Yes yes, language changes over time. I’ve heard that mantra for decades and I know it. That doesn’t mean there aren’t language changes that aren’t grating when they become fashionable (and hopefully temporary).

For me, “morals” being used as a crude catch-all application of “morality,” “ethics,” “integrity” or related concepts bothers me. Sentence example: “Maybe if society had morals there wouldn’t be so many minorities in prison.” lmayo us-foreign-policy

An even more annoying otherwise-fluent-speaker modification I see is when “conscious” is used to mean “consciousness” and “conscience” interchangeably. Sentence example: “Single mothers on welfare that steal baby formula have no conscious.” It sounds like they’re saying the shoplifter is not mentally aware of their own actions, not that they’re lacking sufficient “morals” to let their baby starve for the sake of Rules-Based Order™.

There’s others, but those two come up enough recently, with sufficient newness, for me to bring them up here. Some old classic language quirks are so established and entrenched that even though I hate them, bringing them up would likely invite some hatemail and maybe some mystery alt accounts also sending hatemail after that. You know, because they “could care less(sic)” about what I think. janet-wink

  • muddi [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    13·
    1 year ago

    “_ and I” hypercorrection, or maybe reanalysis if we’re being more descriptivist.

    It’s an interesting subject, and I’m kind of split on it as an amateur linguist, but as an English speaker it sticks out like a sore thumb to me. I think English prescriptivism has pushed the order of pronouns in collective noun/pronoun phrases too much (eg. he and I, not I and him), and people have started to reanalyze the phrase as a noun phrase in itself, but not everyone so it sounds weird to a slice of the population. Then there’s disjunctive pronouns that throws a wrench in the works.

    Note: asterisk means it sounds ungrammatical to speakers of the language in linguistics (me in this case), no asterisk means okay to say. Also later correct reformulation means it’s less common but still correct:

    Alice, Bob and I are going.

    *I are going.

    I am going.

    Me, Alice, and Bob are going.

    *Me are going.

    *Me am going.

    Want to join me?

    *Want to join I?

    *Want to join Alice, Bob and I? <– this is the one that annoys me, but you might think it’s fine

    Want to join Alice, Bob and me?

    Alice and Bob aren’t going probably, but me, I’m going for sure

    Alice and Bob aren’t going probably, but I, I’m going for sure

    It’s me who is going

    It’s me who am going <– this is pushing it

    It’s I who is going

    It’s I who am going <– actually acceptable, but I still do a double take

    Alice and Bob like to go more than me

    Alice and Bob like to go more than I