In Defence of Prescriptivism

[@kklein]

Go to ground.news/klein to easily see how language and biased reporting can skew our perspective on global issues. Subscribe through my link for 40% off the Ground News unlimited access Vantage plan.

[@spawel1]

financial times is true, great, authentic news.

[@kevinclass2010]

In American English, t has been glottalized before syllabic consonants for a while. That's why we say button (buh'n)

[@petretepner8027]

@@kevinclass2010 /t/ is glottalized before /n/ in all varieties of English (same point of articulation). To pronounce _button_ or _batten_ as /ˈbʌtən/ or /ˈbætən/, rather than /bʌʔən/ and /bæʔən/, is a hypercorrection, in most regions.

[@werderlebenslang4576]

Speaking as a german who grew up after the spelling reform I think the problem with the french spelling reform was that even after the reform they are still speaking French.

[@blugaledoh2669]

Lol

[@RobespierreThePoof]

Very funny. By the way, I enjoyed learning German by language immersion in Germany far more than learning French in France. The cultural difference with respect to foreigners learning the language was a fairly obvious and extreme one. Germans were far more supportive, encouraging, and tolerant of my mistakes. Why? I cannot say ... other than to blame it on modern history and say that Germany has been humbled by its rather severe mistakes, whereas France treats national pride like heroin.

[@DrVictorVasconcelos]

Funny, when I listen to Standard German I also get the impression that they are speaking French.

[@shytendeakatamanoir9740]

On one hand, this is hilarious (and true). On the other hand, there are the implications (which I don't think are voluntary at all). So, really, I don't know how to feel about that one tbh

[@levidecroce6036]

What a stupid comment.

[@willcwhite]

Ironically, 'standardised' is not a word whose spelling is standardized across the anglophone world.

[@braytongoodall2598]

It is standardised, there's just more than one standard.

[@Addeand]

​@@braytongoodall2598it is pretty obvious that "standardized across the anglophone world" refers to global standardisation. If you want to nitpick, at least be correct

[@mahatmaniggandhi2898]

​@@Addeandbut there is no one big english standard so this is not nitpicking

[@braytongoodall2598]

@@Addeand "standardisation" doesn't mean consensus nor even widespread adoption: it is about specification. Consider (modern) shipping containers: initially the 20ft containers were most common, now the 40ft containers are more common: these are both standards (coexisting and in some sense competing). Even still, the standardised unit used in the shipping industry to measure cargo capacity is the Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit (based on the volume of a 20ft-long container, so a 40ft is worth 2 TEUs). Standardisation is about creating defined references: it doesn't imply any political status (whether this means popularity among voters, being designated as official by a state, approved by the ISO, sanctioned by the Pope, available on an iPhone or well-known by industry insiders). FireWire was standardised as IEEE 1394 (and perhaps before then too), but it didn't "win" on adoption. Still, it is a data transfer standard. Or consider ISO 3103, a standard for tea preparation. I've never had this, I've never read the document and yet I'm fairly convinced I know how to make a cup of tea. I just don't know how to make an ISO 3103-compliant cup of tea. Some standards are normative, some aren't. There are standardisations for English spelling and usage, and yet English existed before these standardisations. In fact if you want to get rather tricky about it, there are partial standardisations around what the words "English" and "standard" refer to, so even my wording "English existed before these standardisations" could have multiple standard interpretations (or interpretations that are outside current "standard" usage). Open to feedback, but I think I'm correct.

[@lmlimpoism]

english is a vast language with too many dialects that want to spell things differently.

[@theanitmeme]

One of the unstated facts of prescriptivism is that it always has a goal. It could be to enforce a prestige dialect, improve communication, enhance social justice, or anything else. When somebody takes issue with prescriptivism, they’re usually disagreeing with the underlying assumptions behind the prescriptivist’s goals.

[@gyorkshire257]

I think it is more that prescriptivists are d1x.

[@vampyricon7026]

If only. I've had people tell me that my claim that only native Irish Gaelic speaker usage should be considered correct Irish Gaelic is bad because it's prescriptivist.

[@carmenolle5967]

I prescribe shit for vibes alone.

[@skyworm8006]

Yeah it's weird how people dismiss prescriptivism then turn around and be intolerantly prescriptive about the things they want (usually framed as progressive which is usually framed as natural development, which is odd since it required intolerant topdown prescriptivism to get there).

[@gyorkshire257]

@@skyworm8006 I don't think you are talking about the same descriptivism here. Can you give me an example of what you mean?

[@deutschermichel5807]

Reject language prescriptivism, reject language descriptivism, embrace language hypocrisy: Hold others to speak and write your language correctly, but invent the rules yourself based on your liking alone!

[@nialltracey2599]

To whom does that sound like anything other than the sort of prescriptivism up with which we will are likely never to put...?

[@arsray7285]

Ah agri

[@theppotato1667]

Ah yes, the Minions approach of linguistic pigeon polytheism. Just learn enough languages that you never say the same word in the same language twice

[@andrewhooper7603]

i live in the southern US. i encounter this person any time I go to a local facebook page. a whole lot of "lern the langage or leave!" types.

[@spawel1]

this is why i correct people that pronounce their t's

[@thevilmoron]

Prescriptivism is an inherent feature of language revitalization. How can you revive a language if you allow sweeping influences from the dominant language? How can you revive a language without a standard form to be taught in schools?

[@vampyricon7026]

💯 This is always my test case for whether a person knows what they're talking about regarding prescriptivism.

[@zak3744]

Well, quite, but isn't the idea further back in the process than cross-linguistic influences or the method of teaching? The idea of deliberate language revitalisation is at heart a very linguistically presciptive idea! Setting out to revitalise a language isn't a natural, unconscious process arrived at by people just trying to communicate, it's a conscious decision that it would be desirable for people to communicate in that way.

[@thevilmoron]

@zak3744 yes, exactly! Language revitalization is an example of linguistic that I think is defensible and good. Another example is making language gender inclusive. There are plenty of social movements connected to language which I think we should promote.

[@blueberrymuffin_144]

Well said! I used to be completely anti-prescriptivism until I talked about it with an Irish-speaking friend.

[@KasumiRINA]

It should also follow common sense, I've seen too many people dismiss legitimate but less used Ukrainian words because they SOUND too muscovite, and try to replace them all with synonyms that don't have homophones among katsapian.

[@norude]

I think a big problem is that most prescriptivists are just uneducated about language and have mostly bad prescriptions

[@kamalkrishnabaral]

This is the exact thing.

[@Taladar2003]

On the other hand, in the absence of prescriptivists the descriptivists can only really observe and describe accidental changes made by people even more uneducated about language.

[@Idkpleasejustletmechangeit]

Yeah, trying to force linguistic "purity" is bad, but trying to alter the language to be easier or more inclusive is fine. I'll use German as an example. There is a movement where some people try to make the language more inclusive through saying the male form of each word followed by a pause (glottal stop, but yeah) and then the feminine suffix (I personally don't like the way it's done, it's a bit clunky and not entirely gender neutral, but still a good thought). Later on, some other people felt offended because people didn't speak the exact same way as them and whined about it and acted like people were trying to force them to speak that way (which did not actually happen). Eventually, some states ended up banning people from speaking this way in certain situations, which is just a clear overreach of power.

[@norude]

@Idkpleasejustletmechangeit K Klein has literally made a video on it

[@Idkpleasejustletmechangeit]

@norude I know, still makes sense to bring up though.

[@Croz89]

Personally, and this might be controversial, I think we have to get over the idea that "code switching" is somehow a bad thing. It's a normal, natural thing that pretty much everybody does, including the wealthy to some extent. Language is about communication, and having a standard way of speaking that everybody understands (especially ESL speakers), that is taught in schools, is clearly going to foster better communication. Children should not be taught that slang or accented speech is "wrong" but that it *is* inappropriate in certain environments and when communicating with certain people. Speak how you want to your friends, your family or even your coworkers, but not to a visitor, customer or official, because you risk not being understood or even causing offence. It's not their responsibility to understand your accent and slang, it's *your* responsibility to communicate effectively.

[@Duiker36]

Eh, I think it's more complicated than that; I don't think responsibility can be as reliably and consistently assigned as you're saying. It's not a good prescription to tell people that, if they fail to understand something, that failure is entirely the speaker's fault; they may also be making no effort at understanding, which is just as bad as a weak effort at expression. Particularly for second-language speakers, a lot of their struggle isn't because they aren't trying; it's because they've grown up with a phonotactic inventory that doesn't mesh with the new language. Blaming them for inadequately assimilating isn't a failure to code switch. Especially since they tend to have a *stronger* grasp on the taught-standard way of how the language works than native speakers do, and are mostly missing familiarity with idioms and vocabulary.

[@Croz89]

@@Duiker36 In the end ESL speakers are trying their best, it is still their responsibility to be understood, but making a good faith best effort is all we can ask for, and they will improve with time. The listener can't really make an effort to understand them if they don't understand their pronunciation. If they are really struggling then writing it down or employing a translator may be the only option. Of course when the listener responds it should be in a standard form of English to be better understood too. What I'm really targeting are those who think they can talk how they do to their friends and family to everyone and that it's the listeners responsibility to learn the accents and slang of all the geographic, racial, and cultural groups they might encounter.

[@flaviospadavecchia5126]

The funny part is that the 1990 French spelling reform actually made French spelling easier and sometimes more coherent with the history of the word. The general obtuse population was actually more conservative than the supposed elitists of the Académie francaise.

[@thomemasset7300]

Absolutely! I think most of the reform is coherent and getting used quite usually, as agroalimentaire instead of agro-alimentaire, or entrainer instead of entraîner. But at the same time, nénufar, and ognon just looks weird, man

[@flaviospadavecchia5126]

@thomemasset7300 yes, but at the end of the day, nénufar is not a word of Greek origin, so why spell it with a PH?

[@dmnspdn-lz9rg]

@@flaviospadavecchia5126 for consistency with the rest of the language. A quick stroll through the wiktionary says old dictionaries noted both spellings, but over time people just used nénuphar more. It's consistent with the word phare, for example, which is pronounced the same way. IMO history and habits are important in spelling conventions, and though it won't matter in a hundred years when three generations have been taught the new spelling in school, it's still worth it to criticize what could be done better or didn't need to change at all at the time the reforms happen.

[@flaviospadavecchia5126]

@dmnspdn-lz9rg it's more confusing if people think this word has any connection to phare...

[@dmnspdn-lz9rg]

@flaviospadavecchia5126 Sorry, to clarify, I'm not saying it does, I'm saying there is some sense in two identical sounds being spelled the same way.

