Descriptivism and Prescriptivism

In this more rambly video, I cover the often-misunderstood concepts of descriptivism and prescriptivism; whether you approach language as something which can be 'right' or 'wrong', and how this concept extends to other areas of anthropology.
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[@twig5543]

I enjoy the rambles 😊 The discussion of prescriptivism and descriptivism is similar to a conversation I had with a teacher a long time ago about how dictionaries aren't there to dictate how we should speak - it's there to say 'this is how it was at the point of publishing'. It blew my teenage brain wide open and gave me a much deeper interest in linguistics.

[@rickrikardsson7444]

I enjoy your ramblings. Your ramblings are better thought out than most people’s essays.

[@cykkm]

Absolutely not too long or too short, your talk very precisely outlines of a set of profound philosophical topics in sociolinguistics, anthropology and epistemology of science in general. Many of them deserve an hour-long introductory lecture on their own only to understand their true depth. Your presentation is as far from rambling as it gets, it's focussed and painstakingly thought out, and your genuine and personal thinking aloud is admirable. There is no thought without a thinker this far from hard science. What a rare gem of a channel you've built! I shy away from those who make a promise to somehow explain a complex topic fully in a 15-minute video: the promise is unfulfilable from the start; a confident top-down delivery is no less than deceptive. There are indeed channels that translate hours of talks, like the UCLA IPAM institute or NASA Astrobiology conferences. Tangentially, a whole genre of rambling on for hours on end not only exists but is also quite popular. It's called "podcast". :)

[@j.s.c.4355]

It’s funny how I can’t hear the difference. I know what it is, but I don’t notice it. If you hadn’t put up the IPA, I would have been totally confused.

[@himynameisben95]

Simon makes the sound difference very subtle, I knew what he was saying but it still took me a minute to hear the difference as well

[@BuddhaofBlackpool]

Listen more cloth ears

[@AllotmentFox]

There is nothing out there in the universe but a howling void of nothing, but even if there wasn’t, whatever is there patently hasn’t intervened in human affairs. Bearing this in mind I chose the customs of my tribe: Aristotle; a nod towards Anglicanism; a small dash of socialism; the Romantic movement; British trade unionism; and tolerance and liberal democracy. I am 95% certain at any given time as to what the right thing to do is even if it turns out to be wrong later. Doubt is not a massive problem for me. You came out fighting in the first couple of minutes then changed tac. I think your beginning question comes down to questions of authenticity, and though I don’t think there are many wrong ways to speak English I believe there is such a thing as bad grammar. Or grammar that doesn’t help people communicate. I speak West Berkshire and my mate speaks East: we failed to understand each other over a place called Theale, him repeating ‘feel’ and me going, ‘what? Where?’ This is even though I sometimes say ‘somefink’ completely unconsciously.

[@williamsitnin]

What about thought and fought?

[@nsf001-3]

"Th" and "f" are indescernible auditorially and only have a difference in their origin within the mouth as well as commonly associated graphemes/digraphs. You only "hear" a difference through the context of where you expect the associated graphemes to be within a word/phrase. Say "th" and "f" in a recording then analyse the spectrum, good luck picking which is which, better than chance (aka, not just guessing), in an ABX test. At best they may be discernable by variation in other speech qualities surrounding them

[@MsWonderlicious]

You just gave me the giggles when I tried you picture you listening intently to mouse vocalisations and deeming one to be more worthy than the other 😂 Anyway, good analogy! 🙏

[@Corwin256]

I've got a prescriptivist view regarding speaking "mouse". The Latin word for mouse (and I think older English pronunciations as well) is "mus" pronounced similarly to "moose" in modern English. I have had so much fun telling my friends whenever I hear a mus(moose) scurrying about that I've decided this is the "correct" pronunciation.

[@nsf001-3]

@@Corwin256 And then there's mousse, which in English is pronounced like moose, both of which homophonous with how mouse used to be pronounced

[@yeetrepublic9142]

@@Corwin256Have you considered moving to Canada? :)

[@aag3752]

I agree with your points, Simon. I just want to add (for people who are coming to the conclusion that the rules just don't matter), they do matter. In fact, linguists make it a point to emphasize that there is such a thing as *necessary grammar*. And that it's important to get it down. For the sake of being proficient. And for the sake of being understood. That's why it's called necessary grammar, and that's an example of prescriptivism. This applies to pronunciation as well--if your pronunciation is so off that nobody can understand you, that kind of matters also. Beyond these things though, the prescriptive approach becomes less and less objective.

[@xshayahyawzi3666]

This is indeed a very important aspect for language learning. Thank you Simon for bringing it to light👍

[@aag3752]

For learning a foreign language, you DO need some prescriptivism. If you fail to follow necessary grammar, you can't become proficient.

[@xshayahyawzi3666]

@@aag3752 It really depends on whether you really wish to learn the standard language or a "dialect". In certain cases like welsh the standard language is not even understood by the common dialect speakers. It someone wishes to learn scots or orkneys dialect, for instance, learning RP based british english wont help him much. Dialects are full languages which can be learnt by outlanders regardless of the standard register if they so wish.

[@aag3752]

@@xshayahyawzi3666 Well no, it doesn't depend on that. Because I'm not talking about learning the standard dialect; I'm talking about learning any given dialect. Every dialect has grammar also. For whatever dialect you want to learn, you have to know the grammar that goes with it. When I say "necessary grammar", I'm talking about basic rules that make communication possible. One simple example is the rules of word order (SVO). This happens to be common to all English dialects. So, if I want to say that "John killed the boar", that's completely different than "The boar killed John." Violate the rule and you change the meaning. There are many other types of examples, and this is what is meant by some prescriptivism is required for learning a language.

[@xshayahyawzi3666]

@@aag3752 I agree with your point. Some prescriptive grammar in such case is indeed required.👍

[@xshayahyawzi3666]

@@aag3752 Another thing is that when we take any dialect and make a grammar book for it. We are essentially putting it in prescriptive grammar domain as you said, I did not think of it as such. Thanks for correcting me But sadly few dialect get such treatment. I fear for the west country english or shetlandic or any such dialect facing severe lack of patronage. I wish we could prepare a grammar and a lexicon for them so they atleast have a chance of survival.

[@caiusactinunwise1412]

I love this kind of a more philosophical discussion, lowkey especially since I've lately experienced such crisis of morality you just mentioned, and so I really appreciate listening to someone else's opinion on the matter. Very insightful video, as always!

[@fastmovingvolcanomatter]

This was one of the first things they taught us in my linguistics coursework, and they continued hammering it home through the whole thing. Such an important concept, really changed the way that I look not just at language but at behavior as a whole; absolutely great video.

[@kap3214]

The reason I grew up to prefer English over my own native language, is precisely because English felt so fluid and flexible, while my native language was extremely prescriptive with its “rules” prescribed by a governmental committee. I hated being told in school that something I said or written down was incorrect, even though it was a perfectly common expression used by plenty of everyday people.. It was “incorrect” just because some committee decided so!

[@enricobianchi4499]

I'll guess: are you French?

[@reasonablefacsimile]

@@enricobianchi4499 I thought the same! The country that created the word "cédérom" to avoid the corruptive influence of the English-derived acronym "CD-ROM".

[@user-om2ti8jj1f]

Interesting contemplation. Thanks for sharing it with us, Simon! It reminded me of one Zen aphorism: "Don't seek the truth; Just cease to cherish opinions."

