounds natural.
I absolutely agree that "there is no such thing as improper use" is false, and that there are rules of English. For example, there's the rule of SVO order, which says that the subject goes before the verb and the object goes after the verb in a sentence. So "The cat bites the mouse" would be correct, whereas "Bites the mouse the cat" wouldn't.
Another example is the rule that if you're talking about an action that happened in the past, you have to put the verb in past tense. So for example, "Yesterday I baked a cake" is correct, while "Yesterday I bake a cake" isn't (despite being perfectly understandable). I imagine both of the above "rules" I listed are blindingly obvious though, to the point that you might not even think of them as rules, but they certainly are rules that every proficient speaker of English would follow.
But where do these rules of English come from? As a native English speaker, I certainly didn't learn those rules of English grammar from a textbook or a dictionary, or a kindergarten teacher. And neither did any of my other classmates, but yet we still follow the above rules all the time. What happened, of course, is that we learnt the rules of English as we learnt the language from our parents, our teachers, and our surroundings. (You could even say that learning the language is the same as learning the rules.) And similarly, our parents, and the people of the previous generation, they learnt English from the generation before as well. And so on, all the way back through the history of English.
Now, if none of us or our ancestors learnt English from textbooks, then how is it that our language lines up so well with the rules of grammar given in textbooks (e.g. ones for second language learners) and with the definitions given in dictionaries? Obviously, that's thinking about it the wrong way round. Rather than native speakers learning from books, it's the books that copy from the native speakers. The authors who wrote rules like "Whom is used to refer to the object of a verb" were observing how the word "whom" was used in native speech and writing.
While having a book as a reference to check the rules of grammar is often helpful, books suffer from a great flaw, which is that they cannot change with time. You see, English changes (and has changed) over time, since the English that children learn is never an exact copy of the English of their parents. This can be down to many factors, such as children wanting to sound different from the older generation to fit in better socially, or by non-native speakers carrying over features from their native language. Language change occurs even for scholarly English - try comparing a paper written now to one written 100 years ago. A book on grammar will be unable to adapt to changes in what is considered correct usage. (As an example, did you know that 300 years ago, "it's" (with an apostrophe) was considered the correct way to write the possessive form of "it"! See https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2022/11/it-is-or-it-has.html . It even lists a few examples of grammar guides that prescribe "it's" over "its".)
Nevertheless, there are many who follow the rules that dictionaries and grammar guides give, even as the rules become older and older. Eventually, these rules find themselves restricted to fewer and fewer contexts, until they are only used by the most formal or pedantic. For example, the usage of "whom" is rapidly dwindling, and nowadays guides and dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster state that "it is perfectly standard to use 'who'" even in cases where "whom may be technically correct", in reflection of how it is actually used now.
The fact is that the process of researching and writing a dictionary or grammar guide is slow, so a book can never hope to be truly up-to-date, even at the moment it is first published. So the only way to truly know whether something is grammatically correct is to ask a number of native English speakers. Of course, most native English speakers are not consciously aware of all the thousands of rules that make up their understanding of the English language, so it becomes a question of whether something "sounds natural" to them.
"The cat bites the mouse" sounds natural. "Yesterday I bake a cake" doesn't sound natural. And to me, and evidently to many others from as far back as the 1800s all the way up to the current thread we're in, "Recommend me a book" sounds natural.
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Making the point that non-native speakers should not simply trust other non-native speakers isn't in the least xenophobic. I don't simpy trust speakers and writers from my own language to get matters of other languages correct either. You're just grasping for reasons to attack me personally because you dislike clarity in language and thought.
No. You simply don't like concern for making language the most effective tool that it can be.
And the process of that evolution involves both thoughtless and thoughtful activity. DIsmissing the thoughtful undermines an essential part of the process.
Now, let's watch you bomb uncontested territory as if if proves your point:
None of those points bears upon the controversy here.
Nope. Style is not grammar, and grammar forms the core of effective writing. Further, the issues of style more generally would make the whole task overwhelming to more scanlators.
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Finally, PLOT
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No, you don't. I don't know anyone who does; but people who blithely assume that they just picked-up proper use by social osmosis are especially prone to error. In your case, you immunize your belief, insisting that any person or reference that disagrees with you is mistaken.
That's not a great flaw. Books can have new editions when change is warranted.
A puffed-up pretense that someone didn't see that point is a silly affectation. More importanty, that point never carries the weight that people like you imagine.
You're confusing two concepts here. Rules becoming older is not conterminous with rules becoming outmoded. Very few people, rather than many, follow outmoded rules.
Which doesn't make their use proper. (And I note, for those who keep libelling me as xenophobic, that we find just one person here treating as authoritative the practice of native speakers as such. That person is not I.)
You appear not to know what “evident” means. What share of the use that you identify was by the native speakers to whom you point for authority?
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