[@yazanraouf9604]

I am an Arab, and the Arabic language exists in a diglossia where there's an eloquent (fus'ha) Arabic and a general (`aammiya) Arabic In a way our language exists in both an ultra prescriptivist and an ultra descriptivist existence, Arabic language prescriptivism goes really far back during the Islamic golden age, when grammarians codified the rules of the Arabic language - most prominent among them Sibawayh - and much of the rules codified in that era remains unchanged to this day, and honestly? I'd rather not change it at all, I like it just the way it is, and I'm certain the vast majority of Arabs would rather keep it the way it is. I love that the eloquent Arabic makes me capable of connecting to poetry, literature, religious texts, law, sciences that were written centuries ago. I love how there's a 'mode of speech' that is constant, I can read things in Arabic that were written a thousand and so years ago with little issue, I cannot do the same for English texts - I find it difficult to understand Shakespeare sometimes.

[@spaghettiisyummy.3623]

Which is why a modern English translation exists for English.

[@petretepner8027]

"Arabic" covers many possibilities. My stepson is Belgian-Algerian, and speaks both Algerian and Moroccan Darija. His sister also speaks modern "literary" Arabic, and reads Quranic Arabic, but only because she has taken the trouble to learn them (much the way that I read Latin, I suppose). While both claim (legitimately) to be Arabic-speakers, neither of them describe themselves as "Arabs", except (on occasion) in response to European xenophobia. I know nothing of your background. Maybe you come from a country where the spoken language is closer to "old" Arabic than Darija (it would be hard for it to be further!), and where your Arabic ancestry is uncontested. In any event, I will be happy to read any further thoughts you may have on the question.

[@dougthedonkey1805]

I once saw a meme about “the descriptivism leaving my body the moment someone uses ‘litererally’ wrong” and I think that, despite being tongue-in-cheek, it’s probably planted some more nuanced seeds in people’s heads

[@kklein]

this is literally me

[@NihongoWakannai]

Using language is inherently an prescriptive process anyway. I just used an before an consonant which is me prescribing that form of writing onto you by making you read and interpret it. You may then try to prescribe the use of "a" instead by saying I am wrong. Linguistics may be descriptive but we're all prescriptivists every day of our lives.

[@dougthedonkey1805]

@ I dunno, I think you’re stretching the definition a little far. You may be influencing the linguistic consensus slightly, but you’re not really prescribing. It’s a prescription-adjacent phenomenon.

[@NihongoWakannai]

@@dougthedonkey1805 no, it's literally prescriptivism. Just because it's on a smaller scale than say a government prescribing an entire system of language doesn't make it not prescriptivism. Descriptivism is something that can only exist within the academic study of human behaviour. History is also a prescriptive field, but that doesn't mean people are going around saying "no you shouldn't have an opinion on politics because that's prescriptive!" The study of language is descriptive, but people using the language are inherently being prescriptive every time they use it to communicate with another.

[@dougthedonkey1805]

@ you are being prescriptive currently, because you are attempting to enforce a certain definition of a word, just as I am being prescriptive by telling you you’re wrong. But the act of speech itself is not prescriptive, as you are not attempting to push a certain way of speaking. You are reinforcing the cultural assumptions holding the language up, but not necessarily prescribing. If I were to see a man in a dress and tell them they shouldn’t do that, I’d be prescribing. If I (a man) were to walk outside in masculine clothes, I would not be prescribing. I would simply be existing within, and reinforcing, the cultural notions of gendered clothes.

[@isomeme]

Regarding code-switching, i think the key point is to recognize that language always has a performative component. A speaker constantly tunes their pronunciation, word choices, and all the other elements of spoken language to present a persona appropriate to the context and their goals. Sometimes -- often, really -- this is about social status signaling: "I pronounce my Ts and properly use the subjunctive mood, therefore I have a claim on the respect and attention of this group of well educated upper-class people." Other times, however, code-switching is more a declaration of group membership. At my job as a software engineer, I speak in the right acronyms, shorthand, and trade argot. At home, I speak in a language that is roughly 75% in-jokes, intentional mispronunciations we find funny, and telegraphic allusions to shared memories. At a bar with friends, my profanity rate skyrockets. And so forth. I see the performative aspect of speech being compressed into a social power metric far too often lately. Doing that throws away a great deal of the richness of language usage.

[@Croz89]

Yes, I think code switching has been demonised as a bad thing when it's something normal and natural that everybody does and I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with it.

[@Duiker36]

Well, with how you've described it, it's not just group membership: it's efficiency of communication. They're overlapping concerns, certainly, since the efficiency only comes about because you can prove familiarity with group history, but it's not about just sounding like each other: it often genuinely is about not having to explain stuff that you know the other person knows. And fancy words are like that. Sure, they don't always communicate anything more useful than a simpler word or phrase, but sometimes they do. Like, saying "irony" is a lot shorter than explaining the definition every time.

[@isomeme]

Yes, it's a lovely tangle of purposes, all interacting with one another in ever-changing ways. The more I contemplate the nature of language, the more confused and enthralled I become.

[@dzheighough]

I really don't think the prescription against slurs is at all a good example of the positives of linguistic prescriptivism. If I were an awfully racist red blob and I wanted to express my racism and disdain for blue blobs, linguistically, 'bluble' is a great and appropriate word to use. I have succeeded in producing language and expressing my opinion perfectly. The problem however is the racism itself that is expressed. To say 'bluble' is to be racist and to be racist should be discouraged in the exact way that 'I am racist and hate blue blobs' should be discouraged, even though that is a perfectly grammatical and clear english sentence, but it expresses nasty semantics. In the same way that if I were to stab someone with a knife purposefully, I may have done something awful but it does not mean I do not know how to use a knife, or need someone to show me how.

[@largob1594]

Right, but we can take this further to create a situation that is intuitively less oppressing through prescriptivism. Having more and more red blobs realize that "bluble" is expressing a sentiment they don't agree with will stop them from using it. This in turn makes it easier to identify who is racist and expresses it with "bluble" and reeducate those who need to be. On top of that, whereas before, the minority group was fighting a losing battle, now they outnumber the oppressors, which I would say, admittedly from personal experience, has a higher chance of red blobs self reevaluation. As a real world reflection, take for example the Phillipines. I have heard anecdotally that many people there use """bluble""" to refer to each other, as they hear it in movies and other media without necessarily knowing of its history and implications. If a new generation does learn of this and educate those around them, present and future, those who will be left saying it stand out way more. Another great twist is that in this new, more supportive environment, blue dots start identifying to themselves and their peers with "bluble." This is not only extremely validating, I imagine, but also makes the word lose its racist basis, making "bluble"-saying red dots look like a bunch of fools stuck in times past.

[@TheJamesM]

Yes, that was my thought exactly. Of course there are certain words which have acquired particular potency from their historical context, but the heart of the matter isn't linguistic; racism can be enacted in countless ways, and all of them are wrong for the same reason. Slurs aren't wrong because they aren't a "proper" part of the language; they're wrong because they're hurtful (sometimes very deeply so) and express a socially unacceptable attitude.

[@RiedlerMusics]

despite the rhyme "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words may never hurt me", words can and do hurt, and I'd prefer that people don't call me slurs even if they hate me. Of course I'd prefer it for them not to hate me, but … yknow, baby steps.

[@jerkison]

There will also be a large group of people who don't know the word is hurtful. This is where it's good to say "hey don't say this, it's mean and hurtful". Without the overall concensus and people actually pointing it out/enforcing it, then people will ignorantly use them, and racists will get some benefit of the doubt for using these words.

[@diydylana3151]

Those semantics are encoded into the word sense at that point, its not just using the word in a particular way. Its still prescriptive even if its not about grammar.

[@jvcmarc]

At <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="664">11:04</a>, I'd argue that what you're showing is the phonemic transcription, and not the phonetic, because of the use of diagonal slashes instead of square brackets. if the glottal stop is an allophone of /t/ when between vowels, that likely wouldn't be marked in a phonemic transcription

[@kklein]

fair point

[@rowboat10]

yes, good point

[@op-fb2cm]

But then we might as why it's represented as /t/ in the first place. I don't think it's inconceivable that if Cockney was the 'standard' accent rather then RP, broad transcription would use /ʔ/ intervocalicly, just as finger has /ŋg/ not /ng/ despite /ŋ/ being an allophone of /n/ in this context (something not shared by certain non-prestige accents)

[@vampyricon7026]

​​@@op-fb2cm I presume Cockney speakers consider word-initial [t] and word-internal and -final [ʔ] the same sound, so a phonemic transcription would collapse the two. Similarly, [ŋ] being an allophone of /n/ only applies to dialects where [ŋ] only appears in the sequences [ŋg ŋk]. Otherwise you'd need more rules governing it: /ŋ/ = [ŋ] vs /ng/ > [ŋg] > [ŋ], which complicates the English phonemic system more than just adding a new phoneme does.

[@BryanLu0]

​@@op-fb2cmI'm pretty sure /ŋ/ only exists in "ng" and "nk" and you in fact do not have to transcribe it in board transcription. You can, but you don't have to. Because English does not have regular spelling and pronunciation rules, it's better to specify. Especially for loan words, where there is a tendency in BE to naturalize and in AME to maintain

[@Mahawww]

On your slur point, Ethics and Liguistics are not the same thing. I can describe a crime to you without telling you whether I think it's right or wrong, that doesn't mean that I think that crime is okay. People who tell you not to use a slur, "bluble", aren't prescriptivists, they're not telling you you're making a grammatical mistake or something, they're telling you you're ethically wrong to do so. The same way you would be ethically wrong for saying "Red dots are superior to Blue dots." even if that is a grammatically correct sentence.

[@Yadobler]

You're thinking of syntax vs semantics with your last point, and like how every sentence has syntax and semantics, this is sementically ethics like you say, but syntactically a form of prescriptivism occurring - society still influenced the change in ethics of a word's meaning, changing its semantic implications I believe ethnolinguistics and sociolinguistics deal with this

[@agatheherrou7333]

As a minor correction: the French orthography reform didn't originate from the Académie Française, but from the Conseil Supérieur de la Langue Française. The Académie Française merely recognises the validity of the reform, although its official position is that both the new and the old orthographies can be used. Anyway, as far as I know, the Académie Française doesn't really have any sort of legal power, they're mostly here to be grumpy and cost a lot of money.

[@petretepner8027]

Absolutely correct. Also, not a single one of its members is a professional linguist.