[@klara_uferbergen5973]

Thank you for the intersting "pills of thoughts". First of all: thank you for this amazing channel. I wish it existed some 20 years ago while I was deep in linguistics and having much fun with middle English! 😅 Right or wrong in the spoken language is indeed something that comes from family, school etc. In the last few years I am thinking a lot about the acquisition of a language, seeing first hand how my kids are learning. Interestingly, my 12 years old son already has a feeling of the "right" German language he needs to speak at school, but also (new these last couple of years) of the language of "the young people on the street" or the German of the "more traditional" people who take a lot from dialect. At this moment, he has no judgement, just act and speak according the situation. I timidly think that it would be a good idea to promote the notion of registers of language instead of "right" or "wrong" pronouncing. It could increase the level of acceptance of all different social (and linguistic) varieties.

[@firefieldandfork]

Some of my favourite walks are rambles, just like some of your best videos imo!

[@MrVvulf]

I recommend the accompaniment of "Ramble On" from the 2nd studio album of Led Zeppelin.

[@Bjorn_Algiz]

Love your insight and understanding 😊 lovely way of seeing language.

[@Corwin256]

Thank you for your thoughts on this. Having come from a different discipline in my work (mental health work), my immediate thought upon hearing your last question was "empathy". I suppose this is sort of the next step beyond removing one's own opinions and prescriptions from their research. In terms of religion vs. nihilism, it's a bit easier for me to empathize because I used to be an Atheist and have since then converted to a religion. For me, I can simply use memory as a starting point to build on and I develop empathy for those of different religious/philosophical views. I've also found extended conversations with friends of different opinions to be helpful. I'm cisgender male and have exactly zero experience outside of that. Yet one of my closest friends is nonbinary, and while it took me years to even begin to grasp that experience because I have never experienced anything like it, having many extended conversations with this friend have helped me understand in a way deeper than any other cisgender people I've talked to so far. And yet the more I think about it I seem to find myself coming back to your concern which you stated. I've been an Atheist and so empathizing with that and therefore understanding an Atheist point of view and how an Atheist would operate isn't entirely difficult for me. But it's not nearly as easy with the transgender experience. I kind of went in a circle here, but I'll still post the comment just in case it's of any use to you or others. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on empathy and whether it could be helpful in anthropology.

[@whatsthatnoise5955]

I'm an ESL teacher and a lot of my students don't say "think" or "fink" they say "sink". Similarly with the word "cathedral" (they do school trips to English town and so they always have to look at the cathedrals), they often say "caTedral" or "caSedral" and I correct them to say "caTHedral" but I also say that if they find it hard to make the /th/ sound they can say "caFedral". That's because no-one in the UK says "caTedral" but some will say "caFedral" and therefore it will fit more with the way native speakers talk. That is somewhat prescriptive, but none native speakers want to learn how native speakers speak, so in a sense you have to be prescriptive when teaching, but I think it's worth broadening the range of prescriptions we give our learners.

[@abyssimus]

Same here, preschool no less. Biggest issue I have I have to say "F it" to is V being pronounced as B. F ends up being much closer than the almost aspirated B, especially in my own accent where V collapses into F if I'm speaking below a certain volume. Then there's my co-teacher having trouble with S and SH, which makes it awkward when she tells the kids to sit on the floor. Please don't, kids.

[@valq10]

The thing is, replacing th with t or s sounds very definitely foreign, but replacing it with f comes with a lot of connotations about class and region and background. As someone who naturally uses f and consciously code-switches to avoid judgement, sounding like a foreigner might have some benefits.

[@ciangannon3880]

I dare say very many Irish people in the UK say caTedral

[@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714]

"I'm an ESL teacher and a lot of my students don't say "think" or "fink" they say "sink"." Why!?! Who taught them this completely wrong way of saying it?!? "That's because no-one in the UK says "caTedral"" Oh but they do. For starters there are about a 100 000 latvieši in the UK and our word for a grand church is katerdāle. /θ/ is a germanic alaphone of what basically every other europian language will say as /t/. "so in a sense you have to be prescriptive when teaching, but I think it's worth broadening the range of prescriptions we give our learners." [wispers] - Accept american english as standard. (normal speach) - I like 20. century upper class british as much as the next guy [thinks of girlfriend] no not as much as the next guy (she finds it so attractive and arrousing shes convinced me to speak it arround her even when prity generic american is my native) but it is harder to learn cos theres just less material for imersion. So if the goal is fluency with a native accent go for american english. Also having learned english from american cartoons I think basically everyone says /kafi:drəl/ not /kaθi:drəl/ as would have been said in ages past.

[@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714]

@@abyssimus How are such people allowed to teach? If you cant distinguish s and š you should teach any language which makes this distinction.

[@eddcosterton5531]

There is a line where pronunciation becomes unintelligible, which would be the start of a new language presumably. But in an age of english being used accross the world for the purpose of interacting with each other, it is of some help to say how people should pronounce words if they want to be understood. But i agree that there is no inherent rightness or wrongness to pronunciation

[@phils2967]

The idea of grammar or pronunciation being normatively "right" and "wrong" is silly. But of course, it still makes sense to know about rules because they do, in reality, influence what your speech is signalling (your pronunciation of "think" will also transmit information). In that way they are very much real and would appear even in a purely descriptive account of language that is sufficiently detailed.

[@aag3752]

So it's not actually silly since it has an important function. Choose what you really want to say.

[@jerotoro2021]

Immediate comment from the [θɪŋk]/[fɪŋk] example: suppose someone pronounces that word [ˈtɑkoʊ]? I think everyone would universally agree that that's wrong. Why is it wrong? It's not because we understand that pronunciation to have a different meaning. It's because that pronunciation deviates too far from the agreed upon way to pronounce that word. And if something can deviate, you can assume there exists a standard from which it deviates. And since we generally accept and understand [fɪŋk] but not [ˈtɑkoʊ], there must exist a definable threshold of acceptable deviance, where a little bit of deviation is ok, but too much is not. I wonder if this acceptable range has been studied at all? Would be an interesting video.

[@edward8597]

Well, communication happens when both speaker and listener are working from agreed-upon principles. The reason why it would be "wrong" to pronounce 'think' in that manner is that (unlike /fıŋk/), there isn't another person who will understand you if you say it that way. How far we can stretch pronunciation before the listener can no longer understand is an interesting question. In isolation, we can't parse /'tıŋkə/ as "think" (we'll hear 'tinker'), but in the middle of a sentence spoken by a person with a pronounced Italian accent, we'll be able to get it.

[@KatMistberg]

Personally I think there's no such thing as an "agreed upon way to pronounce a word", just how much exposure you have to different varieties/accents of the language. I say [θɪŋk], but I find [fɪŋk] as being perfectly normal and the same word as my [θɪŋk] because I've been exposed to many instances of people pronouncing it that way. But for someone who has never been exposed to varieties of English that pronounce the word as [fɪŋk], the pronunciation [fɪŋk] would be odd (though likely understandable since it is likely acoustically similar to their pronunciation). On the other hand, if (hypothetically) there is a (very obscure) variety of English where [ˈtɑkoʊ] also means , then for those speakers all of [θɪŋk], [fɪŋk], and [ˈtɑkoʊ] would be perfectly normal and understandable, though for us, since we have not been exposed to the pronunciation of [ˈtɑkoʊ] for the word , it is not understandable for us. Because different people (even speakers of the same "language") are generally not be exposed to the exact same spectrum of language, I don't think that there a shared "agreed upon way to pronounce a word". As for the "acceptable range" of pronunciation, I'd think that it would be determined by a combination of the person's exposure to the variety of pronunciations of a word, acoustic similarity, and the similarity of the pronunciation to that of other words.

