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Linguistic Perscriptivists
(mander.xyz)
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
You don't consider the simplification of Chinese "language", nor the ordering of Nynorsk, or the creation of the Korean alphabet.
You don't think the efforts of thousands of teachers across a nation teaching the language prescriptively according to the designs of the state constitutes language. You seem to consider it forceful meddling in a natural evolution that should be left to just do what it does, unrestrained and undisturbed by judgmental nerds.
There are some cases in history where academic writing (seen in government and religious documents) differs so greatly from the actual language of the people (which those very same government employees and clergy use when outside of their professional environments) that the two languages are more like distant cousins.
Of course, it's the popular language which evolves into the language of today, while leaving the ancient, once "proper" language behind where it belongs.
And then, that region's language prescriptivists of today say that the version they were taught is the right one, all over again ๐