Who pays for them?

[@petretepner8027]

Members of the _Académie Française_ receive individually a very modest 3,180 euros annually from the French State. They are already well-heeled people who are greedy not for money, but for status and reputation. I am not in a position to estimate what "fringe benefits" they may gain from membership.

@@petretepner8027 That makes sense and is about what I expected.

[@petretepner8027]

Glad to be of small use. As a former _fonctionnaire_ I'm your go-to guy for inconsequential details. Seufz. 🙁

[@strwberry_mist]

my first thought seeing this in my notifications was "oh yeah you shouldn't say slurs that's true"

[@thezipcreator]

the first thing I thought of was "prescriptivism makes sense when teaching someone a new language"

[@frenchertoast]

Moral prescriptivism (nobody's against that) ≠ linguistic prescriptivism (what people actually mean when they say prescriptivism is bad)

[@artugert]

So would it be okay to say bad things about a group of people, as long as you don't use "slurs"? Of course not. The problem isn't a linguistic one, but a moral one.

[@andrewhooper7603]

@@frenchertoast actually, some of us don't believe in prescriptivism in any form. that's why i go to the doctor for advice, but i'm not about to let him tell me i have to take "clopidogrel" because I "had a stroke". bruh, i came here so you could write a note for my boss that says I have to work light duty on account of my limp arm. don't need your totalitarian nonsense.

[@NihongoWakannai]

​@@frenchertoast everyone is an prescriptivist. Just using language inherently makes you an prescriptivist. The study of linguistics may be descriptive, but the study of linguistics is like the study of history; just because history is descriptive doesn't mean we can't prescribe how the world should change in the future.

[@afuyeas9914]

Linguists aren't entomologists observing insects, they're part of the linguistic experience and as such have to take part in linguistic discourse. If they don't they will be passive participants of the upkeeping of linguistic prejudice. This video really hit the nail on the head, keep it up!

Eh, you can be a linguist of a language you ain't involved in. Eg because it's in the past, or because it's far away.

[@Valery0p5]

"this is an hypothetical word" Comment section: I'm going to prescribe a specific case

[@ratewcropolix]

an hypothetical

[@Rosemary_Benson]

@@ratewcropolix prescriptivism moment

[@jdelacruz14791]

​@@ratewcropolix Erm it's actually "a hypothetical"

[@Rao-y5b]

It reminds of the "tolerance paradox", where for society to be 100% tolerant it should intolerate intolerance

[@spelcheak]

It’s not a paradox, it’s just an incoherence in the ideology. The solution is to not be tolerant.

[@andrewhooper7603]

@@spelcheak "immortality is impossible, therefore you should stop trying to live. i'm very smart, btw"

[@Rao-y5b]

@@spelcheak it is a paradox. In a paradox with the God and the stone, "not creating such a rock" is not a solution of a paradox. Most of the paradoxes are about certain possible events, where we can not generate the correct output

[@thomaspickin9376]

@@Rao-y5b Honestly whenever anyone brings up the paradox of tolerance online, it's usually to silence an opinion they don't like or find shocking. As the paradox never actually defines what 'intolerance' is it leaves people open to define anything they want as 'intolerant'. So they feel justified in saying they don't have to tolerate it or listen by calling upon Karl Popper's Paradox as some kind of authority (whom they've probably never read). In regards to the God and the stone, two solutions might be 1: It's equivalent to asking God to create a square circle, which is impossible, you're asking God to do impossible things which doesn't make sense. 2: If God isn't bound by the Laws of Logic then he would be able to, however to us it would seem like a paradox as we are. (A little hard to wrap your head around).

[@NihongoWakannai]

It's not a paradox, it's sophistry. "Don't tolerate intolerance" is just a way for people to try and justify their own form of intolerance whilst shunning others.

[@Skyhigh91100]

The video started out with talking about differences in how languages are spoken, but most of the discussion about institutional prescriptivism was about spelling. I think it's very important to differentiate these things. Spelling, reading, and writing are not natural; they're skills that humans need to be taught. One of the main reasons humans developed writing systems was to disseminate their ideas to a large number of people who they might not have direct contact with. The tools to create large amounts of written works and disseminate them broadly (or, nowadays, over the Internet) require a huge number of people to create and maintain. Fundamentally, written language requires large societies to be useful, and external teaching in order to be used, so it makes sense that *how* we write is codified by our societal structures in a way that allows everyone to glean information from the page (or screen) as quickly as possible. On the other hand, spoken languages are natural. A baby will start to babble and eventually copy the adults around them without anyone sitting that baby down and formally instructing them. That means that the way in which we speak is tied fundamentally to our local social groups, because (without outside intervention) that's how we learn to speak. It's certainly the case that more privileged groups can afford to send their children to formalized schools where they can be instructed in how to speak "properly", which can result in certain pronunciations being classified as higher or lower class, but there will also be groups who can't (or aren't allowed to) do so. The children in those groups will grow up speaking the way that those groups speak. It doesn't even need to be about privilege; accents can be regional as well as social. There are also many possible physical attributes about our mouths, tongues, noses, vocal chords, etc that make spoken sounds vary greatly. Yet, as long as we can understand each other, no one way of pronouncing any individual word should be taken as the "right" way to do so. That's why correcting spelling is fine, but correcting pronunciation seems so elitist: if anyone is trying to formalize/centralize/standardize pronunciations, they must inherently be someone who has access to a lot of power (because as mentioned, it takes power in order to force such a universal standard), so to do so without the obvious benefit that standardized spelling has implies that that person is claiming that their way of speaking (and thus, their privilege and/or cultural background) makes them "better" people. That is, obviously, an abhorrent notion in a democratic society, and hence it is met with the vitriol of "descriptivism, not prescriptivism!" that we see online. But is that really, itself, prescriptivism? I'm reminded of the Paradox of Tolerance, the notion that the only thing that a tolerant society can't be tolerant of is intolerance, which means that a perfectly tolerant society (supposedly) can't exist. This is often used by fascists to mock, feign offense, or attempt to dismiss anti-fascists who are trying to silence their intolerant ideas, claiming the protections of free speech while simultaneously working to build a society where that freedom will be abolished. I feel that labeling both the person scolding Timmy for dropping his T's and the person calling a minority group a name they don't want to be called "prescriptivists" is akin to calling both the fascist and the anti-fascist "intolerant". It's superficially true, but by leaving out the nature of the power imbalance, the things that both groups are intolerant of, and the goals of both groups, you're losing most of the information (and thus, changing the connotation of, if not the definition of) the word "intolerant", to the point where the word is almost a meaningless label. "When everyone is super, no one will be." I don't feel like "prescriptivist" is a useful label, and thus a meaningful word, if it can equally be used to describe a minority asking people to stop calling them a slur, and a central authority declaring the "correct" way to pronounce every word in a language. There are just too many differences between those two use cases. The word needs to be able to be applied to the latter, and not the former, if it is to have any purpose in our lexicon.

[@letusplay2296]

In Japan, NHK, the national broadcasting association, publishes a dictionary of correct pronunciation. It is used to prescribe a specific system of pronunciation (not just pitch accent, but also a description of when devoicing occurs and when "ga" is to be pronounced as "nga" to name a few things) for their newscasters. It's updated regularly to reflect changes in the way normal people are speaking, so it's similar to the OED in that way. Most people never open the NHK accent dictionary, but they do correct each other's pronunciation. I'm not a native speaker but I don't think it feels quite as elitist as someone correcting pronunciation in English. I think the reason it doesn't feel as elitist is because it's not coming from an institution necessarily, because people are only familiar with the NHK's prescriptions via the pronunciations used on the news. Even still the pronunciation continues to change in interesting and fun ways.

[@TurbopropPuppy]

prescripto-liberals and prescripto-fascists

[@MechaOrangeStudios]

K Klein: Anti-prescriptivists are the REAL prescriptivists!

[@DonkoXI]

In a way, I think this is kinda the point of the video. Prescriptivism isn't itself good or bad because it can be used in good, bad, and neutral ways in a variety of contexts. This doesn't make the word meaningless though. It just means it's value neutral.

[@vampyricon7026]

That's exactly what Klein is talking about though: Pop linguistics is so stuck on the idea that prescriptivism = bad that they can't accept the idea that it is just a value-neutral word. It's just a word for people who prescribe things (about language, in this context). The prescription itself can be good or bad. Like, I challenge anyone to say the prescriptions of minority language or dialect speech based on the usage of their native speakers should be eliminated and let the majority language run roughshod over their speech.

[@swchwrm020]

One thing to add: there is a form of prescriptivism that doesn't punch down. When you're from a working class background and have some upwards social mobility, you learn to code-switch both ways. You don't want to be alienated from friends and family by speaking in a middle/upper class way to them, even if that comes more naturally to you than before. So you codeswitch "down" in order to avoid the "look who's gotten all posh now, why don't you just talk normally like us". I'm a teacher from a (I guess) lower middle class background (in the Netherlands though), we didn't have a lot of money but my parents were educated and I went to a posh secondary school and to uni. When I speak with posh parents I speak with an accent I know from secondary school (not quite posh but formal), but when I speak to working class parents my Amsterdam accent is thicker than it would be naturally, which makes conversation easier, because there's more trust and familiarity.

[@LowestofheDead]

*Moral* prescriptivism: " is harmful and immoral word, you shouldn't say it" *Linguistic* prescriptivism: " isn't a word, even though everyone understands what it means Descriptivism: "We just added and bussin to the dictionary no cap"

[@red_roy]

...are you saying slurs shouldnt be in the dictionary? like... i think its pretty important to document and have publicly available academic information about slurs. i have a friend who doesnt know why the n-word is that bad because they grew up in a diverse city where they've never heard it used in the bad way. but dictionaries and wikipedia is a great resource for them to learn about it. also, if you remove the r-word (slur) from the dictionary, you would only have the non slur version of the r-word in the dictionary. and it would be bad if a non native uses the r-word without realising its a slur.

[@FarnhamJ07]

@@red_roy er, I don't see where they said anything of the sort? i think you're tilting at politically correct windmills.

@@red_roy Is there really only one word that starts with r that is a slur, so it's enough to say 'the r-word'? I'm impressed.

[@red_roy]

@@FarnhamJ07 huh, they are totally implying its bad to have slurs in a dictionary.

[@ivy-re6qo]

see i think this comment just kind of. forgets about the fact that descriptivists also have morals and therefore do not think that slurs are good, even if they accept that a slur is a word

[@dnyalslg]

Spanish is not a spelling mess, and one can read the words of Christopher Columbus and Cervantes themselves and understand them perfectly. It’s all thanks to the RAE’s heavy handed prescriptivism.