[@Moonflowers11]

I appreciate your logic. I'm from New York and my linguistic skill is being able to understand many accents.

[@F_A_F123]

If there exist a community which pronounces it [ˈtɑkow], that pronunciation is correct

[@shmoobalizer]

why would you think that? [tɑkoʊ] is the General American pronunciation of it

[@l0ll3rc04st3r]

This is something I've been thinking about recently with regards to grammar. I am a staunch descriptivist when it comes to language , which translates to grammar being a consensus of rules to facilitate communication. AS any aspect of language, it is subject to change. However, in order to have a say in said consensus, you have to join in at least to some extent, so that your contributions to it are recognisable as such. Also I guess these changes need to be communal and not just individual. This is how I square grammar being somewhat prescriptive with my stance.

[@totlyepic]

Re:The early discussion of school's influence on opinion on this sort of thing: We, as a society, greatly underdiscuss the inherently authoritarian nature of schools. As institutions, their primary purpose is to mold children into good workers (of various forms), and for STEM, their structure and methods are really well-suited, but for language, it's a homogenization and flattening of culture. It poisons our perspectives about ourselves and each other. 11:30: Camus' concept of "the absurd".

[@CraftsmanOfAwsomenes]

Even the way phonics is taught is kind of misleading imo. I know it's just supposed to be a baseline to start from, but we tell kids to "sound it out" when it doesn't comport very well to a lot of English vocabulary. As a child I was stuck not being able to read words I should have been able to for a while. Distinctly remember being confused why a police car says "po-li-ke" on the side.

[@wtc5198]

this is a beautiful way of putting it. thank you

[@macksonamission1784]

I love that you pointed out that the culture you examine may in itself not at all believe in some kind of empirical objectivity. I can do my best to deconstruct or set aside myself when approaching another language, but there is ultimately no monarchical vision from nowhere. I think that the more effective posture for understanding is not disinterest but love and empathy. I will come to know someone else's perspective best by knowing and caring about them, sharing life with them, undergoing formation with and through them. In doing that, I can discover their world without pretending I am not already quite formed, and I can refrain from judgements, even the millions subconscious judgements that inform what I notice, what is relevant or salient to me. And, in the end, you'll find out how truly prescriptive you are when you have children. XD

[@talitek]

Great video! I'd love to hear your thoughts on linguistic purism (such as what happened with Icelandic) and loanwords in relation to this. How do the ethics tie into removing loanwords? Is there any benefit in replacing loanwords with "homegrown" ones?

[@simonroper9218]

This is a good question - I think it's more of a political thing than a scientific one. In cultures that have dwindling languages, especially cultures where the native language has been eroded away by colonial control, I can certainly see why there might be an interest in resisting that change! It's difficult for me to comment on, as I'm in the fortunate position of speaking a language that isn't under threat.

[@talitek]

@@simonroper9218Thanks for the answer! I would be inclined to agree with you here. I also personally believe there's an important distinction between written standards and spoken languages here - a written standard exists to aid in communication (and has a large political aspect to it as you said) whereas spoken language is constantly changing regardless of anything else happening, and should be described rather than prescribed (he said prescriptively).

[@SNDKNG]

​@@talitekAs an example on the other side of the language-contact specturm, take Yiddish - a West Germanic language typically characterized as having 5 lexical strata: a Middle High German basal layer, a mixed hebrew-aramaic acral layer, an early Romance/late Latin adstratal layer, a co-territorial early modern adstratal slavic layer, and finally a 19th Century New High German adstratum. The final layer is sometimes pejoratively referred to as "daytshmerizm" (germanism) and was a major point of political conflict amongst Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jews of the 19th and 20th Centuries, many of whom saw their language as a deformed, bastard dialect (a jargon) of "proper German" to be "brought up to date with the times", while others sought to reject any German national ties. In modern times, English has taken the role that German played 150 years ago. Can there be said to be an internally consistent "pure" Yiddish without Daytshmerizms? Probably! Does it make any sense in its linguistic context without considering politics? Probably not!

[@sarahlawson71]

I completely agree that in usual circumstances "fink" and "think" are just as valid. From experience though, this can become a more complex issue when having a standardized pronunciation of the word can make communication more inclusive for people with auditory disabilities or who are using English as a second language. When I encounter other people, similar to myself, who may struggle to process sound in noisy environments, using a standardized pronunciation can really help aid their understanding. (for example if I heard the "f" sound in "fink" in a very crowded environment, my mind would immediately be trying to process words beginning with "f" and I'd be more likely to mishear you and think you'd said "fear" or "find" etc) Perhaps its a case of give and take in these particular types of circumstances

[@jayzious]

Love re-discovering your channel : )

[@TimeTravelReads]

Thank you for the video Simon.

[@nsf001-3]

"Rambly videos" are my favorite (but I enjoy all of them)

[@tailortelhais1744]

This is a huge topic, so I didn't expect everything to be covered. Nonetheless what I'm most curious about was left unaddressed. In essence it is the question of when it is inappropriate to disregard all prescriptivism out of hand. As much as I agree that, the the vast majority of cases, languages should be studied descriptively, it seems silly to me to suggest prescriptivism serves no useful purpose. The logical extreme is that everyone goes around expressing themselves with words that only have meaning to themselves, without regard to societal agreements about what specific words mean or what grammatical rules apply in which languages. My hypothesis, in simple terms, is that prescriptivism is a positive force whenever it leads to increased comprehension. I think it would be ridiculous to say there isn't a good reason to go along with the majority opinion that e.g. "banana" means "banana". If a teacher corrects a student who e.g. exclusively uses the word "banana" to mean "house", this is not just a matter of letting them know this is not the consensus definition. It is also a way to encourage them to stick to the majority opinion because this use of the word "banana" would not go understood. While in many other fields, individuals may choose their own approach with no direct consequence for others, this usually not the case in language use, which is primarily a social activity which benefits from agreement in terms of the applying rules. If you speak to yourself, there is no direct relevance to which words you use to mean what, just as if you're the only driver on a particular road, it makes no difference which side you drive on. But just as it matters a great deal which side you drive on when there are other drivers on the same road, if you hold a conversation with someone, it is a bad idea to stray from the rules of the language you're speaking.

[@mondopinion3777]

Hi Simon, Please forgive me for posting off-topic. I have enjoyed your insights about language (and your contemplative nature photography) for many years. A thought about meaning in language occurred to me yesterday. I googled it a bit and came up with nothing. I thought I should ask you. Is it possible for language to have meaning without Story ? I can see how simple language can link meaning to words like grass, chair, blue etc., but what about the great and nuanced words, the words that carry values, the spiritual words? The question came to me when I had been thinking about how odd it is that the Old Testament is just a series of stories linked in a genealogical chain. Story expresses meanings in time, in relationships and their consequences, in the outworkings of Intent.

[@valq10]

Simon I'd love a video on the origin of so-called 'incorrect' features of Northern English. Particularly I'm thinking the use of 'us' where Southerners use 'me' and 'our' as a familial form of address e.g. 'our Kim'. I don't think this can be explained by Norse influence as far as I know so it's interesting how grammar can be so different.

