• Sylvartas@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Unfortunately the Académie Française is mostly full of crusty old men who think they can dictate how the french language evolves, so we rarely care about what they have to say

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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      4 months ago

      The alternative is English, where influencers and popular-girl types push something into popularity, and that drives the (d)evolution of the language. Quite actually the worst of us, the most shallow and short-sighted of us, people who peaked in high-school, people who have no idea how this or any other language works, decide how we speak.

      Now we have words which are synonymous with their own antonyms, pluralization for a derived word different from its own root, no collective retained clue about mass nouns, and “because Becky said it” kind of rules fighting with the “massive population of ESL and their bad adjective order is the most popular, ergo the standard” mess.

      And you complain about old scholars?

        • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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          4 months ago

          Prescriptivism is exactly the opposite of blindly following vapid influencers and their eternal quest for ‘likes’. There is something in the middle between prescriptivism and Idiocracy, and that middle ground was the fucking point of what I said.

          • Floey@lemm.ee
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            4 months ago

            I don’t need the acrimonious screeds of a racist incel to tell me how language should function. I communicate daily, in English, both on and offline, and have yet to witness this breakdown of communication you’re decrying.