[@NihongoWakannai]

Same with english, it used to be just a bunch of regional phonetic spelling before standardized spelling.

[@snibo1024]

So prescriptivism is good unless when it isn't, I mean yeah a good video that takes an opinion and say it's nuanced and explain why it is that way I really like it there should more videos like this on KZbin in general keep up

[@gljames24]

Language is meant for effective communication. If being lax is beneficial, that's great, but sometimes it's detrimental and you need to strictly define your usage.

[@gahllib]

Former English teacher both within the anglosphere and outside of it, came here fully ready to hate this video from the thumbnail and title, expecting some weird elitist pearl-clutching. Very pleased to be wrong and the general level of nuance! The french academy too is an interesting example, specifically because the vast majority of french speakers are african and the vast majority of written communication is on unregulated social media, and so both spoken and written consensus french is actually beyond the reach of the academy, and (similar to the US) most of the changes in French language right now are coming from an increasingly diverse and immigrant-rich body politic. But all that reinforces your notion of the inextricability of the sociological from the linguistic!

[@ablobofgarbage]

"consensus prescriptivism" is kind of a mix of prescriptivism and descriptivism. It is descriptivist in that it describes how the consensus currently is, and then it prescribes that you should conform to the consensus

[@andrewhooper7603]

this is the skim milk of linguistic positions.

[@gljames24]

And it falls apart once you realize that a lot of definitions are contradictory and these definitions break taxonomies and dichotomies. Take the vegetable fruit debate for example. All fruits are a subset of vegetables btw.

@@gljames24 > All fruits are a subset of vegetables btw. That's not really the consensus definition.

[@NihongoWakannai]

​@@gljames24 fruits are not all a subset of vegetables. "fruit" is a botanical term for a specific part of a plant. "fruit", "vegetable" and "grain" are culinary terms to describe plant matter with different culinary purposes. Something can be a fruit and a vegetable simply because the definition of fruit changes depending on whether we're using the culinary or botanical definition.

[@NeunEinser]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="376">6:16</a> The most British sentence "The way I see it, there are two big issues with the laws of North Korea: That they cause suffering and are awful and cruel, in short that they are bad laws"

[@piaraismacmurchaidh4712]

Don't you mean in "Defense" of Prescriptivism

[@danielwarren3138]

Absolutely not

[@Felix-l1o8s]

Very interesting video personally. As a German who lives in an area where low German used to be spoken. I personally have an accent which I suppressed in a lot of cases for quite a while. I am one of those folks that say "richtich" instead if "richtik", "Tach" for "Tag" and use phrasel adverbs. ("Da will ich hin" instead of "Dahin will ich") I was never forced by anyone to use standard German pronunciation, I just felt that it was more comprehensible or something like that. For quite a while now, I have personally given up on maintaining a high German accent. I know that I am perfectly understandable to anyone who is not a total A1 newbie and stopped caring about this invisible prescriptivism that made me use the "better" pronunciation.

[@qwertyasdfg2219]

Funnily enough, Northern Germany is said to speak the purest Standard German, with its bastion located in Hannover. This is because the pronunciation of Standard German (Hochdeutsch) is based on an area where Low German was traditionally spoken, whose name I regret to have forgotten.

[@NewbieFirst]

pronouncing -ig as ich is Standard German, Tach instead of Tak for Tag isn't tho

[@K2ELP]

​@@qwertyasdfg2219the pronunciation is actually based on the Mitteldeutsche dialects, as otherwise words like schlafen wouldn't have underwent the sound change from F to P. The area around Hannover has the clearest standard German because the people living there basically had to learn standard German as a new language, as standard German is based on Southern German, that's why it's called 'high German', because of elevation.

[@qwertyasdfg2219]

@@K2ELP You have misunderstood. what I meant by Standard German's pronunciation being based on Low German is that it is "Low German accented", having a Low German substrate pronunciation-wise. I know everything what you're talking about. Standard German, based on middle High german, was introduced to the Low German speaking areas as a foreign language, being the language of Church and education. Acquiring the language through school, the swamp Germans came to speak High German as though they would read it, that is, with a Low German accent. This has now become the base for Standard Pronunciation, like the one spoken in Tagesschau.

[@XavierGobble]

I think it is important to make a distinction between moral prescriptivism and linguistic prescriptivism. Your ending critique here is that you need prescriptions to make society good and that is obviously the case. But the blue blobs aren’t being linguistically prescriptivist here they are making a moral prescription they say “it’s hurtful and harmful for you to use that word” not “that slur you are using is grammatically incorrect”.

[@concibar4267]

but aren't both just different moral reasonings? Like, one group follows the moral value of "More people having an easier time understanding each other" is a preferable world. The other group follows the moral value of "Less people being discriminated against" is a preferable world. Both are concerned with what we should do (ethics). You could argue for each group if prescriptivism is an effective way in order to achieve their goal, but I would say both are concerned about doing the right thing (or... other people doing the wrong thing).

[@kori228]

before I watch the video-for language preservation, I agree

[@cheeseitup1971]

Where is the descriptive/prescriptive premise from? I always thought people were talking about how the science of linguistics shouldn't recklessly make value judgements, not that language policy can't ever exist.

[@vampyricon7026]

A lot of online linguistics spaces have users take it upon themselves to wage a holy war against all prescriptivism because their only exposure is to people who say you shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition. I had the same thought as you when I first encountered a description of descriptivism: "You're just describing doing science. What's the difference?" and as far as I can tell, there is none.

[@diydylana3151]

​@vampyricon7026 Its really been bothering me, I wanted to write a post about it (coincidentally a week later this vid pops up) because having standardized forms and terminologies is necessary so people you know, understand one another despite all the language change in various schisms. How do you get there? Prescribing. Somethings are just more useful than others. Non standardized forms are fine. But let there be standardized ones? If there is a good argument to be made to keep a words usage/meaning rather than what the majority mistakenly thought was its meaning then..thats a fair argument to make? I think its a false dichotomy. If its something they dont like they call it prescriptivism and if its something they do like they stay quiet. And I'm not the type of person to get bitchy about commas or slang or something. Things should just be able to coexist.

[@slaimiaadem1634]

I swear the power of memes will make the word "bluble" a new slang word

[@rateeightx]

Two examples I always bring up of Prescriptivism being useful are Science and Laws, In both cases it's generally pretty important that your meaning is communicated clearly with no ambiguity, And for that purpose it can definitely be useful to give a word a specific definition and not deviate from that definition, Which is I suppose Situational Prescriptivism, "In this context, This word should always be used with this specific meaning and no other, But in other contexts, Use it however you like".

[@MrS-in8pp]

Couldn’t you also argue though, that ambiguous laws eliminate loopholes, allow room for common sense in judicial proceedings and ultimately fit the needs of an ambiguous world?

[@diydylana3151]

​​@@MrS-in8pp you can be unambiguous about your ambiguity i'd say. Language and concepts inherently have limitations, but the underlying intent can be made quite clear. You don't want ambiguities over what word sense you're using to make your point, you simply want your sentence to apply in a broader sense.

@@MrS-in8pp You can leave room for interpretation in laws without making your language extra ambiguous.

[@serfit1]

I like how the final message was just don’t be an asshole, that’s always been the best lesson.

[@commieRob]

As a native English speaker who lived in Vietnam for a couple years, I would often be shocked by native English speakers expecting Vietnamese English speakers to understand the formers' particular highly stylized dialects. Dialects are lovely, they make language diverse and interesting, but for God sakes you shouldn't expect a young woman working in a bakery in Saigon to know "why chochlah" means "white chocolate", and you certainly shouldn't keep repeating it the same way expecting a different result.

[@ladymacbethofmtensk896]

Well, Vietnam was a FRENCH colony.

[@K2ELP]

​@@ladymacbethofmtensk896how is this relevant

[@ladymacbethofmtensk896]

@@K2ELP English colonialism created English influence. French colonialism left French influence. And the French language is notorious for the many silent letters in its spelling.

[@thai-cheese]

I have an interesting perspective from the current predicament of Cantonese speakers. In response to the Chinese communist party's policy of strengthening cultural unity through suppressing regional dialects, there is a movement to better reflect spoken Cantonese in our written Chinese communication (idioms, word choice, etc). As a Guangzhou born Cantonese speaker, I am largely in favor of videos promoting the proper written form of Cantonese words in effort of preserving and legitimizing the language. That is until I go into the comment section of these videos that protest the "standardized Cantonese" being promoted is just Guangzhou-ese which under-represents the linguistic diversity of the Canton region. In the struggle against the central government's Mandarin prescription, Guangzhou is the cultural minority. As the capitol of Canton and third most populated city in China, Guangzhou speakers promoting written Cantonese become the powerful cultural majority prescribing our language to the less populated regions. Survey says that about half of Guangzhou residents speak Cantonese while the equivalent rate in many cities across China is less than 10%, so don't those dialects need the attention more than us?

[@Hambrack]

I think there's a big difference between the kind of prescriptivism of spelling and the prescriptivism of speech. A writing system is artificial, man-made, unnatural.

[@steeltarkus58]

How can one type of human expression be natural and another one not? Man is part of nature after all, speech as we know it today is as man-made as writing is . Or are you implying that writing systems are a product of some sort of unnatural and/or alien forces?

[@xCorvus7x]

In writing, prescribing rules makes a lot of sense. Imagine how much more difficult life would be if you yourself had to ponder how to spell every word you write or what word other people could possibly have meant by the combinations of letters and other symbols that you read?

[@Hambrack]

@xCorvus7x I mean, for some languages this is the case (e.g. minority languages) and the problem is picking one that addresses all the language's needs.

[@Hambrack]

@xCorvus7x I mean, for some languages this is the case (e.g. minority languages) and the problem is picking one that addresses all the language's needs.

[@xCorvus7x]

@@Hambrack What do you mean by minority language? Doesn't any given language, regardless how fringe it is, just have its own spelling?

[@johningham1880]

Certain sections of the Cerulean Blobbian community have reclaimed to word “bluble”.

[@angeldude101]

I honestly thought this was were it was going, where many people from both sides agree that the word is bad, only to find that some of the blue blobs have started using it to describe themselves. The concept of language getting "reclaimed," and slurs and insults ending up being worn as badges, is so weird and interesting.