[@jameshopkins7507]

Simon, I love your videos. I have never been a fan of prescriptivism, but I think it might be true that "accent consciousness" is more prevalent in the UK than here in the US. We tend to accept however a person pronounces things, most often without correction. Here in my area, for example, I have heard "sword" pronounced both as "sord" and "suard". Some pronunciations ring odd depending on what your customary usage is, but we tend to let it slide. There is no "Received Pronunciation" here in the US. Keep up the good work, I love your perfectives.

[@screetchycello]

Yeah, definitely not to the same extent. We do have some racially coded things - like AAVE is definitely stigmarized and so is the Indian accent due to outsourcing. Also I have a couple friends from Arkansas who dropped their accent because of the hick/redneck connotation.

[@wendygerrish4964]

New York City people were saying were saying 't' instead of 'th ' The word "with" was pronounced as wit or whit. I see the same with Californians failing to follow cockney English etc. Just our ears aren't trained. I love different accents.

[@My_Personal_Youtube]

​@@screetchycelloAbsolutely. A lot of people lack basic linguistic understanding, and think much of AAVE derives from ignorant mispronunciation. The word 'ask' is the most prominent example of this. In actuality, 'aks' is the more historic pronunciation, not a modern mispronunciation.

[@wtc5198]

amazing video, as always. this topic is very dear to me and i agree with 100% of what you said

[@TheArghnono]

Love your discussions about linguistics. You made an interesting excursion through anthropology into the philosophical field of ethics. It is interesting that so many intellectuals are some form of relativist, considering that this is a small minority of those who actually think carefully about moral philosophy. I strongly recommend reading Russ Shafer-Landau's "Moral Realism" - this is a book often used in introductory courses in moral philosophy, and quite accessible given the subject. Searching YT for good lectures on the subject is also a possibility. Like linguistics, philosophy is a field that requires study to have informed opinions.

[@jrobinprescott]

Yeah, I think a lot of people are surprised to find that moral realism remains a very common view among philosophers! If PhilPapers surveys are anything to go by, its actually fairly dominant internationally There are of course plenty of vibrant non-realist schools today too, even if they don’t usually take the form of folk subjectivism. After all, it’s not really that far a cry from forms of non-cognitivism But I also think it might be possible to put the metaethics to one side. Someone below described cultural relativism as an epistemological tool for anthropology, and that strikes me as a promising view. When studying a culture, it seems extremely useful to provisionally accept their views on morality, history, god(s), medicine, etc., but that doesn’t mean that these topics have no non-relative facts.

[@schweinmachtbree1013]

@@jrobinprescottI’m not sure that “provisionally accept” is a good choice of words; is “entertain” what you meant?

[@jrobinprescott]

@@schweinmachtbree1013 Not quite, although you may be right that it would be a better word! I just mean that the facts of the matter aren’t really to be interrogated at all: what matters in this context are the accepted views about said facts. A particular culture’s belief about the afterlife may turn out to be true or false in some ultimate sense, but the belief itself is certainly a real thing either way. In other words, your goal isn’t even to “entertain” the idea, because its truth isn’t even up for debate here. The beliefs simply are what they are

[@MatthewDoye]

The question of right and wrong highlighted has many parallels. What it comes down to is accepting what an individual or group says and taking it as true within that context. Alongside that subjective evidence we must also collect the objective evidence and present all of it.

[@willowbilly3092]

In my Dena'ina language class, prescriptivism and descriptivism were brought up in relation to the orthography of those such as linguist James Kari versus the occasionally different spellings of fluent first-language Dena'ina speakers like author Peter Kalifornsky. The back velar/uvular consonant gh in a word like yagheli "good" lowers the e vowel into a schwa, which sounds very similar to the a vowel; Peter Kalifornsky insisted that the word should be written as yaghali to reflect the vowel he was hearing in his Outer Inlet dialect, whereas James Kari prescribed a standardized e. Older writers are more likely to use now-nonstandard spellings, and their works also may preserve more features of High Dena'ina.

[@LimeyRedneck]

4:54 May I recommend 'S For Lisp, by Watsky which echoes this sentiment? 🤠

[@LimeyRedneck]

You make quality, thoughtful, thought provoking, humorous, well researched videos about language and adjacent topics, as well as providing some quintessential British garden, countryside, weather footage for FREE and people still moan‽‽ 😐😑

[@cadileigh9948]

a good ramble And thinking of how historic events are presented / distorted how can we enforce our times views on what is truth when data continues to evolve ?

[@JodiAmanda]

This is just what I was looking for for many reasons. Thank you! One way this is relevant for me is that I teach phonics, so prescriptivism is certainly helpful in teaching literacy skills, especially to students with learning differences. I have one student who refuses to pronounce th as [θ]. She doesn't like sticking out her tongue, so she pronounces it as [f] instead. I stop myself from telling her that she's plain wrong because my husband pronounces the th as [f] as well, but I do try to correct her. Sometimes she'll misspell a word and write fink instead of think, so pragmatically, it's helpful to practice this distinction. I live in BC Canada, and it's not as common here to pronounce th as [f]. My husband's first language is Polish so perhaps that influenced his pronunciation.

[@fabianheinrich3930]

I think it's worth noting that there are a lot more options than "morality is just one person's word against another" and "there is one absolute moral code that comes from god". There are plenty of more nuanced positions. For this issue you should look into the philosophical literature on it. There are two mistakes that I've found some people make on this issue as it relates to anthropology: 1. I agree that for the purposes of research you need to take a morally neutral perspective. But I think many people conceive of not morally evaluating other cultures as itself a moral requirement, not just a prudent research practice, which is of course self-contradictory. If you think we can't evaluate other cultures morally because there is no objective morality, what morality is it that says that you can't evaluate other cultures morally? (People sometimes react to this point as if it's somehow cheap or disingenuous or catching people on a technicality, which I don't think it is at all. To claim that you should never morally evaluate another culture is a substantive moral claim. A truly morally neutral position would be equally neutral on that point.) 2. Many people apply this moral neutrality to all other cultures, but are willing to morally evaluate their own culture. I take it the reason people think this makes sense is that they think a culture can only be morally evaluated from within that culture, which makes some sense. But I don't like this approach at all. To me, part of what it means to take someone or their viewpoint seriously is to be willing to critically engage with it. If we're willing to morally evaluate our own cultural practices but not those of other cultures, I don't think that's really treating those other cultures as equally worthy of consideration.

[@aidanfehr7660]

I'm curious to hear what you think about institutions such as the Académie Française, which ostensibly exist to standardise language and facilitate communication, but often end up playing a rather prescriptive role in moderating the development of a language. English has no such institution, as far I know, and as an Anglophone the notion of an official body which regulates a language has always struck me as a little bizarre.

[@givepeaceachance940]

I mean it’s a bit daft but we have English standardization as well

[@bendthebow]

I have an old copy of Fowler's Modern English usage. I do enjoy it I must admit. Sometimes there's reasoning, something not so much 😊

[@myouatt5987]

Cheers Simon, for a video which kept me engrossed throughout ... I personally didin't think it rambled (but perhaps that's the way my brain works!) 😀 Loved the reference to teachers and pronunciation ... I was always taught in the mid-1960s that the 'oo' sound in 'too' or 'choo-choo' (for a steam locomotive) should be pronounced with a 'dark u' as in German, rather than 'ü' as in 'chew' ... and it still grinds a bit when I hear the 'ew' sound these days! That said, I think fundamentally it comes down to the concept of 'it is what it is' and who am I to judge? Grerat vid - thanks, really enjoyed it.

