this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2023
921 points (96.5% liked)
Programmer Humor
19154 readers
2012 users here now
Welcome to Programmer Humor!
This is a place where you can post jokes, memes, humor, etc. related to programming!
For sharing awful code theres also Programming Horror.
Rules
- Keep content in english
- No advertisements
- Posts must be related to programming or programmer topics
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Grammar is code.
However, real grammar and prescribed textbook grammar are two different things.
Anybody who bitches about prescriptivism is just mad that their grammar sucks.
Edit: this always gets 'em crawling out of the woodwork
Prescriptivism is mostly just an unprincipled mishmash of shibboleths someone pulled out of their rear end hundreds of years ago, classism, and knee-jerk reactions against language change.
For example - why do people distinguish less vs fewer to refer to countable vs uncountable nouns? Because someone wrote in 1770 that they thought that distinction was elegant, despite not actually reflecting the way English at the time was spoken.
Why is ain't "not a word"? Because it originated in the speech of poor people, and was used less commonly by rich people. People roll their eyes at new business-speak because it comes from rich, powerful people, but look down their nose at language innovations from poor hillbillies and other disfavored groups.
And you can find writings from old prescriptivists complaining about literally every change in the language, such as hating the new ambigious use of singular 'you' when 'thou' was perfectly good and unambiguous or hating phrases like 'very pleased'.
Oh, so you mean the whole of the contemporary field of linguistics?