[@nexusanphans3813]

To a (large) extent, it is. We cannot have proper communication when everybody sticks to their own slang. What we can do is balancing prescriptivism with attitude and prejudice. As a speaker of minority language, there is added benefit of prescriptivism that I can attest: to ensure that the language stays intact with less erosion from the influence of the more dominant language. When you allow laissez-faire influences from another more dominant language, that minority language will be prone to code-switching and other assimilating influences that eventually reduces the overall linguistic diversity. Look at code-switching in Indian languages for example.

[@TheRealBFKelleher]

I'm surprised that you didn't mention that most French speakers nowadays live in the African Francophone countries and are completely free from French language institutions.

[@MrKumbancha]

i live in argentina, and even though we are not in the RAE's (royal spanish academy) jurisdiction, pretty much all teachers will say "this is correct spanish because the RAE says so" so i would not say we are completely free of them

[@KasabianFan44]

@@MrKumbancha I was thinking the same thing when I read OP’s comment. It’s interesting to see that the French Academy’s prescriptions are only considered at all in Europe and maybe Canada, while virtually all Spanish-speaking nations in South America accept the RAE as at least some sort of credible authority. To be fair to the RAE, they do put some actual effort into describing how the language is used in each individual country and the differences between them (it’s not perfect of course, but it’s certainly something), so perhaps that’s why? Although saying that, they practically never ever discuss the Spanish spoken in Equatorial Guinea, Western Sahara or the Philippines, so I do wonder how the RAE is viewed over there.

[@lennih]

I like this channel. Had a couple of observations with this video in particular. *1)* That is not a picture of the OED. And common people don't look up words in the OED, because the OED is a useless dictionary unless you're a researcher/linguist. Oxford has many dictionaries that are very useful and freely accessible, and then they have OED which was 29 volumes in the last printed edition and is currently available online behind a paywall. The picture shown is ODE, and then there's ODO, there's OALD, etc. There's a huge difference between them. *Point one:* no one uses OED except a very small group of scholars and nerds with cash to spare. *2)* Writing systems are subsidiary to language. A word is not a its written form but its spoken form. There are languages that have writing systems, languages that don't. Language is a biological ability whereas writing is a cultural ability, just like having an impressive vocabulary in order to read 18th century poetry is also a cultural ability. The difference between language and writing can't be ignored when discussing what this video calls "prescriptivism", as writing is by definition a consensus, and by definition arbitrary (not Saussure's arbitrary), by definition it is an imposition. And just like it is inappropriate to put your elbows on the table if you're dining with the king, but not if you're having dinner with your wife, it's inappropriate to spell "i" without a capital letter in a newspaper, but not in a youtube comment or whatsapp text. *Point two:* "suttel" is not comparable to John complaining about t-glottalization: the first one is a spelling mistake, the second one is by no means a mistake. The second one is prescriptivism, the first one is observing/not observing a capricious rule that is the defining characteristic of all writing systems. *3)* Is it possible for native English speakers to make a video about prescriptivism without highlighting the fact that English is more democratic/better than French/German/Spanish/other languages? I don't think it is. I do believe that French speakers are more prescriptivists than English speakers, but that is a social phenomenon, and it's got to do with a tradition in schooling. I imagine that all English Universities must really hammer home the fact that their language is inherently better than French because they don't have an institution like l'Académie Française, and they're more democratic. The importance that English speakers imagine that l'Académie Française has in French society is ridiculous: this institution always has controversial resolutions, against tradition, they announce future changes, people invariably complain, rivers of ink are written in the press, reports in the news, people make jokes, people dismiss the changes as ludicrous... most of the changes are never implemented, people just spent months discussing and joking about the spelling of a word. If the French are prescriptivists, that's because of school in France and societal attitudes towards language, not because of an institution no one in France gives a flying ****** about. *Point three:* placing English as a superior language in absolutely every video that discusses prescritivism vs. descriptivism, because English is more "democratic" than other languages as "it is not regulated by an institution" (when in actual fact most languages around the world aren't either) is simply imperialistic, chauvinistic and ignorant. By the way, I am a linguist from Argentina.

[@Hwelhos]

I can imagine that wa'er becomes standard and later the glottal stop is lost together with the following schwa and say "Can i ge' a bo'le of war" and people correct them by saying "You want a bo'le of war? Of *war*? Or do you want a bo'le of wa'er"

[@Imevul]

Basically, this video could be summarized as: Either nothing communicated can be wrong -- or -- if I do something non-standard it's wrong. But if I and a mob does it, then it's language evolving. Either way, I like to think of it from a different angle: The only real goal of communication is to make your message understood. Sounds reasonable then that if you intentionally do something that makes you less understandable to others, that is wrong since it strays further from the goal. If John and Timmy suddenly appeared in a vacuum, they would die, but they would also both be wrong if neither of them refuse to accommodate and adapt their speech so that optimal communication can be achieved. On the other hand, if John and Timmy grew up together and spoke exactly the same for 20 years, then suddenly one day Timmy started speaking differently, then he would be wrong for reducing communication efficiency. I think in the real world though, almost nobody is in the pursuit of optimal communication, and most are happy if they can wing it through life, one grunt and hand gesture after another. Conclusion: Everyone is wrong.

[@PeCzech]

"The only real goal of communication is to make your message understood" That's not true. And it's pretty prescriptive of you to assume the "only real" goal of communication.

[@Imevul]

@PeCzech I'm listening. What do you think is the purpose of communication then.

[@PeCzech]

@@Imevul Whatever people communicating have in mind. You know, we live in a society. Someone's goal may be to show his higher status, greater knowledge or whatever, someone may want to convince people that are listening to the conversation that they are DEMOLISHING THEIR OPPONENT, or things like that.

[@vampyricon7026]

​@@PeCzech And that is part of their message.

[@PeCzech]

@@vampyricon7026 That's pretty boring. If you define "message" as anything you want it to be, then sure, it can be part of their message.

[@camelopardalis84]

Very much looking forward to watching this.

[@mirabeaux851]

I love French, but can we just call it “the French Academy” in English?

[@VoidVerification]

I started school (in Germany) in 1992 and first learned old German spelling, then new German spelling. There was a LOT of public outcry at the spelling reforms, so there was a revision of it, making part of the new spellings of certain words optional, whereas some of the core rules changes (like the revised usage of ß) stayed mandatory. So this wasn't purely power at play, but also reacting to public sentiment to tone down some of the reform.

[@ReddoFreddo]

I think a good prescriptive institution is one that has a lot of linguists, aka descriptivists in it. Oftentimes, prescriptive institutions are composed mostly of writers and journalists as opposed to linguists, and while I'm sure they're fine people in other realms, they reflect an upper middle class culture, which historically cast A LOT of judgement on the way people speak, especially in some countries.

[@vampyricon7026]

Exactly: It's what's being prescribed that's the problem, not prescription itself.

[@ClementinesmWTF]

I got kicked out of a certain “linguistics” Facebook page for espousing the opinion that spelling prescriptivism is ok because it’s not natural in the first place. I made a lot of these same points, but they hated it. Let just say that militant descriptivists (read: pseudo-linguists who have a similar linguistic understanding as militant prescriptivists) don’t actually understand what parts of prescriptivism make it bad and wholeheartedly reject anything prescriptive, including spelling. It’s perfectly possible to mix both as you’re doing here.

[@blueberrymuffin_144]

I don’t see why spelling perscriptivism is bad in a world with auto-spellcheck and almost no usage of cursive in job settings. But if this were the 80’s, I’d argue it’s disadvantageous to dyslexic people. Maybe those folks are stuck on that past opinion.

[@ClementinesmWTF]

@ even then, dyslexia doesn’t make a wrong spelling all of a sudden right. We can understand the mistake while still trying to make it more accessible and correct it for them (eg spellcheck and autocorrect). None of that is a good argument against prescriptivism in writing.

[@blueberrymuffin_144]

@@ClementinesmWTF Yeah, I just don’t think not knowing how to spell should affect people’s job opportunities and such. The only consequence should be getting your spelling corrected.

[@ClementinesmWTF]

@ cool, none of this is an argument against prescriptivism still…no one is disagreeing that we should make accessibility features. And when you have them, you should use them to your advantage (ie I haven’t seen a handwritten job application/non online application in decades so what is your point of acting like this is an actual issue)

[@blueberrymuffin_144]

@@ClementinesmWTF Yeah I agree. Don’t really know why people are against spelling perscriptivism aside from accessibility concerns, is my point

[@gljames24]

That oxford dictionary example reminds me of Unicode. They say they want to only describe how language is used, but now lock in language into what they deem common. I'm still upset they rejected Cyan and Magenta while those colors are literally used by every color printer in the world!

[@ElliotShayle]

It's so refreshing to see someone finally defend the idea of prescriptivism. I got the feeling that most linguists dismiss any prescriptivist tendencies, although I always believed that there were powerful benefits to communication by being able to communicate in a standardised and prescribed way.

[@koibubbles3302]

Personally, I don’t think it’s right of the blue people and their friends to ban usage of the word “bluble.” I don’t think it’s a good thing that this word has been restricted. Yes in the past it was used discriminatorily, but the issue was always the discrimination and never the word. If there is no ill intent in using the word, like maybe saying it in passing or quoting another person who said it, then there’s no reason the word shouldn’t be used. Especially if these blue people have reclaimed this word and use it conversationally themselves.

[@SleinJinn]

I work in language education-mostly, but not exclusively, EFL-but my own background is in academic linguistics, and my teaching style is heavily influenced by linguistic theory. So the tension between descriptivism and prescriptivism is something I've always had to confront. When I first started teaching, it was something I struggled a bit to reconcile, but what I've realised through the years is that descriptivism operates at the level of language communities whilst prescriptivism operates at the level of individual language users. I'm very transparent about this with my students/clients, and I let them decide whether they want me to correct them to higher status "prestige standard" forms, or whether they're choosing to identify their language with other language communities, in which case I'll work within that dialect, sociolect, etc. And I regularly rely on corpus data when deciding which forms I should introduce my students to. I think it's also worth pointing out that prestige standards-along the lines of what you're calling "consensus prescriptivism"-play a particularly useful role in the case of linguae francae. The fact that one language allows you to communicate with such a broad swathe of people all across the globe and to participate in such a large body of media and culture is the principle reason people learn English as a foreign language. But, without the gravitational pull of prestige standards, linguae francae lose their utility over time as different language communities drift in different directions-look no further than the Romance languages.

