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Comment by PaulRobinson | Hacker News Reader

To refer to these variations as a "mistake" is the problem.

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.

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>The English I am using to write this comment would be incomprehensible to my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents.

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.

But only if written; it's more unfamiliar pronounced: http://faculty.virginia.edu/OldEnglish/Guide.Readings/wave/p...

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....

> To refer to these variations as a "mistake" is the problem.

But, surely, some variations are mistakes, whereas others might have come about as a deliberate and thought out breaking of an existing rule.

Mistakes are possible but language variants with different rules are not "mistakes" no matter why the variation came about. Intentional thought or planning is behind about 0.5% of our standard English. Why hold other dialects to a higher standard?

> Why hold other dialects to a higher standard?

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.

"Mistakes" only in the context of language B. But if they are speaking language A, why would you even use the word "mistakes"?

I don't mean that everyone who speaks makes mistakes by doing so. I mean that the language came about through mistakes. That, in my view, makes it quite appropriate to say that language A is language B with me stakes.

Native speakers do make mistakes, but a persistent “mistake” which is an ordinary feature of how many people speak, is perhaps not such a thing at all.

It came about as a mistake, that's what I'm concentrating on.

But since you've already acknowledged that this is equally true of all dialects (that they form as a result of "mistakes") then why are you concentrating on it especially in regard to AAVE? Hmm...

> why are you concentrating on it especially in regard to AAVE?

What? It's what the post is about.

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