[@kilojoel776]

I noticed an audio glitch at 2:51 so just letting you know

[@erfelgamazig]

Thanks so much for this upload, Simon. By the Way, I did not find it rambly or disjointed at all, or even boring in the least. I have a great thirst for linguistics and the differences. As an anthropologist, I would have a very difficult time going into Sodom and Gomorrah, with an open mind, thinking that what they were doing was right in any way. I realize that the ancient Palestinians, and some Hebrews that were "off track," sacrificed their babies to a "god." In Caeseria-Phiipi, they would often throw their infants into the stream that fed into the "Gates of Hell" where the "god" Pan, who was the fertility "god." There were apses for phallic symbols, for the nymphs to be enthralled by, and often "private acts" were performed by the same stream, which emptied into what was called the "Gates of Hades." So they believed they were closer to pan, and they would be more likely to get their fertility wishes, if they "worshipped" in this way, whether it was with temple prostitutes or their own wives. (sorry, I'm rambling) I've often wondered why American speakers say "While" and English from the UK say "Whilst" There is probably a reason for this, as Engish was developed first in the UK. Anyway, you can probably see why I have opinions about right and wrong among society. But I don't see any right or wrong way that most Americans say "Reg-u-lar," while in the Deep South, they say "Reg-a-lur" And why do some people speak, with additives like putting the word a** at the end of almost every adjective? Maybe someday I'll know.

[@GrahamMilkdrop]

As long as you can be understood, right and wrong are irrelevant. I have, however, found myself recoiling at certain pronunciations over the years even though I wouldn't consider myself to be a judgmental person!

[@GrahamMilkdrop]

The thing about social conditioning that troubles me is how easily it is manipulated. Few people seem to question the beliefs they've inherited whether those beliefs are religious or scientific. With the increasingly atomised society that we live in there are fewer opportunities for alternative models of thought and behaviour to take root as each individual is dominated by socially acceptable media! Even saying such a thing will draw immediate backlash!

[@GrahamMilkdrop]

Slightly connected... I live in Cornwall and the other day I was heading to the shops as the local secondary school was breaking up for the day and as I walked past hundreds of teenagers I was amazed when it dawned on me that there wasn't a single Cornish accent to be heard anywhere. They all sounded like they were from some fairly affluent suburb in London that borders a council estate. There was nothing to identify them as being local! It appears to be that our physical communities are no longer the greatest influence on the upcoming generation.

[@GrahamMilkdrop]

Especially with the rise of AI generated social media content it is going to be increasingly difficult for alternative points of view or opinions to be shared. A guy called U G Krishnamurti once said something to the effect that nature is busy making individuals while society is busy trying to force everyone into a single mold adding that it was grotesque. I can imagine a time when all comments on social media will be processed through an app like Grammarly but instead of it fixing grammar it will be ensuring that the ideas expressed will be approved for public consumption! The conditioning is STRONG asking people to really examine whether their own persona is a genuine representation of their experienced reality or a product of fear built up over a lifetime trying to protect the individual from potential social rejection isn't easy!

[@faithlesshound5621]

Simon is looking at anthropology and linguistics from an English (originally German?) perspective, as descriptive sciences. In the US these subjects developed out of Mission Studies, where the overall purpose was to CHANGE how foreigners thought and behaved. Even something as apparently descriptive as Webster's Dictionary turns out to be an attempt to differentiate the colonists' language from that of the mother country, by deliberately choosing new or uncommon spellings. Before the war, the new science of sociology was touted as the appropriate study for our rulers and administrators, in place of the then more prestigious classics. Anthropology was for the colonial satraps and missionaries who often hosted and facilitated the early scholars.

[@enricobianchi4499]

True and depressing

[@givepeaceachance940]

So you think English anthropology wasn’t colonial? Uh huh. Look up Evans-Pritchard for me, will you?

[@CadeD679]

Could you help me with a debate? Was the name Ælfgifu pronounced with a hard 'g?'

[@SuperLeetProPwnr1337]

Off topic for this video in particular, but related to your type of content. It would be an interesting exercise to create a possible "future English". Where you apply a bunch of changes that could plausibly happen to the language. Obviously it would be impossible to predict how the language will actually evolve, but that wouldn't be the point here. Instead it would highlight how a different version of English could sound without having it sound like "a very old person" is speaking (the way it can often feel when hearing an older version of a language you know).

[@michaeld.3504]

I like ALL of Simon’s videos! 👍✌️

[@danbornside3670]

i think the idea that "researchers should be objective, and not bring their own values and biases into their research" is itself a very biased way of thinking about research. what counts as neutral objectivity is a product of cultural values, and it's the exact sort of thing that is hardest for a person to eliminate precisely when they're trying to avoid having it espressed in their research. There's a video by the leftist cooks on "meta-modernism" that explores this a bit. I would say that a reasonable alternative approach for a researcher to take is instead to honestly categorize their own values and biases, and explore in depth how those values are similar to the ones in their research subject and how they differ, and why. Probably more important even than that, is for researchers to clearly express what their values are and how those might have biased the results of their research, so that later researchers who try to use those results can look out for what those biases might be.

[@MasterOfManyColours]

Simon: "Let's imagine [...] one man pronounces this word 'think', and another man pronounces it 'think'." Me, with English as a third language: *Imagining I can hear the difference*

[@iykury]

even as a native speaker from the us they sound very similar to me, even though i can easily produce the sounds [θ] and [f]

[@terdragontra8900]

Ah yes, the point you make at the end is very very interesting. Similar to the "paradox of tolerance", its fundamentally impossible to be 100% culturally relative, given that cultural supremacy is an important component of some cultures.

[@mondopinion3777]

Cultural supremacy indeed. I never wanted to learn French because they are so fussy about pronunciation. Americans, in contrast, rather like hearing English slaughtered by "foreigners."

[@Moonflowers11]

@@mondopinion3777 We don't necessarily like it but we have to do it in order to navigate our way through everyday life. In the course of running errands, I may hear many different accents and my brain just translates them all to English.

[@nsf001-3]

Cringe narrative

[@epileptictrees5213]

Ofc the anarkiddie thinks that's cringe​@@nsf001-3

[@varunachar87]

@@nsf001-3just curious: what are you saying is cringe?

[@conorm7770]

I find your videos extremely interesting, partly because you often caveat your videos with saying you aren't a scholar on the subject whilst still being so eloquent and clearly researched in what you discuss, so i was wondering what qualifies you to talk about the topics you talk about? And also to what extent does it matter that someone is qualified to talk about what they talk about?

[@amandachapman4708]

I wonder if "correctness" in pronunciation is more obvious in literate societies, as they have the guidelines of the written word. The "th/f" construct is a particularly clear case in point. I can imagine literate speakers of earlier forms of Enhlish debating different sound changes that were occurring in their societies, such as the -ough changes that got pickled in the aspic of the written word (though, through, cough, etc)

[@314thag0ra5]

It may have been a ramble, but it was refreshingly common-sensical and honest, and I enjoyed it. I remember that before I went to school (early 70s) I spoke a very strong regional dialect. But school and the BBC affected it to the point I lost most of it. The message absorbed by us all at school was that if you didn't talk "posh" you were uneducated and only fit for the trades. There was no way you could get through secondary school with any aspiration to sit your A levels or go on to university if you still spoke like your granddad. It's a depressing thought, with hindsight.

[@benjeyemanp1742]

What are your thoughts about spelling and its link to how words are pronounced, considering the "th" in "think" shows the speaker how it should be pronounced, surely? Considering almost every English speaker is now literate, it shows us a guideline of how to pronounce the language.