[@randomguy-tg7ok]

Language is about communicating with each other. Prescribing language allows people to speak closer to each other, and less diversity = easier widespread compehension. If you're learning English, you have to learn or otherwise pick up that there are three ways an English speaker might pronounce an intervocalic t. That's three sounds you have to recognise and categorise as one. Not impossible, and probably not the hardest thing in English - but still harder than if everyone just used a t sound. That's one reason why people might prescribe: your dialect is good and all - until someone else can't understand it, and you need to know how to speak "properly".

[@jem5636]

Thank you for helping me to disentangle prescriptivism from punching down, and help me understand why I actually hate certain subsets of it so deeply - not because it was prescribed, but because it was insulting, derogatory, or cruelly exclusionary.

[@petretepner8027]

Here are some of the ways the word _subtle_ has been written (in published texts) since it was first adopted into the English language from Old French _sotil/soutil/subtil_ in the early 14th century: _sotil, subtile, subtyl, sutile, subtil, subtile, sotell, sutille, subtille, sutyll, sutil, sotell, suptyl, sutill, suttle._ And here are some of the ways it has been pronounced: /sɔˈtil/, /ˈsɔtəl/, /ˈsɔːtəl/, /suˈtil/, /ˈsutəl/, /ˈsuptil/, along with the modern standard /ˈsʌt(ə)l/; that's ignoring both regional variations on the pronunciation of the vowel /ʌ/ like [ʊ], [ʏ] and [ʉ], and regional substitutions of the glottal stop [ʔ] for /t/. I'm not quite sure what that proves, nor whether it can be regarded as an argument either for or against prescriptivism. I do know that both English and French make for problematic examples when it comes to spelling rules, since both have clung like limpets to etymological spelling (sometimes “re-etymologizations”, as in the case of _subtle_ ) rather than, like the vast majority of Roman-alphabet languages, opting for a (broadly speaking) phonemic approach. For this reason, anglophone and francophone children and adults are much “worse” spellers of their own languages than those who natively speak any other European language; to the best of my knowledge, North America is the only place on earth where people indulge in “spelling bees” as a competitive activity, and French-speaking countries the only ones where the _dictée_ (dictation) forms such a large part of the school language-learning curriculum. Written French also encodes a great deal of grammatical information which the spoken language does not (or does differently), so when a child learns to read and write in school, they are, in effect, learning a second language, even if the language spoken in their home is perfectly standard modern French. Both American and British TV newsreaders and presenters frequently “mispronounce” words they are reading from their autocue, because English spelling gives wholly inadequate clues as to how they should be spoken. Their listeners, in turn, adopt those pronunciations, having heard no other - language change in action, though springing from a relatively novel source. So much for the similarities between English and French. One very important difference is that, whereas France has, for at least 250 years, imposed a rigorous (and at times viciously cruel) policy of suppressing local “patois”, encompassing not just French dialects and minority languages, but even minor differences in local pronunciations, in favour of a (now outdated) Parisian standard, the British have rejected, or in the second half of the 20th century reacted against, the notion of a standard public version of the language free of “regionalisms” (RP or “BBC English”) as “snobbery” and an unwarranted encroachment of the Southern English upper and middle classes on the freedom of both their own working class and people from other parts of the country and beyond. The result is that people working in public information/communication roles in London (rail ticket salespeople, bus conductors, even tourist information employees), dealing not just with customers from all over the country, but also with foreign visitors, are free to express themselves just the way they would back home in Glasgow, Barnsley or Mumbai. The BBC and other broadcasters now have a deliberate policy of employing presenters with (sometimes slightly “poshed-up”) accents representative of different areas of the country. While not always imposed with such single-minded ruthlessness or carrying the same flavour of dictatorial centralism as in France (or of snobbery as it would/did in Britain), most countries or language areas of Europe accept the existence of a standard version of their language for public, or at least official use. Italians do not expect to hear their national broadcast news read in Sicilian or Venetian, or even in an accent strongly suggestive of those areas. Nobody from Bern or Zurich supposes that they can tour the Baltic coast of Germany expressing themselves in Schwyzerdütsch (though their origin is likely to be recognizable from their accent): both they and their hosts will use (at least an approximation to) standard Hochdeutsch, though this is the “natural” language of neither. Good luck trying to make yourself understood speaking West Flemish in Amsterdam, or even in Antwerp! So you have half-convinced me with your argument for prescriptivism, within certain strictly-defined limits. Speaking as a Bruxellois/Londoner, do not (if you value your safety) come into my local London pub demanding that we “pronounce our 't's”, nor, as some arrogant and apparently suicidal French tourists have been known to do, order a drink in my local Brussels bar pretending not to know that _septante_ means _soixante-dix._ For that matter, do not enter my Aunty Eileen's tea-shoppe in Dorset and exhort your waitress to suppress the [ɹ]'s in her speech. But by all means, should you invite me to give a public lecture on this or any other subject in Britain or in France (hope springs eternal!), expect me to deliver it in a good approximation of RP, and at least attempt to remember the complexities of French-French arithmetic. But wouldn't most people do that anyway? I hope you won't find it rude of me to end on a rather personal note: I find your own accent very difficult to place. Are you a USAer or a Canadian? Either way, it strikes me as a rather uncomfortable compromise between Standard American and British RP, though for all I know, it could be the perfectly natural accent of some part of North America.

[@NewbieFirst]

Dictants are extensively used in Russian education, due to the morphophonemic nature of Russian orthography. French orthography also appears to be morphophonemic, while English is strictly morphological. At least with Russian and French you can correctly read the words out loud immediately (bar some exceptions like eu or ai and ignoring Russian stress)

[@petretepner8027]

​@@NewbieFirst I didn't know that about Russian schools, so thanks for the info. You very neatly pinpoint the "extra" difficulty of English spelling: it works neither way round. Not only is it impossible to know how to write a word spoken in isolation (like in French), it is equally impossible, in very many cases, to know how to pronounce a word you see written down, unless you just "happen to know". I don't know much Russian, but if I find a suitable YT video in Bulgarian, I'll give it a go as a dictation exercise (if you think the two languages are comparable in this respect). I am far from confident of being able to give myself a "smiley face" on my homework!

[@NewbieFirst]

@petretepner8027 should be pretty close, the lack of cases might make it a bit easier, since vowel reduction would be less of an issue when it comes to the endings, also Bulgarian has two steady vowels (Е, И), while Russian has only one У, and Bulgarian also has simpler vowel reduction in general.

[@NewbieFirst]

@petretepner8027 should be pretty close, the lack of cases might make it a bit easier, since vowel reduction would be less of an issue when it comes to the endings, also Bulgarian has two steady vowels (Е, И), while Russian has only one У, and Bulgarian also has simpler vowel reduction in general.

[@petretepner8027]

@@NewbieFirst Everybody thinks Bulgarian must be "easier" than most of the other Slavic languages, because of the lack of noun cases, but it has a truly terrifying verb morphology/syntax, more complicated even than Old Church Slavonic. But yes, Bulgarian spelling is reasonably "phonetic" after the orthography reforms (latest in 1945). The modern alphabet has 30 letters (there used to be 44!), with mostly a one-to-one correspondence between graphemes and phonemes.

[@jasmijnwellner6226]

Alright you changed my mind. I won't use the b-word anymore. (But seriously, you changed my mind about prescriptivism.)

[@greenoscc]

LOL

[@themoderndandy713]

Thank you for the nuanced video! Prescriptivism seems to work somewhat like an internet boogeyman, and it's easy for internet linguists to attack it without any nuance. Regarding individual prescriptivists (a good example of which is Bryan A. Garner, author of "Garner's Modern English Usage"), they don't exist to force people to agree with them, but as a resource. Is it not a good thing that resources exist for those who want to speak in an educated and traditional way? It's not as though we're required by law to follow their advice. Prescriptivism and descriptivism also have different uses in the language world. For example, a prescriptivist linguist is a redundancy, but so is a descriptivist copy editor. A descriptivist copy editor would read the document and go, "Interesting. I'll be sure to note your writing style. That'll be $500." Grade-school teachers must also be prescriptivist by nature: They're teaching children how to read and write. Descriptivism and prescriptivism both have valuable roles to play in the world of language. I've found that some anti-prescriptivists are still prescriptivists, and in a negative context, too-they're just populist prescriptivists. "That's an archaic word, so don't use it," or, "That tone is too formal, so speak differently," is pretty much the same as, "That's not how it's traditionally spoken, so don't say that." As for correcting other people's grammar in general, that's more of an etiquette issue than anything.

[@RuanPysoft]

Okay, for spelling... My language has this _super_ annoying rule in it's spelling that while there is a "correct" way to spell a certain set of sounds, if most of the speakers spell it differently then that way is also a correct standard spelling. This is fine. But what _really_ bugs me is that there's a perfectly good way to spell the word for China which neatly shows how it's pronounced ( /ʃi.na/), but everyone can read and write English so then they spell it "China". But maybe the real reason this annoys me that much is because I just like our digraphs for /ʃ/ /ʒ/ /tʃ/ /dʒ/. (Also it annoys me _'cause you're just writing English at that point, seriously!_ We have standardised spelling! I might have an irrational grudge against that particular spelling...) What's also interesting is prescriptivism as a form of language preservation. For example, growing up the teachers always told us not to mix our languages, which I always found annoying, however I now find myself consciously avoiding adding English words into my Afrikaans. Interestingly enough, though, I only correct my brother or people learning Afrikaans as a second language when they use an English word. Of course, which word is an "anglisisme" (anglinisation?) is kinda arbitrary. If it entered the language a hundred years ago, everybody uses it, and it's in the dictionaries, is it really still English? And when do you draw the line? And what if the word has recently come from English and is displacing a native word, but it has Afrikaans pronunciation, spelling, and conjugation? Heck, look at "offisieel", borrowed from French through Dutch (though French did get it from English which in turn got it from Latin) which is simultaneously starting to see more use due to its similarity with English "official", and being prescriptively disallowed in favour of "amptelik" as it's perceived as being English. (Though interestingly enough, I have not seen such prescriptivism against words originating from languages other than English - well, not intentionally at least (se offisieel) - which I think is because the vast majority of Afrikaans speakers speak English very well, which leads to a great influence over Afrikaans; and many parents are raising their children English, leading to kids that can _maybe_ understand Afrikaans but not speak it. This results in English being seen as a threat to our language, whereas other languages are not. I myself might have nothing against English and think it's a cool language, but I try to scrub its influence from my Afrikaans and if I ever have children I won't speak English to them, just like my parents don't speak English to me)

[@AhrenAKADan]

