Yubel wrote:Rocsteady wrote:Yubel wrote:site23 wrote:Yubel wrote:False wrote:my favourite old man thing is people forgetting that any language is a constantly evolving construct that people add to and remove from to suit their cultural requirements
So why aren't English teachers today teaching kids that 'doggo' and puppers' are synonyms for dogs and puppies? Why aren't
they adapting to this contently 'evolving' landscape? EDIT: if this is actually being taught in schools across the country, strawberry floating shoot me.
It's fine if you don't like slang words, but they're still a real part of language. Every subculture is constantly inventing new words or alternate meanings. Words you associate with young people aren't inherently sillier than our or any other generation's slang - there's no reason to get annoyed if you overhear a slang word you don't recognise.
If these evolutions of our language became as standard as being taught in schools and used in all manner of professional disciplines, I'd be more accepting of it. Deep down though, as a bit of a lingual purist - although I do sometimes adopt slang just to adapt in certain situations - it does irk me a bit...not gonna lie, literally 100% like.
What genuinely
does annoy me is folk who come at me with slang and then get defensive/frustrated toward me for making things awkward as I try to decipher what is is they're trying to convey. There's definitely some wriggle room to be had on both sides of this debate imo.
Can you not understand it from context though? There can't be that many encounters where you genuinely don't know what the person means.
Also I'm not sure the lingual purist argument works since the language is constantly evolving. Purist from when?
All I expect is to get through life with the way I was taught how to read, write and spell. Communication is fundamental and so, despite the evolving landscape, there shouldn't be any newly emerging barriers to that. Language =/=politics.
I understand your frustration to some extent but you cannot expect that at all. Fundamentally both these things havent
really changed, but especially in reference to casual speaking this will inevitably evolve and that's ok, because stagnancy would be the death of culture. The languages that do not change are either dead, like latin; or scriptural, like forms of arabic, aramaic, and sanscrit. A language that changes little would indicate a culture of isolationism and conservatism (arabic to some extent is the latter depeneding on who you ask), but even then it would still exhibit changes over human time. But it's also ok to not fully adapt to all of the changes; there's nothing forcing you to outside of a need to sometimes understand some slang people around you will use.
Even if a lot of this stuff isn't taught in schools now it inevitably will be in 50 years or so because evolution is fundamental to culture and life as a whole. Thus being a linguistic purist ideologically, outside of certain contexts like the way you personally speak, carries little value as it flies in the face of the human reality, a reality which I would describe as a positive aspect of our being.
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