Ah, the old "I was just testing you" excuse. I think that one went out of favor when I was in third grade or so.
It's not common in the vast majority of cultural circles -- I know because in my travels all over the world for the past 25 years I've spoken with thousands of people who speak many variants of the language, both as a first language and not. In general, if you ask anyone who has studied English grammar whether it's correct or not, they will tell you it's not. The only place you'll find otherwise is inside small enclaves of "progressive" thought who are trying to change the language to suit their feelings. You put a large amount of credibility on those enclaves. Most of the rest of the world does not care one bit about them.
I think you've misunderstood Stallman's comments, if you've read them. I'll reproduce them here again as I've done other places, though generally I wouldn't cut and paste several times into one thread:
"
Every language has grammar rules. They are in the minds of speakers of the language — including, for English, me. The fact that they weren't decided by an official edict doesn't mean these rules are a trivial matter; demanding people change their grammar rules is an affront. You might succeed in convincing me to change the English grammar rules in my mind, but don't you dare demand it. "
I don't have to justify myself to you, the statements I made are axioms. The language form you want to be correct is in fact not "in common use", it's simply a bit more commonly used in that fashion [I]inside certain cultural circles[/I]. If that's where you run, you perhaps wouldn't know that outside those circles in the vast majority of spoken and especially written English it is still considered incorrect.
And I'm actually now curious if you know that you're != your, because you've done it again and autocorrect generally gets that right in my experience.
That's the difference of EFL/ESL and a native speaker. If you live in the US/UK you're probably aware of how pitiful the average person is at grammar. However, they can always tell if a sentence is right or wrong for their variant of English.
When I taught English abroad, I would get asked questions all the time on things I hadn't researched yet so often the answer was "just because".
Except we are talking about the English language. And it does have rules, they are called grammar. Plus, you're using the bandwagon fallacy. Just because a lot of people do it doesn't make it right.
It's plainly obvious that not every person speaking english uses an identical grammar. It seems reasonable to assume that at least some people don't notice the difference/s. The incorrect form must not be significantly more difficult to use because it's being used. They haven't learned that it's incorrect or can't see why it matters.
I'm a bit confused about what point you're making. Are you talking about individuals "naturally" preferring the correct grammar -- as opposed to learning it? Or the grammar has developing over time?
Not everyone does it, though. I mean technically yes, it's required grammatically, but it's one of those rules that isn't always obeyed. It's a mistake but common enough to be aware of it.
It's common among native speakers too. You might even say it's stopped being 'wrong' and started to become just 'informal'. I just find it really jarring, unless the clauses are really short.
I hope my comment didn't come across as anything other than the constructive criticism it was intended as.
The construct has been used incorrectly for many years, to the point that most people hear it and don't shudder over it anymore even though it's incorrect.
As a non-native speaker, you learned it correctly and thus it sounds wrong once you've actually paid attention to it and studied it. Many native speakers never really study grammar and don't understand it -- I'm no exception, I took a course years ago but can't quote grammar rules and go almost exclusively on how things sound to my native ear. It makes it interesting at times when my non-native spouse asks me "why do you say it that way" and I have to research the rule so I can explain it properly or fix my incorrect impressions.
On the contrary, in any circles where precision in language is appreciated or grammar is important, it has been called out as incorrect for years. I remember being hit for it on college papers 20+ years ago.
There's also a well-known thing about English in that it's culturally much less prescriptive about grammar than other languages. The American-English philosophy around grammar doesn't necessarily transpose to other grammars around the world.
Yes. If you are trying to teach children "correct" grammar rules that they will go home and unlearn because their peers speak a different grammar, you are getting teaching very wrong and you should do it differently. As has been reiterated exhaustively in these comments, that does not mean you do not teach them SAE. It means you teach it so they actually learn it.
Don't take this the wrong way, but highlighting "your" vs. "you're" indicates you really don't understand what we're talking about here. That is a difference of orthography, of spelling, which is completely unintuitive and frankly stupid to speakers of dialects in which those words are pronounced exactly the same way. Any native speaker, however perfect you consider their English, must be taught spelling by rote. All English is "broken" in that regard. (Did you know there are languages where there is no such thing as a spelling bee, because there is exactly one possible way to spell any word?)
But we're not talking about that. We're talking about people who go home every day and speak a real language, one just as proper, correct, consistent, coherent as your own. Just different. Your insistence that your language is "proper" because it is the language used in formal speech by the rich and powerful is, yes, incredibly unaware of your privilege.
And your calling that "silly" is, o irony, quite ignorant. Did you read the article? Did you read these comments? Did you go on Wikipedia and look up AAVE? Southern American English? Appalachian English? These are not broken forms of English, these are forms of English you do not speak. This is all completely uncontroversial among people who study the use of language scientifically.
What grammar rule is violated? The question "is it not?" Is completely valid English and common with French speakers.
I would literally argue that it's ironic that most English speakers have a bad command of the language. Of course you're experience may be different. The reality is that grammar is often, especially in spoken language, is butchered. It's affect is that many people could care less.
Those protests were popularized by grammarians who learned grammar thru a Latin lens, so, to them, being used to the Latin grammar, this construct in English looked incorrect. From a Germanic language context, though, it's perfectly normal.
And this is how the English language has become what it is. If someone politely points out that the use of a word is incorrect, instead of thanking and correcting themselves, people just shrug and say: "it is what it is" and continue to spread the incorrect usage. I even wonder why bother with grammar in a language like this.
Their usage is fine, and I couldn’t have imagined interpreting it any other way until I saw your misunderstanding. But if you’re more interested in correcting arbitrary grammar rules than gaining a better understanding of the conversation you joined, that’s my cue to drop it and go do something better with my time.
When the rules in the rule book are used as a cudgel to beat on native speakers of a language, it is the rules, and especially those using the rules in that way, which are wrong.
English has prestige dialects which conserve certain features, and others which are low status and don't. A phrase like "I done been doin it!" is grammatically regular, in a dialect of the language which you don't speak; it isn't the same thing as the mistakes a non-native speaker will make, at all, and you shouldn't treat it like it is.
English Grammar is arbitrary and there is really no such thing as a "correct" form, only a formal one. Which is kind of elitist and disparaging imo.
Ain't is my favorite example. It was considered proper English until the lower class started using it [0]
I'm not against formal grammar but to grammar nazi everyday language is to be nothing more than an elitist pedant who presumes form to be more correct than function (which is only true in creative writing imo)
I disagree. When I took foreign language classes I wanted to apply the prescribed/common grammar rules, but I mistakenly used them incorrectly. I wanted to do apply the rules as a native would, but I got it wrong despite my desire to get it right. Therefore I classify that as a mis-take.
It's not common in the vast majority of cultural circles -- I know because in my travels all over the world for the past 25 years I've spoken with thousands of people who speak many variants of the language, both as a first language and not. In general, if you ask anyone who has studied English grammar whether it's correct or not, they will tell you it's not. The only place you'll find otherwise is inside small enclaves of "progressive" thought who are trying to change the language to suit their feelings. You put a large amount of credibility on those enclaves. Most of the rest of the world does not care one bit about them.
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