Halfway through, quick thoughts 1. I think you have to be experienced as a descriptivist in order to prescribe good language change. And in some ways we kind of do this. There are words, or even just modes of words, that I champion because i think they're Good Words, and there are words which i strictly define because I think the conflation of the different modes of usage cause more confusion than anything else. We are all agents of and within our languages. Be the change you want to see. 2. In my eyes, being wrong is more about what generally inhibits understanding. But if this difference has a consensus around it and you understand it perfectly fine, unless you can say somehow that it actually makes things more difficult to understand beyond you being a shithead who gets hung up on it, it's a difference not a problem 3. Oh also you can prefer things one way or another just for artistic/fun reasons. But again that's a preference it doesn't mean things are a problem

[@jeffreyhabgood91]

I had to go to speech pathology growing up because there were just so many phones i couldn’t reproduce that it got in the way of understanding (the best example I can remember was thirty and forty sounding exactly alike minus the vowel). I think my experience particularly was an ideal example of how these concepts should be applied: someone took a descriptive analysis of my idiolect and decided that my communicative experience would be improved by training me to produce the “correct” phones. And it did help! But I think the key there is that they started from a correct and fair descriptive analysis, and thats where so much confusion on these points happens. One of the things that strikes me with the John-Timmy example is that ultimately, John’s descriptive analysis of Timmy’s speech fails to understand that Timmy’s use of glottal stops in that linguistic situation is consistent and not an impairment to communication with exposure. Had timmy used a glottal stop in a consonant cluster like in “street”, then John would still be an asshole for his tone and the fact that he’s subjecting timmy to a speech pathology lesson without timmy’s consent, but he would be at least be basing his prescriptivism on a stronger descriptivist core. The two concepts exist together, and people can use both for good and for bad! Though obviously, with the way power manifests in the current day and age, bad prescriptivism tends to have more harmful consequences.

[@TomteMiley]

I love how by now I can almost always guess what point the video is gonna make at the end by only seeing the title and thumbnail 😂 Really good arguments, you certainly helped me putting into words what essentially were my thoughts to begin with too

[@gljames24]

The Paradox of Descriptivism is that it often leds to a defacto standard becoming an entrenched standard that is then prescribed. The very act of describing is prescribing a view or framing of language.

[@EnanoPancracio]

That makes no sense. Prescriptivists eventually moving on to prescribing the changes in a language they initially opposed isn't the fault of descriptivism. And recording how people use the language is not prescribing anything to anyone.

[@cirnobyl9158]

Also a lot of ESL (English Second Language) learners like immigrants have no choice but to RELY on some degree of prescriptivism to survive! It's hard enough for them to adapt to a new country with a new language and work a narrow subset of low-income jobs as-is, but one thing that they can cling to for comfort is learning "standard" English, a set of firm rules for English that is considered unobjectionable. If an ESL asks you how to prepare for an important interview, you wouldn't teach them slang. You would teach them the words and the accent expected of them in a formal setting. These ESL will probably teach their children very "standard" English as well, and warn their children to use slang sparingly. This doesn't come from a place of malice. This comes from of place of wanting their children to have a better future than themselves.

[@josephclayson2714]

This feels more like an argument for descriptivism in _written_ language rather than in spoken language, which is much more easily enforced via spell checkers and grades and whatnot. It's hard to imagine a way to enforce prescriptivism in the spoken word that doesn't feel dictatory (apart from large cultural shifts like you said towards the end), and it makes sense. All language though when used mostly for communication should be somewhat standardized, whereas when used mostly for self-expression shouldn't be.

[@yveltheyveltal5166]

"'consensus prescriptivism" is really Democratic Centralism for language btw

[@user-id9bn1ic9v]

When I learn a language from a native speaker, like in a class, I’ll often ask the “correct” way to say it, and then the “wrong” way to say it, because consensus prescriptivism is a good thing to know, and in itself should be studied by linguists.

[@MaggaraMarine]

Finally someone says it. This is also an issue on music theory forums. "Music theory is descriptive, not prescriptive". That's a very simplified way of approaching it, and easily leads to kind of "nihilist" attitudes about teaching people what to do/not to do in music. (In other words "there are no rules, you can do whatever you like - just feel it bro".) I think the point about certain rules just emerging naturally from the way that people use the language is also important. Again, the same applies to music. There are plenty of music styles that don't necessarily have "formalized theory", but to many people, the lack of formalized theory gives the false impression that those styles are somehow less strict about the rules. And classical music is supposedly much "stricter", because the theory is clearly formalized. But in reality, this just isn't true. Blues also has a lot of rules. If you asked a self-taught blues guitarist to give their opinion on random people's blues solos, they would instantly be able to tell which of the musicians didn't know how to play the blues properly. And they would be "prescriptivist" in this sense. But I don't see that as an inherently bad thing. Knowing what is and isn't appropriate in a specific style is important when it comes to learning to play in an "authentic" way. And knowing the style well is what gives you freedom to express yourself. Prescriptive attitudes in music can also be harmful. An extreme example would be Ben Shapiro's "rap isn't music because it doesn't have melody or harmony". But maybe a more common example would be using the conventions of one style to judge other styles that actually follow different conventions.

[@chyza2012]

I really hate how redditor descriptivism evangelists don't realize it applies to lingusts studying a language, not the people speaking it. If a speaker group accepts there's one correct way of pronouncing something, and you insist they accept an alternate one, YOU are being a prescriptivist, you're prescribing to them how their language should work despite it working otherwise.

[@FairyCRat]

I don't really agree. If THEIR dialect only has one possible pronunciation of a certain word, then fine, no need to make them pronounce it differently. But just because they won't use any different pronunciation themselves, doesn't make it any less mean for them to correct speakers of other dialects if they use a different pronunciation, at least provided that they still understand the word.

[@xCorvus7x]

@@FairyCRat _Their_ dialect? What, would you try and start your own? If you double down on such a mistake, which no one would hold against someone who tries to learn the language, the problem is not the behaviour of those who've pointed it out to you. Obviously pointing out where someone misspoke isn't appropriate in literally every situation but it's certainly not _mean_ or any other kind of problem per se.

[@vampyricon7026]

@@FairyCRat >doesn't make it any less mean for them to correct speakers of other dialects The only one bringing up a different dialect here is you.

[@skyworm8006]

Not exactly. The existence of another pronunciation that needs correction means it's in the language and pointing that out is descriptive. It's absolutely not a random 'mistake' in an individual otherwise it would not even be worth mentioning. Usually people are taught something is wrong, coming from a single source (like a language authority or an institution's style guide). Such a source may only prescribe a guideline, or it may define or reinforce a standard dialect. But the way people speak on the whole and perceive to be correct/normal, may and often does disagree, in such cases it is usually just ignored. It's not so simple. What's correct and what's incorrect is complex and there is plenty of room for the speakers of a language as well as educated outsiders to discuss it and decide for themselves. In general though, there is a sense of correct and incorrect, so people are naturally prescriptive. This wasn't the case in the past though, the phenomenon clearly comes from being taught it. Though homogenisation of speech is definitely natural, where people are living together and needing to communicate, that is different to the very pedantic approach and sense of correct and incorrect, which has little utility for communication (because homogenisation already happens according to need) and denies any variation however slight.

[@skyworm8006]

@@vampyricon7026 If someone learnt to say a word differently then it is almost certainly not unique to them or new. People don't just say words randomly or make 'mistakes', that's not how differences in speech work, changes are rather slow, not coming from one person's invention, and often in reality rooted in established, old speech of a minority dialect entering the mainstream and becoming standard. So not even actual changes developing, such as a pronunciation changing because a weakened sound is lost entirely. Nothing wrong with a bit of prescriptivism, where reasonable (either way everyone is tending towards speaking the same), but you are being stupid and disingenuous.

[@norude]

Well, the idea of English speakers being more open to non-standart spellings, so that the spelling system would be easier to use over time has been floated around a few times

[@marikothecheetah9342]

Yes, especially mixing: they're there and their and your and you're. Makes it so easy when you don't stick to their proper usage :/

[@norude]

@marikothecheetah9342 I, as a non native English speaker, would be confused by theese mixups, but the difference between "it's" and "its" is just stupid

[@marikothecheetah9342]

@@norude wait a bit longer, misspellings and distortions are in their infancy. I know it's trendy to follow descriptivism, and be all chill about the language usage, but for me, using three languages daily at work, consistent language spelling and usage is crucial to communicate in a clear way with clients. But yeah, little misspellings, that along the way may distort whole words is a non-issue, right. Old English sitting in the corner and chuckling.

[@flightlesswizard]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="808">13:28</a> no way bro dropped this right at the start of no n-word november😭

[@spaghettiisyummy.3623]

Nut.

[@gljames24]

I almost hate it more when an institution goes along with a consensus name rather than a scientific name because they view the scientific name to be too prescriptivist while just reinforcing the nonrigourous consensus name as the consensus.

[@jakobbauz]

As someone who has studied linguistics and teaches German as a foreign language professionally, I have always been full of cognitive dissonance each time I would correct one of my students (which is basically all I do all day long). So... sanx mayt!

[@vladprus4019]

This video is surprisingly relevant to the lore of the tabletop RPG game Mage The Ascension, mainly the consensus bits.

[@gljames24]

Trying to avoid prescriptivism often just leads to an adhoc convention rather than a well-defined standard.

[@ultrapicti0n587]

I am so proud you've evolved from being blindly against prescriptivism, you've taken the mature choice of seeing that the world itself is more complicated than just descriptivist is good and prescriptivist is bad.

[@1Dr490n]

The main thing I learned in this video was bullying is bad

[@darkardor666]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="373">6:13</a> "anarchists seething rn" Me, an anarchist: "HOW DID HE KNOW?"

[@gljames24]

on the otherhand, people missuse the terms Socialism and Capitalism all the time and I would prefer an authoritarian enforcement of language for the idiots who keep insisting that capitalism is synonymous with a free market when it actually describes external ownership of capital outside of the direct stakeholders. Worker Cooperatives are Market Socialist! Markets are an Anarchist/Libertarian system!

[@DragonsAreAwesome45]

The problem with prescriptivism is that at no point in the process did a group of people use this power to cause the spelling of *any* European language to make sense

[@DragonsAreAwesome45]

What English really needs isn't a "spelling reform" but a spelling overhaul

[@ladymacbethofmtensk896]

English spelling does make sense when you realise that much of it reflects how the language was spoken during the time of King Richard III, and those infamous silent B's? Those are Eighteenth Century Latin affectations.

