Well, to be honest it is.
In the same way English is (especially spoken one), "mistakes" from the languages that preceded it.
In the same way English is (especially spoken one), "mistakes" from the languages that preceded it.
I have a long-lost-now-found sister who grew up in French Switzerland and in black culture in NYC . She's basicaly bilingual in both standard English and in AAVE (as well as Spanish and Swiss French). It's really interesting to hear her switch from AAVE with her rapper friends and coworkers to standard English with everyone else. She will conjugate verbs differently, which is the most obvious change to me, as AAVE has a richer verb system than standard English:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_En...
On a side note, as a non native English speaker, the double negative always sounds really awful to me :) You can call it dialect all you want, it just doesn't make any sense.
Two negations on different parts of the sentence also don't reinforce each other: "not everyone is not doing it" if equivalent to "some people are doing it".
To me treating double negative as reinforcement of the negation is a weird, unintuitive corner case that doesn't fit in the broader framework of the English language.
But be aware that these kinds of arguments bear striking similarities to the arguments we have about the singular "they", which someone on a message board will always seem to have ironclad logical arguments against, only to find their argument foiled by incontrovertible evidence of its acceptability in Standard English.
http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/aint-nothin-wrong-wit...
It's amazing how difficult it is for people to get past the trap of thinking that what's familiar is "correct."
That's why when people who don't speak AAVE try and "fake it", it doesn't sound right at all. It's not just an accent with some slang words thrown in.
Evolution is not always just by way of mistakes!
[1] http://www.wvculture.org/history/journal_wvh/wvh30-2.html
The English I am using to write this comment would be incomprehensible to my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents.
The version we are using here is acceptable because it is the form that those in power have accepted. To assume a variation is incorrect because the elites have rejected usage of that version makes the argument extremely political.
Perhaps we should just accept it is an evolving language and vernaculars, dialects and variations are perfectly fine. If it is useful to a community to teach one of those in their schools rather than RP/Queen's English/Standard English, to decry that and insist it is wrong is to make a political argument about the right to identity as a community.
But, surely, some variations are mistakes, whereas others might have come about as a deliberate and thought out breaking of an existing rule.
What? It's what the post is about.
I'm not. I'm perfectly fine with saying that language A (be it well established or not) is language B with mistakes, even if language B itself came about through mistakes.
Not necessarily. For example, take this: "Harold is swift. His hand is strong and his word grim. Late in life he went to his wife in Rome."
That's grammatically complete and fully intelligible Old English. It would be perfectly readable to anyone from 1200+ years ago who had mastered the modern alphabet and spelling conventions.
By the way, that's a made-up example from an Old English textbook. How about:
Lord's Prayer I (Exeter Book,10th c.) [....]g fæder, þu þe on heofonum eardast, geweorðad wuldres dreame. Sy þinum weorcum halgad noma niþþa bearnum; þu eart nergend wera. Cyme þin rice wide, ond þin rædfæst willa aræred under rodores hrofe, eac þon on rumre foldan. Syle us to dæge domfæstne blæd, hlaf userne, helpend wera, 8 þone singalan, soðfæst meotod. Ne læt usic costunga cnyssan to swiðe, ac þu us freodom gief, folca waldend, from yfla gewham, a to widan feore. (The Exeter Book, ed. Krapp and Dobbie 1936)
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~kemmer/Words04/history/paternoster....