[@simonroper9218]

In English, the relationship between spelling and pronunciation has become a bit mangled, as standard spellings have lagged behind sound change. Most English speakers today don't distinguish between 'whine' and 'wine' in pronunciation (there used to be a voiceless 'wh' sound in 'whine'), but the spelling distinction remains. I'd argue that the collapse of the distinction between 'th' and 'f' is a modern example of the same thing happening - to a speaker with the merger, they are just two different ways of spelling the same sound.

[@fariesz6786]

​@@simonroper9218calling it "a bit mangled" betrays your Britishness C:

[@Dunbardoddy]

Another great video!

[@J-sv9dp]

I don't see certain pronunciations as "right" and others as "wrong", but I do nevertheless see some use in prescriptivism. It's a bit like singing a song... Different people might sing the same one a bit differently - neither is "wrong" but if we're going to sing together, we might be more cohesive and better understood by a wider range of people if we're all on the same page and singing from the same hymnbook, so to speak. The trouble is that not everybody agrees on which page of which hymnbook to sing from... Variety is the spice of life and local dialects and accents being their own charm and sense of community to an area; at the same time, code-switching to more widely-understood accents (eg. some commonly prescribed form of "standard" English that we might have learned in school) is not a bad skill to have when communicating with a variety of non-native English speakers or Brits from other areas and backgrounds. Finding common ground and making contextual adjustments (as far as one is able) for the purposes of clear communication to a wider audience is not wrong either. Just my two cents.

[@Roland-pw5xj]

Daniel Everett went into the Amazon jungle as both evangelist and linguist. He encountered a challenge to the idea of the universal relevance of his beliefs (both Christian and Chomskian) and came out of the Amazon jungle no longer an evangelist, and a better linguist.

[@TatianaBoshenka]

This is fascinating, especially the moral perspective on different cultures. For instance, I don't know if I could be objective about female genital mutilation, or the rape of young girls, or other misogynistic practices of other cultures. I want to feel like being objective is not the right response to things like that. I can see how that might be a problem in any anthropological research I undertook, though.

[@MelonShala]

in a way, the pursuit of ridding yourself of what you once believed to be an objective framework in order to view things more objectively and unbiased is, in itself, an objective(to you) framework constructed by you to view the world differently. You're just trading one tool that helped you live within one society (working class Britain/ whatever society you grew up in), for a tool that will help you live within another society (anthropological studies).

[@phils2967]

postmodernism has entered the chat

[@ciangannon3880]

It probably boils down to what register you're using, among friends a more vernacular "wrong" pronunciation is more likely right. If you wish to communicate with a broader range of speakers it's probably easier for everyone if a more standardised "right" form/higher register is used. Also when teaching it's probably better, ie increased utility, to learn a more standardised form, or to learn the language the "right" way

[@ottr765]

Not trying to argue with the main points about what it is what linguists do, but I'm trained in philosophy so I can't help to point out that opinions about what scientists should do are of course also prescriptions. Even if we accept that the product of scientific research, descriptions of objective reality, are value-neutral (and if there are universal reasons to accept some values, then this is simply not within the scope of empirical science to work out) , the collaborative activity of science still rests on a shared understanding that producing those descriptions is worthwhile, which is a prescriptive, dare I say a moral standpoint. I think that's fine because I think that human cognition is fundamentally normative and descriptive thoughts can't exist at all without normative commitments. Furthermore, shared knowledge, and discourses about what counts as fact, cannot exist without shared commitments to norms of public reasoning, logical inference, the value of coherence and consensus etc. Because of this we can make logically sound arguments to the effect that some value systems must be rejected because they are irreconcilable with the shared ends inherent to public reason. That doesn't mean that science shouldn't aim to be value neutral in its descriptions, of course. In fact it should aim to be value-neutral for this very reason. Failing to separate value judgements from neutral judgements in scientific results clearly has a tendency to diminish the quality of scientific research. Especially value judgements that are not made explicit can lead to this outcome because they lead researches to ignore data or underhandedly manipulate their subjects or appeal to biased assumptions or otherwise use deceptive methods. And as you point out, the normative assumption that your society should be the default measuring stick for everything else can really mess up the way you describe other societies. (Though I'd urge to not put to much weight on this usage of "society" as mapping roughly to "nations" or "cultures", as if these were independent, discrete units. Humanity itself forms a community which engages in constant exchange of ideas, values and cultural practices that especially today transcends national and linguistic boundaries. So there is absolutely merit in relating different cultural practices to each other as expressions of a common human condition. In other words there is merit in developing a general anthropological theory as an analytical tool to understand what different human social formations are doing. Just without the arrogant assumption that your own culture is the gold standard.) This is not conducive to forming a consensus about the mind-independent makeup of reality and rather often acts as a vehicle for ideologies and power-structures that benefit the societal status quo. If that status quo requires deception to rationalize its maintenance, it is probably not actually worth maintaining. But a judgement like this can only be made because science has a normative *foundation*, even when it is methodologically neutral.

[@frankharr9466]

If it were me, and it's not, I would suggest being as honest with yourself as possible. People generally assume that there is a right way to talk and to behave and our evolution supports that. I will set that aside temperarily so that I can understand THAT form of language or behavior better for now. I don't know another way of doing it. Oh, and I'm fine with the ramble. It was interesting and focused and structured enough to be meaningful and wondering enough to cover the associated thoughts. It's not easy.

[@randomvintagefilm273]

So if I say fuck instead of tuck is that OK too?

[@user-qd8yy9lc4g]

You may notice "th" is a pretty different sound from "t", on multiple fronts. You may, but if you don't say "fusk" and "furnip" it will be pretty obvious its just a joke.

[@tobybartels8426]

/θ/ is better so that you can tell the difference from ‘fink’ (not that there's much room for confusion there, but I do prefer to have more sounds to work with).

[@Mihai_9999]

More videos on anthropology, please ❤

[@jusk8lp]

This reminds me of a short I saw yesterday. I think it was also from a TikTok. It may or may not be what you’re talking about, but I think it’s valuable to share. So a lady is pretending to not understand her friend when the friend says, “Hummus” with an American accent. The comments section is an insightful exploration of native English speakers’ experience with “foreign” words such as “croissant,” “guacamole,” or, yeah, “hummus.” One comment said, “I think it’s not fair that ESL speakers are allowed to have accents and speak English a little differently, but English speakers learning a different language are not.”

[@jacobscrackers98]

>If someone is confused by you saying "fink" instead of "think", I would suggest that's a problem with their comprehension. What if they are unfamiliar with that pronunciation?

[@simonroper9218]

That's the kind of thing I meant by 'a problem with their comprehension'! Sorry I didn't make it clearer

[@umblapag]

I may have misunderstood your questioning at the end, but. Not having echolocation did not prevent humans from developing a concept of it or from studying bats. I don't see why a similar thing can't happen with social constructs like the idea of absolute morality. You don't have to be a moral absolutist to study one.