[@diydylana3151]

As long as language change exists, spellings will only make sense if you keep reforming the spelling over and over. But then you also lose out on etymological connections of words, easily recognizing already known words, and are forced to pick a specific dialect. Its easier for me to know "londeners often ommit the t in words like water and turn it into a glottal stop " than have it be written as a glottal stop as now its evident its the same word. Chinese doesn't really have that problem because 1 character is 1 word root and those stay the same. The problem there is that the char itself can change form, and it's components are tied to the meaning and sound they had at the time. But some degree of prescriptivism and picking 1 language its vocabulary allows people of differing chinese languages to read the same manderin text quite easily. Problem there than is that typically governments will surpress other languages and dialects and make them die out. Thats what we don't want. Prescriptivism can make things make more sense. You just don't want to use it for something bad like wiping out peoples own varieties.

[@onetruetroy]

Excellent video for bringing up this interesting topic. - Although I only speak English and a few phrases in other languages, I understand more foreign language phrases than other people I know whom only speak English. I love language and enjoy listening to people speak with a variety of dialects, accents and vocabularies. If I don’t understand what is being said then I’ll politely ask for clarification. I don’t respond with “oh, you meant to say ” I thank them and now I know a new way to hear that word. I continue to speak in my way. What works for me is to speak how I would write the phrases, paying attention to grammar and context. I think mimicry is rude and condescending. Plus, I’m autistic and cannot always tell if the listener got what I was saying. - This is all about the age-old conflict between ‘us’ and ‘them’, and what the video explicitly states: power. Controlling communication through verbal and written language is no different than telling people what to think about and how to think it. - Words (and their variations) I enjoy hearing and being used: going to, gone to, want to, am not, vase, government, February, opossum, draw, drawer, drawing, tree, ask, orange, library, acclimate, commute, sandwich, isn’t it, gigabyte, harpsichord, aunt, what, this, that, baroque, aluminum, schedule, obvious, stir, darn, pawn, palm, chips, crisps, fries, wire, war, ward, lieutenant, colonel, acre, merry, marry, Mary, steer, stir, sure, shore, sheer, shear, share, shell, shale, shall, shawl… 🥹

[@williamswindler105]

As a Cree learner, I found <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="235">3:55</a> rather funny as Cree spelling is anything but standard lol.

[@AnarchoGoober]

One of the major problems with prescriptivism is that it's often done from the top down and part of a system of domination and oppression. Prescriptivism would be relatively fine if it was consensually implemented by the speakers themselves on some platform of standardization, but it pretty much never is, and leads to many communities being negatively treated for speaking some non-standard version of a language. This alienates language from speakers and turns it into an appropriated tool of authoritarianism. Obviously, the people can still be bigoted or any number of negative things that lead to popular prescriptivism becoming a tool of oppression from one group to another, but those are problems too that can be resolved or lessened in severity. Anarchy doesn't mean chaos or without rules, it means of the people.

[@lemonZzzzs]

Good points, although the problem of how language differences are inevitably leveraged to further division between people is not fully explored, imho. Then again, this isn't a problem of prescriptivism, but of the humanity itself. A rigidly enforced language taught equally to all that study it would reduce the surface of attack between the different groups along class, race, or whatever other common lines of division; but at the cost of stagnating and impoverishing the language itself. And, of course, there's this (not so well) hidden caveat of "taught equally," which, of course, never happens. Also, I'd argue your example about the red vs. blue prescriptivist ban on the word bluble is *not* a "good" instance of prescriptivism. By the time the blue peeps are accepted and equally empowered as the red majority, that word should no longer affect them. The taboo, however, prolongs that painful tension point and thus furthers the division between the blue and the red. * The blue members are still _taught to be hurt_ by that word, maintaining that attack vector on the mutual acceptance and unity; there is still the oppressed "us" and the oppressor "them" in that teaching. * Also, the way that kind of taboo often works is, the blue members of the society feel they can still use it, but everyone believes the red members can't; that naturally creates a new division between the two groups, delaying the true equality * Ultimately, by the very existence of the taboo, there *is* a meaningful difference between blue and red members of the society, so there is no true unity or acceptance So, on the surface, making that word taboo promotes unity; but past a certain point in the actual unification process, maintaining that taboo either betrays the failure of that attempt at unity or becomes a detriment to it; usually a bit of both (in reality, more the former, but also a bit of the latter). TL;DR: Making a word a taboo gives it power, and this kind of word is a word of division, so in your example, you gave this word the power to divide the people, which hurts the effort for them to realize they're all equal. That's not "good" prescriptivism, despite the intent.

[@niklaseriksson81]

We must recognise that prescriptivism is also not only how we speak, but how we enforce what rules to say something. Today it’s considered taboo to say certain words, and as a (fellow) Swede, we can remember N- words (as in with the bool) has completely changed. We (Swedes) have prescribed a particular word what considers to be deem worthy to say. Now we (Swedes) are saying the particular pastry differently. It would be unacceptable to say anything else. So it is with many other words we prescribe meaning to. We cannot be too descriptionists, otherwise we’re are all going against what culture is (lex all what linguist anthropology are saying ..)

[@coolguy4709]

The fact that this is the only video on prescriptivism that genuinely didn't misrepresent prescriptivism. Prescriptivism is not inherently classist or racist. The vast majority of it is not. It is a way for more people to understand each other.

[@Ardub23]

"Lots of people say it like this." (Ooh yes, that's descriptivism, we love that!) "Said like this, it's easily understood by most people." (Mm yes, delicious descriptivism.) "Therefore, if you want to be easily understood by most people, it's a good idea to say it like this." (NOOO that's prescriptivism! it's EVIL!!!) Of course, being easily understood isn't the only reason anyone's ever used linguistic prescription. (See note below.) But it is a pretty good reason, and there's quite a bit of prescription it works for. I hope we can do away with the notion that prescriptivism is the opposite and enemy of descriptivism. It's a tool that can be (but sadly isn't always) used to help people communicate. (Note: In the above example, replace "easily understood by most people" with "reminiscent of the aristocrats' dialect" for another not-so-good but somewhat common reason prescription has been used. Note that even though this reason isn't a good motivator for prescription, prescriptions that have come from it aren't automatically bad-there may be better reasons to use the same prescriptions.)

[@stefan_popp]

Such a well-laid out argument. You totally changed my mind, which I had changed already a few years earlier.

[@hexasquid]

punching down and also when the prescriptivism is just "it should stay the same" seem like the major red flags.

[@gljames24]

I was always annoyed at Tom Scott for saying we should be descriptivists when that requires a prescriptivist understanding of the term descriptivism in the first place.

[@love2o9]

The thing is that descriptivism can't exist without prescriptivism. When describing languages and changes within them, you use the general consensus of how that language is to even be able to tell there are changes.

[@Liggliluff]

Problem with Ground News is that it's using blue for left and red for right, the opposite of the world. While it has news from the world, this alone is confusing every time.

[@1d10tcannotmakeusername]

It's american

[@astrOtuba]

Damn, I was thinking about this side of prescriptivism vs descriptivism for several months now, but you organised it so nicely, it all just clicked in my head. Thank you♥️

[@andyarken7906]

I agree, mostly. As for the facts presented here... there was not just an "accepted" German spelling reform. There was the reform of the reform, and if memory serves, the reform of reformed reform. Because people very much did not agree on it! Partly, they just canonised typical spelling errors, resulting in the larger part of the population mispelling the new form. And then they ended up allowing both versions, which, yes, obviously reduced the amount of errors people made when writing, but also made the language harder to learn (again, errors are avoided easily if several versions are considered correct, but understanding these different forms gets harder). And then, despite that language reform being discussed in the three main German speaking countries, they still changed the language in unintended ways. Germans will not make a huge difference in the pronunciation of the letters E and Ä, which is why they tend to mistake these letters for each other. But for Swiss people, these letters are very different. So exchanging an E for an Ä creates a completely different word (what on earth is a "Gämse"? What is a "Stängel"?) In conclusion, the German spelling reform was an example of bad prescriptivism that is still not applied by all publishers...

[@ollelindelof2592]

Thank you for this, im currently writing an essay about this exact topic in swedish class!!

[@Aesclingua]

Could you make a video talking about how the descriptions of English phonetics (especially the vowels, English 'coup' sounds nothing like German 'Kuh') are sorely outdated? Also, rip RP. (~1920 - ~2000)

[@usernamenotfound80]

I think a lot of that stems from confusing phonemic and phonetic desriptions. It is perfectly sensible to phonemically transcribe "coup" as /ku:/ or "day" as /de:/, even though the vowels are diphthongs (along the lines of [ʉu̯] and [ɛɪ̯]) for most speakers. After all, it is is clear which phonemes /u:/ and /e:/ are supposed to represent.

[@Aesclingua]

@usernamenotfound80 I'd argue it isn't fine for phonemic transcriptions to be so inaccurate and distant to the actual realizations. It'd be much more sensible to transcribe them phonemically how you transcribed them phonetically. The distance between the "phonemic" transcriptions and the physical reality shouldn't be so wide. Most people casually looking at info on English vowels would think that English has a sound like [u], and that they can use their native /u/ to pronounce it correctly; and the same goes for English speakers using [ʉu̯] to pronounce the /u/ of foreign languages.

[@vampyricon7026]

​@@usernamenotfound80 That can be a good *dia*phonemic transcription, but notice how linguists describing English dialects use phonemes that are as close to the phonetics as possible

[@vampyricon7026]

Also I believe that ground has been well-covered by Geoff Lindsey here on KZbin

[@RedAngelSophia]

Another problem is - there is literally a problem with excessive descriptivism that can literally be demonstrated with what has happened to the term “literally”. Sometimes, prescriptivism might be needed to prevent things from going too far off the rails. Also - though just glottalizing the ‘t’ in “water” might not make anything someone says too hard to understand - too many vernacularizations in pronunciation very much _can_ make a dialogue that is _supposedly_ of your own language totally incomprehensible. This is not a hypothetical, by the way. I have witnessed it first-hand with my ear - being completely unable to communicate with people because of this. Yes -- we all laughed at that SNL skit where an airplane’s pilot was trying to communicate with air-traffic controllers who were speaking in their regional dialects of English - but such communications can happen in real life. (Though I hope not in air-traffic control. I really do hope that air-traffic control organizations have the good sense to be a little bit - prescriptivist - at least enough to prevent that from happening.)

[@thatthoasguy]

I'm a descriptivist until someone uses the wrong homophone or forms a past participle with

[@oliveranderson7264]

This was amazing, it was like having an idea I've been having for so long be properly developed then reexplained to me.