It's not actually descriptivist versus prescriptivist, but crypto-prescriptivist versus prescriptivist. The way that so many people prescribe while pretending to oppose prescriptivism is a recurring absurdity, and can also be found outside of linguistic conflict. A real descriptivist has no objection to prescriptivism as such, and an open prescriptivist has no objection to real descriptivism.
Nah, your problem is you are an asshole
Nope. You're simply one of the aforementioned belligerent ignoramuses.
Your case fails, because the purpose of language isn't to communicate just the thought at hand, but thoughts that will follow it over years to come. What merely suffices to communicate the thought at hand can undermine our ability to communicate other thoughts later. The folk who argue for care are rarely thoughtless traditionalists, and far more often people who want the tools of communication to be as effective as possible.
Please stop talking down to me. I do my best to remain polite.
Yeah, you're right that there's a difference between a rule becoming old and a rule becoming outdated. For example, the rule "sentences about the past should put the verb in past tense" is very old, dating back all the way to the beginning of the English language and even before, but it's no less true today than it was a thousand years ago. Meanwhile some other rules, such as "use the pronouns thou/thee when referring to a single person that you're talking to" have fallen by the wayside.
Unfortunately I don't think there's a way to filter results on Google Ngram to limit to only works written by native English speakers. I don't think it matters though. Most of the time, if people read a book, they're not usually thinking about whether the author is a native English speaker - they pick up on new words, grammar patterns from them all the same. Also, people expect the English found in books to be correct, and will generally consider text found in books to be correct English, so I think the collection of text from books that Google Ngram uses works as a measure on what people would consider to be correct.
The word "proper" can have different meanings when used in different contexts or by different speakers. Some may use it simply to mean "correct". But in other cases, it seems to be referring more to "proper" in the sense of the phrase "proper English" - the higher-register form of the English language, used most in more formal contexts and books. (Though many books that are less "high literature" will often use more casual forms and expressions that people might not consider "proper".) I think that most people would agree that what sounds natural might not be "proper", but I stand by my assertion that what sounds natural is what is correct.
YMMV, as they say. I have seen many of constructions very alien to the practices of native speakers become fashionable in scanlations.
No, your first reaction, before any comment, was to deliver a community strike.
So you're falsifying the history of discussion, and I'm supposed to read the revision and start over. Not gonna happen.
You need to read about a construction called “the historic[al] present tense”. What you blithely call a rule isn't quite, and never has been.
That's not quite right either. The forms “thou”, “thy”/“thine”, and “thee” were familiar. Using them with a person of notably high social standing would have had unpleasant consequences.
Then please stop pretending to a insightfulness and competence that you don't have.
That claim is, at best, misleading, depending on how one interprets it in the absence of logical quantifiers.
That view is uninformed. Lexicographers often push some prescriptive agenda; recent, perverse illustrations were provided by Merriam-Webster. While dictionaries such as the OED simply try to report observed use in work printed in the British isles, dictionaries have more typically looked to the use of a narrower class of writers. The AHD has been quite explicit about that practice; others haven't felt a need to explain what they were doing, even as they did it. No handbook of style simply reports common practice, though linguistic studies try to do so.
There isn't.
It matters on your prior assumption that the common practices of native speaker are the determinant of proper use.
Not quite. If an Anglophone reads of a tourist or immigrant using an expression, the Anglophone doesn't typically take that to be acceptable practice. And, no, the Ngram viewer isn't going to help you with that problem, either.
You could have made that point with far less verbosity. In any case, you are raising a point about style, and I've already said that I didn't want to burden the scanlators with issues merely of style.
As I noted
I know how you feel: I saw "anyhow" replacing "anyway" , and people pronouncing it "anywho" ...
To clarify for anyone else reading, this refers to me adding a "strike" reaction to his initial comment. I didn't try to report Oeconomist's comment or get it taken down.
I've added the original version of my comment below now, to preserve a record. I've also highlighted what I changed in green so you don't have to read the entire essay again.
Perhaps I should revise my use of the word "native", and replace it with "proficient" instead then. After all, it's undeniable that non-native speakers of English can have a huge impact on the language, whether it be through loanwords or new turns of phrase.
Good point, most dictionaries don't document all usage, and aim to cover the "proper", higher, registers of English more than the casual, informal English that most people use in their day-to-day life. So when the Longman dictionary discourages a certain usage, it is for those who aim to write in "proper English", rather than those who want to use the word or phrase in the same way that others would.
At first I thought this was ridiculous (don't all second-language teachers recommend speaking with native speakers to get better at the language?), but now I realise that you mean "proper" in the sense of "proper English" here too. In that case, I think it's quite reasonable to expect that someone who only uses English in casual contexts (like most conversations) wouldn't be as accurate or familiar when using a higher register of English.
Yes, that's right. The point of the paragraph that you were quoting from is that "proper English" is just one of many styles of English, and that something not being "proper" doesn't mean that it isn't correct. Indeed, if you had said that "recommend me a book" was improper, rather than incorrect, I'd be inclined to agree with you given the evidence (that one dictionary entry) you provided.
If you don't want to burden the scanlators with issues of style, then why do you propose a change that differs not in being more correct, but merely in being in the style of proper English?
Your question willfully misinterprets my use of “proper”, which I have explained clearly, with a different use. And that willful misinterpretation is to sophistically beg the question. My concern was exactly for correct use of the verb “recommend”, which you don't know because you blithely assume that you just picked-up proper use by social osmosis.
That begs a different question. Nothing is learned from the idea that proficient people are proficient. I return to my question:
and, in the face of your revision, ask What share of the use that you identify was by proficient speakers or writers? What you implicitly claim to be evidence is no such thing. What you explicitly claimed to be evident is no such thing.
After reading everything you've said, I honestly think you're just trying to agitate people here. It's no longer about language and writing for you. Everyone who's spoken here is perfectly understandable but they all use language in different ways. Why continue to be nitpicky on a forum about a romance fantasy manga to this extent? Aren't you also here to enjoy the manga? Also, without "non-native speakers", you wouldn't be able to read this manga in English...
Sorry I misinterpreted what you meant by "proper", please disregard everything past the fourth paragraph in my last comment. From now on I'll assume you use it interchangeably with "correct". If instead you use it to mean some other, third thing, please clarify what it is exactly you mean when you use the word "proper".
Not exactly. Replacing "native" with "proficient" yields (I'm using your summary of the point I was making here, which I think is accurate once you replace "proper" with "correct") "the common practice of proficient speakers are the determinant of correct use". That's not a tautology - for example, it implies that it isn't dictionaries or style guides that determine correct use.
Let me readdress this point then, under the interpretation that "proper use" means "correct use". As I alluded to in my previous comment, I think this is ridiculous.
My initial judgement of the usage of "recommend" was based on nothing but whether it "sounded right" to me. However, please note the way I phrased my comment:
This is basically impossible to answer, not least because we haven't even clarified what it means to be a proficient speaker. Actually, I stumbled upon another thread here https://english.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8015/how-reliable-is-google-ngram about the reliability of the data, though they have different concerns to yours.
"recommend to me" vs "recommend me" on Google and looked at the first 20 results.
Wah, everyone but me is a stupid idiot!
It may be useful to highlight which mistake you are referring to. The chapter is filled with awkward phrasing and grammar issues. It may also be helpful to cut out jargon. I don't think non-native English speakers would know what "vocatives" and "inner/outer accusatives" are.
