grammaticality - How dangerous is the acceptance of common usage on traditional English?


I mean how far should we flow on with the current called "common usage"?


Is there a fear that the real English is going do disappear someday?


By the way, as for me, I like common English myself. :)



Answer



I personally feel that the idea of a "real" version of any active language is unrealistic. Language evolves in order to meet the needs of communication, and that landscape is always changing. In the days of Old English, we didn't have laptops, rockets, cars, and mp3 players. The language had to change to include words describing those things. Likewise, people are constantly finding new ways to describe more intangible things like emotions, colors, and even philosophical concepts.


An inactive language like Latin can certainly have a solid definition, since it is no longer evolving. I would suggest that any language currently in use can not have a "real" version. It can only have a particular lexicon at a particular point in time.


I would add that it is normal, and desirable, for a language to resist change to some degree. If a language changed from one day to the next, for example, it would be very difficult to communicate in that language. I'm sure there is a happy medium somewhere in the middle; a language that is flexible enough to change as required, but not so fluid as to be incomprehensible.


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