[@beepboop204]

only the idea of a "private language" is wrong, im fairly certain that language-users form multiple overlapping communities of speakers, just because Snoop Dogg and Shakespeare are hard for grandma to understand doesnt mean they are objectively hard to understand. :D

[@ralphwortley1206]

If one includes ACCENT as "right" or "wrong" I have some research to tell you about. I did not myself run this project; I merely did the statistics. In Johannesburg students were asked to visit people at home to convince them of one or other side of a matter then being widely discussed. They asked the people to listen to a recording of two voices giving argument A and argument B. The argument was given in SARP and SAE. Appropriate randomisation was done. The statistics showed that neither argument A or B got the most votes, but the voice speaking SARP was regarded as having given the most convincing argument. I am afraid that I no longer have the journal reference, as I am long retired. I enjoy your programme as I did complete a B A Hons in English lang and lit, although I went on to study and teach psychology. A fellow student friend of mine studied the then rather contested subject of linguistics and I learned a little from him. He went on to professorial status.

[@AntoekneeDetaecho]

As we’ve established in Simon’s scenario that the universe doesn’t have an opinion, I’m going to feel comfortable in my continued belief that human sacrifice is wrong, seeing as the universe isn’t sentient to the action… 😂

[@schweinmachtbree1013]

Simon didn’t clarify whether he meant human sacrifice of “evil” humans or human sacrifice of any human; one is much more easily morally decidable.

[@darynvoss7883]

Is the Northumbrian dialect basically on a continuum to Scots?

[@AllotmentFox]

Great video

[@petrapetrakoliou8979]

What about when you are a foreigner who is in the process of learning the language, like myself, shouldn't he be corrected? There are more and more like that and there was a lot in the past too, for example when all those Normans were slowly learning English or Celts or Romans. For my own language, I would say that dialects are not to be corrected, but if somebody is in the process of learning my language, correction is welcome up to some point.

[@schweinmachtbree1013]

I think that’s absolutely right; there’s a clear distinction between differences due to dialect and differences due to being in the process of learning a language and simply making mistakes.

[@gdgyhgrd]

When linguistics take the descriptivist approach, it is generally with the understanding that it applies to native speakers but not learners.

[@user-oe1bu5qw1w]

Almost 16 minutes about the phrase "There isn't truth, there are only opinions and similar cool stuff."

[@johntupper1369]

Wrambly videos are my fave

[@DaveHuxtableLanguages]

It drives me mad when mice missqueek.

[@JodiAmanda]

LOL!!

[@jdonland]

You might consider checking out Heather E. Douglas' 2009 book "Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal".

[@briantaylor9475]

Excellent!!!!

[@karlpoppins]

Here's my take on the issue (not having watched your video yet): Things can be correct or incorrect, but only with respect to a standard. Descriptivism, I think, effectively is the idea that linguists should not abuse their authority and redefine that standard in ways that suit their and their sponsors' (e.g. the government) interests - instead only describing language use as it occurs for the sake of scientific study. It really does not and should not apply to the approach an average layman has with regard to their language use, as well as that of others. Furthermore, some kinds of prescriptivism are widely accepted by (I hope) everyone: we call it "public education". As far as the first part of my thesis is concerned, language evolves by people's unconscious consensus on how it's used; if no one is allowed to disagree (i.e. express their feelings that a certain instance of language feels "wrong" to them), then how can an honest consensus be reached? If any non-standard use of language by individuals or even a tiny minority is blindly accepted then language no longer represents and serves its speakers adequately. That push and pull between conservative and innovative use of language is what pushes language forward into a place that truly represents its speakers - so blind conservatism is no better than reckless innovation. With regard to prescriptivism in the form of public education, it's important to note here that it should not be the place of such education to shame or discourage dialectal variety, but to reinforce the use of the standard dialect in contexts where it is most useful. The use of standard language not only evokes a sense of unity among people, but also serves as a more efficient communication tool. Even disregarding these advantages, teaching a language in standardised way is simply far easier than adhering to the dialect of every single individual. All in all, I think that there's a fine line to be straddled between keeping language somewhat consistent for the sake of practicality and allowing people to express themselves freely. I err on the side of innovation, personally, but I think that some modicum of conservatism is necessary to keep innovation in check.

[@karlpoppins]

On another note, please keep posting those rants - or any other video you like. Your presentation style and your speech cadence are both very enjoyable. Though, I will say, I do prefer it when the circumstances allow you to record these videos with some natural ambience :)

[@danielj.8876]

I think the main reason we think about certain pronunciations being more correct than others is rooted deeply within how language functions as a concept. We want to be clear and precise when we speak as not to be misunderstood, we say /think/ and not /sink/ as not to be misunderstood as saying sink (there's a popular sketch about a German confusing those two). Minimal pairs like those are all over any given language because the number of sounds we can make with our vocal organs are limited while the number of concepts we want to express are rather unlimited. Also our time is limited, so avoiding this problem by making new words longer and longer is hardly practical. To sum it up, clear speech is a necessity for language to function and it demands for certain pronunciations to be viewed as more correct than others. Of course there's no such minimal pair for every two sounds, like /th/ and /f/, but the urge of keeping them separate anyway is naturally developed from the desire to teach clear and unmistakeable speech. Ofcourse language changes and so does pronunciation but sometimes listening to conservative types correcting some pronunciation or grammar they view as wrong helps avoiding problems further down the road.

[@fromshane]

Interesting point about how empirical ways of thinking are themselves prescriptive

[@NathanaelFosaaen]

In Anthro we talk about using cultural relativism as a epistemological technique, but that method has started to fall out of favor with most anthropologists. the "th" vs "f" pronunciation of think is one thing, but that's an issue of systematic sound change where a whole speech community changes the pronunciation of a word. That's not the same thing as when I as a child thought "mariner" was said "ma-reen-er" (rhymes with "greener"). That's not a sound shift in a speech community, it's just one person saying a word wrong until someone corrected him.

[@outfitmadeofawesome]

sound shifts don't always happen in a whole community all at once. You were a child, and so you didn't have influence on others, but if you'd been someone with more social impact in your community, your pronunciation may well have triggered a community shift. It's quite difficult to draw the line, actually. I agree with your intuition, in a sense: it seems that there's a difference between pronouncing 'think' as "fink" and pronouncing it as "goose". The latter seems wrong, but pinpointing exactly why (or whether) it is wrong is challenging. We might say "because people wouldn't understand", but we could of course teach them to understand, and I have a hard time understanding the French of a Frenchman (I'm Canadian), but that doesn't mean his pronunciation is wrong. We might try to say it's because it doesn't fit with the spelling, but that doesn't so much work in English, which isn't always phonetic (e.g., colonel). We might want to say that it needs to fit into a certain kind of process of social construction that wouldn't be arbitrary, but the reality is that there is a spectrum of social construction processes too. Some more gradual, some less authoritarian, some accidental and some on purpose, etc.

[@karlpoppins]

@@outfitmadeofawesome "The latter seems wrong, but pinpointing exactly why (or whether) it is wrong is challenging" - I find that the answer is simple: it deviates too much from the norm, and doing that is not socially acceptable. Language is a social convention after all, like the clothes we wear or the gestures we make. Just like it might be socially unacceptable to show someone the middle finger or go to the bank naked, it's also unacceptable to use the word "goose" to mean "think".

