On the battle between purists and non-purists… http://forum.richarddawkins.net/viewtopic.php?p=1792244#p1792244

Whatever people say, in a way we’re all sticklers! To a great extent it is ingrained in us to stick to arbitrary language rules and to see to it that they’re preserved.

As anyone who has children can attest to, we will automatically and relentlessly correct whatever strikes us as unconventional speech. Just consider how irregular verbs have persisted through the ages. If a child says “I sleeped” or “I thinked”, nobody is going to think “That’s cool and far more logical than ‘slept’ and ‘thought’. Languages are supposed to evolve anyway, so I don’t see the point in correcting him.”

There is probably a good evolutionary reason for this instinctive reflex to correct children and for our interest in observing the prevailing usage in our given environment (such as preventing the hostility that a group might feel towards a person whose behavior is perceived as foreign or unfamiliar, for instance).

The degree of fastidiousness in this matter is usually commensurate with the extent of the knowledge that people have (or think they have) about the conventions, traditions or standards of the language. If, for example, you remark that “disinterested” is not at all the same as “uninterested”, whoever is not aware of the difference might react by thinking or saying “Oh well, get over it, languages are supposed to evolve, after all”. But that very same person would likely react quite differently if the convention being broken were thoroughly familiar to him.

So probably people whose knowledge of the language is limited tend to expedite its evolution the most—at least as far as changes that we may regard as gratuitous or arbitrary are concerned. Now an altogether different type of evolution takes place when a useful neologism is introduced, or when a word acquires a new meaning that enriches our means of expression, or even when a new syntactic twist appears to be more intuitively right or easier to handle than its prior version. I’d say that it’s OK to frown upon the former type of language evolution and generally OK to welcome the latter.

I think a good reason to challenge changes that don’t enrich the language in any way (let alone those that impoverish it) is that the faster the language changes the narrower the period whose literature and written word in general we can easily understand. Wouldn’t it be wholly regrettable if, say, two generations from now Dickens became as difficult as Shakespeare is today (which would mean that Shakespeare would in turn become virtually incomprehensible)? For the same reason, even what could be seen as sensible and useful reforms or developments, such as a more logical spelling, should be very carefully weighed, as a tradeoff is always involved.

On the upside, never before has such a large portion of the population had access to basic education. Then there’s the ever-shrinking world that modern technology brings about (which is likely to impede the development of excessive regionalisms—or even to dilute existing ones—, and to make the “speciation” of languages increasingly improbable). And finally, intrusive but welcome software corrects our spelling as we type, and, when in doubt about standard usage or grammar rules, Google can in seconds elucidate the most intricate linguistic conundrums. All of which should help to keep the language fairly homogeneous and to prevent it from unnecessarily evolving too fast—or is that fastly?

I completely agree that language is a living organism and that you should adapt and keep up to date. I love my mother tongue (lovely phrase) language but I fear my English has deteriorated (as has my spelling) and I don’t even speak great Italian because my Italian husband prefers to speak English… I live in a linguistic twilight zone…and have fallen prey to the Anglicization of Italian words and vice versa…oh dear…not much hope for me….and to think I was a Lit grad once upon a time…!

Yours linguistically frustrated but a great lover of the sumptuousness of language!

Dianski

English is not my mother tongue, as it can be perhaps understood from the way I express myself in this language. I’m Estonian so all my knowledge of the English language has come from classrooms, movies and some books I’ve managed to read. I do not think that there is a ‘proper’ English language, but I do immensely enjoy listening to the way you, for instance, speak, the accent you have. I would love to be capable of speaking like that, but unfortunately my English has more of an American sound to it than British. Oh well, I can’t change my cultural background, as much as I would sometimes like to.
Thank you, as always, for an intellectual read.

Yes, I am one of those people who snickers at misplaced apostrophes, who winces at phrases like “between he and I,” who cares deeply about the pronunciation of “nuclear.” One of *those people*–those you’ve lambasted here as killjoys who don’t truly care about language, but only about being right–your premise apparently being that if we truly loved the language and felt any sort of joy in it, we wouldn’t waste our time picking at linguistic nits. To be frank, this accusation wounded me to the quick, particularly coming from someone like you, whom I’ve always looked on as rather a kindred spirit–someone to whom language is at once a marvelous plaything, a noble cause, and a trusted friend.

With all due respect, Mr. Fry, it’s precisely because I *do* love language in general and the English language in particular, and I *do* take joy in it, that it bothers me so much to hear it mauled about. Yes, yes, I understand that language is constantly evolving, and it’s not merely futile but counterproductive to try and keep it fixed at some arbitary point in its development that we’ve decided is more “correct” in its conventions than any other. But the language as it is right now, this minute, does have its conventions, and those who wantonly disregard them, to me, come across as disrespectful. Disrespectful to me, the listener, and also to the language itself. It hurts me, almost physically, when people spell everything phonetically and shove their punctuation marks in anyhow as if it didn’t really matter. It’s got nothing to do with clarity; usually (though not always) the meaning is more or less discernible under all the layers of rubbish. But as you pointed out yourself, language is far more than just a means of communication. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate” means roughly the same thing as “Gee, you’re cute,” but the way it’s said makes a difference.

Sure, you could argue that as long as the meaning comes across, it shouldn’t matter whether the conventions are observed. By the same token, you could argue that there’s nothing wrong with showing up to work in your pajamas, because they serve all the essential functions of clothing (keeping you warm and covering what you’d rather not show). But as you noted yourself, to do so would be inconsiderate, would imply “not caring.” And to my mind, using “infer” in place of “imply” (a specific example you cite as an inconsequential nit that people like me can’t resist picking) has just that same aura of laziness. “Yeah, infer, imply, whatever. I know there’s some difference between the two, but I can’t be bothered to remember what it is. I’ll just use whichever one I feel like at the time. People will know what I mean anyway, so who cares?”

Well, I care. I find this kind of linguistic sloppiness downright offensive. I think a glorious, rich, creamy, fattening language like English deserves more than a shrug of the shoulders and an “Oh, you know what I mean.” Yes, and I may know that my husband loves me, too, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care whether or not he says it in no uncertain terms.

And incidentally, the reason I object in so many cases to turning nouns into verbs is that usually there are already perfectly good verbs that mean the same thing. To use “impacted” when you mean “affected” strikes me as sheer bureau-corporate pretentiousness.

And now I must be off for my nightly ritual of sucking down prune juice and sneering at the local greengrocer.