You do know that you do it too, right? Even many words being spelled “correctly” and used “logically” have changed in meaningful ways. It might annoy when someone now says “I’m literally dying” after a joke, but once upon a time “incredible” meant “totally lacking credibility” and not “amazing”. Language changes. In French, you negate a verb by saying “not verb step”. Taken literally, it’s the same meaningless gibberish as “could of,” yet it’s good enough for l’Académie Française while “could of” is abhorrent? I get that it’s not how you’d like to communicate, and not how you’d like others to communicate with you, but it also isn’t inherently bad or undesirable, since clearly that is how many people communicate.
So communicate the way you prefer, and make it known that you’d prefer that. But also, don’t tell others they’re wrong for reasons that are, ultimately, just as arbitrary as theirs.
This thread isn’t /changemymind, this is “what pisses you off”.
I’ve made my reasons clear.
I don’t think you understand “arbitrary.” The process of applying standard spelling to words began in the mid-1500s, whereas how you spelled a word prior the formalization of the words in these early “dictionaries” was indeed arbitrary. The efforts to standardize English are the exact opposite of arbitrary.
You do know that you do it too, right? Even many words being spelled “correctly” and used “logically” have changed in meaningful ways. It might annoy when someone now says “I’m literally dying” after a joke, but once upon a time “incredible” meant “totally lacking credibility” and not “amazing”. Language changes. In French, you negate a verb by saying “not verb step”. Taken literally, it’s the same meaningless gibberish as “could of,” yet it’s good enough for l’Académie Française while “could of” is abhorrent? I get that it’s not how you’d like to communicate, and not how you’d like others to communicate with you, but it also isn’t inherently bad or undesirable, since clearly that is how many people communicate.
So communicate the way you prefer, and make it known that you’d prefer that. But also, don’t tell others they’re wrong for reasons that are, ultimately, just as arbitrary as theirs.
I’m not interested in a tu quoque discussion.
This thread isn’t /changemymind, this is “what pisses you off”.
I’ve made my reasons clear.
I don’t think you understand “arbitrary.” The process of applying standard spelling to words began in the mid-1500s, whereas how you spelled a word prior the formalization of the words in these early “dictionaries” was indeed arbitrary. The efforts to standardize English are the exact opposite of arbitrary.