[@outfitmadeofawesome]

@@karlpoppins The reason I chose such an outrageous example was to show that we all accept that there is a line SOMEWHERE, but figuring out WHERE that line is is challenging. That's the point: everyone knows that 'goose' is too extreme to be a normal diversity, but it is very difficult to say why that is. Handwaving at social acceptability will not do, because we *do not agree* on what's socially acceptable. Some people think commoners speak wrong, some people don't--that's the whole point of this video. Some social group accept 'fink' and others do not... who is right? You can't choose a correct group without doing so either arbitrarily or on the basis of privilege. The same problem applies when you're trying to define a mechanism for social construction. The original commenter here says that the community has to agree for it to be acceptable, but no *new* changes will be able to meet that bar, because change has to start somewhere. If we decide try to define acceptable changes by defining acceptable *starts* to changes (e.g., its ok if a language shift happens while nobody notices, but it isn't okay if people do it on purpose), we come across the same arbitrariness problem as the prescriptivism about language use. I studied linguistics in undergrad and philosophy of language in graduate school, and these things are much slipperier than they seem at first. We typically have clear intuitions (e.g., you can't just do and say whatever you want/some variance is welcome but extreme variance is not/etc.) but giving a logic basis for those intuitions is often murky and more arbitrary than we expect. That doesn't mean it's *impossible* to figure out, just that you're probably going to get it wrong when you take your first crack at it. Also... it could be impossible!

[@karlpoppins]

@@outfitmadeofawesome I think you misunderstood my... uhm... misunderstanding? I never claimed that finding the line between "right" and "wrong" is easy, which as you've stated is not at all a trivial matter. Instead, I merely addressed the direct part of your comment where you ask _why_ something is considered to be wrong, hence my response: social conventions. Mind you, this is not some kind of deep statement; it's rather obvious to me and you that a lot of what we take for granted is arbitrary social convention, but there are plenty who fail to see relativity in the matter, and that's why I attempted to boil down the issue to its essence, even though I'm not really addressing it in detail.

[@turtlepenguinXkizuna]

my stepfather lost his ability to participate in organised religion due to teaching the sociology of religion. i found this meander through your thoughts interesting!

[@phillyphilly2095]

Simon, I have a couple of suggestions. First, think of culture as coming in two boxes: the purely conventional and the naturally grounded. Think vs. Fink is purely conventional. No one is gonna die if you say one and not the other. Human sacrifice is not arbitrary like linguistic codes. It has real material effect upon its victims. Second, don't assume a "culture " is some homogenous unitary thing that everyone in a community endorses. A "culture" often is the hegemonic perspective of the ruling faction. It may be contested by others in society. Certainly the vanquished of mesoamerica did not agree with being the victims of Aztec human sacrifice, for example.

[@simonroper9218]

These are both good points - they're in line with how I currently think, and I don't think they're necessarily at odds with what I said in the video, but I certainly could have made some of these complexities clear. 'Cultures' are imprecise abstractions, and individual people within a culture might well disagree with hegemonic ideas of morality. Even so, while you could easily prove objectively that sacrificing somebody causes them physical harm, it's the normative aspect that is a construct. Certain belief systems might hold that sacrificing people has some good effects in the world that outweigh the physical harm done to the person. If I were to study those belief systems, I would need to try to understand why they think it's okay to engage in those behaviours - and so my own moral belief that human sacrifice is wrong might not help me very much.

[@phillyphilly2095]

@simonroper9218 Agreed. To be a good anthropologist, you must suspend your moral judgment long enough to let your scientific curiosity take precedence so that you can produce objective analysis. This is what anthropologists call cultural relativism (in distinction from moral relativism), as I'm sure you know. But that doesn't mean the anthropologist can't condemn the culture he studies on moral grounds, outside of the scientific analysis. Indeed, a moral judgment is unavoidable. To not condemn the Aztetcs, for example, is to make a moral judgment that Aztec behavior does not warrant condemnation. Moral relativism is impossible since moral relativism itself is a moral position. True, there is no extra-human standard of morality out there in the universe. But in societies where it is customary to physically harm people or to deny them equitable status, there are always some people who resist. I prefer to take their side. (I'm sure you have thought about all this.)

[@liquidoxygen819]

This will be good!

[@paolostrada93]

Higher pitched mouse squeaking is actually an Americanism

[@powdergate]

There is an objective truth in linguistics which is that any American speaking is incorrect. Doesn't matter what they are saying, but the very act of them speaking at all is incorrect and should not actually occur.

[@Chingus4682]

I wouldn't call that rambling at all It was enlightening to hear your insight on this

[@godfreypigott]

Pretty much everything he says I have previously considered, but at more than twice his age I still can't express my thoughts anywhere near as clearly as he does.

[@howtoappearincompletely9739]

It is perfectly possible to be prescriptive about pronunciation without being motivated by classism. In the case of the /f-θ/ merger, we can advise against that pronunciation because it will increase homophony, thus increasing ambiguity; for example, "We've [fɔːt] about what you said." - Did we think about, or fight about, what you said? If we can agree to value clear communication, it is entirely right that we discourage the /f-θ/ merger.

[@phirion6341]

Doesn't really account for the fact that human languages have had these situations happening over and over again, and as communicative creatures we have consistently been able to work our ways around it. Your specialised example exists for so many other mergers that we barely think about despite being homophones. I can assure you that even with the merger happening, we'll find ways to distinguish what we mean by using "fighting - thinking" or "fought you" etc

[@waelisc]

On the other hand, Anglo-Saxon English was packed full of ambiguity across its declensions and conjugations, to the point that word order and context became basically the sole way to comprehend anything in the language (as it is in Modern English) and yet 1000 years of English and it's still here

[@whophd]

Clarity? Wasn’t BBC RP developed in an era of poor microphone technology? Why is it I have to put less effort to interpret some more than others - I have to use context clues to know if someone is saying “free” or “three”, e.g. “did you hear they have free movies?”

[@allangardiner2515]

"Removing the humanity" is exactly what you can't do because the human language context is that using the standard form is needed in certain social contexts. The people who preach that standard forms do not need to be learned by people like me who grew up with a working class idiom have the advantage of being able to use standard English speaking and writing when the social situation demands it. Lingua francas exist for a reason.

[@pierreabbat6157]

Some English speakers would say "I only saw six monkeys eat leaves" and mean any of at least three different meanings. I distinguish them as follows (it may be relevant that my second native language is French): I only saw six monkeys eat leaves - I didn't hear them. I saw only six monkeys eat leaves - I didn't see seven. I saw six monkeys eat only leaves - they didn't eat fruit. As far as I can tell, putting "only" in different places depending on the meaning increases clarity, so I say that it's correct and that putting "only" only immediately before the verb is wrong. However, using the Oxford comma can lead to ambiguity, and not using it can lead to different ambiguity, so I can't prescribe using or not using it.

[@NessieAndrew]

We need an Alex O'Connor and Simon Roper crossover on morality.

[@GamingWithUncleJon]

Ngl, the way you speak i, as an American had trouble distinguishing. Also in US English "fink" is a totally separate word, meaning a disloyal or unreliable person, usually modified with "rat" and that pronunciation for think would create confusion. But that would be quite separate from the prestige issue you're describing.

[@sluggo206]

Right and wrong are culturally defined. Language is intrinsically social. Most people have gotten past the idea that one kind of pronunciation is intrinsically bad, but it may be culturally inappropriate for a situation. A standard national variety of a language is a useful thing, especially in this time of mass communication and mass foreign-language learning.

[@harrynewiss4630]

The problem is the practical idea of having a standard version of a language - especially useful where dialects are highly variable - has become conflated with the idea of 'correct' speech. Now in English, dialectal difference isn't very large compared with some European countries where dialects are even mutually unintelligible in some cases. So that suggests we can maybe be a bit more relaxed about this. BUT - English is now a world language and in my view it's very important that British children learn to communicate in a standard form of English for that reason. That doesn't have to mean their dialects or sociolects have to be derided. Indeed, learning about how they vary from standard English is an interesting exercise in itself.