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Comment by tcptomato | Hacker News Reader

What would be the right way to correct him?

I think the right way is, don't. This kind of "mistake" can not really result in any misunderstanding so there is not really any benefit gained from a correction. Correcting serves only to disrupt the flow of the conversation.

It benefits me, the non native english speaker passing by in the comments and who learnt something today.

I'm a native English speaker. I don't personally like corrections like this, and I would never criticise anyone for using the 'wrong' term. There is too much convention in English which isn't useful because it bleeds into pedantry and I think this is such a case. Using either word gets the job done cleanly, and at the bottom that's all that counts.

The problem is you take this as a critic, which is not.

This feels so wrong to post in this thread, but I’m going to bite. It’s ‘critique’, I believe you mean.

I’m sorry.

Edit: as someone who can’t even figure out the markdown to italicise right now, maybe I should have kept my nose out!

See! I am learning even more because of this.

> you take this as a critic, which is not.

Interesting. What is it?

Well I was about to say correction but I think I got caught by a false cognate so it was indeed a critique but you weren't criticizing the previous post if my understanding of those words is correct.

OTOH, what I see is misuse of words like this ultimately ends with “well, lots of people use it like this, so now it’s correct.”

(See, for example, “literally,” or “comprise,” or “hopefully.”)

All the "incorrect" uses of those words are fine and are a part of the language. Outside of prescriptivism, that's just the use of the language, not misuse.

Even "literally"? While my original comment was just a Stannis joke, I really think you need to rethink how useless it is to have a word that means both "not figuratively" and "figuratively" (by common usage) at the same time. If it means both, we literally have no further use for it in the English language because it modifies nothing.

Why not have the word "no" mean "yes" and "no" while we're at it?

Cleave:

- to adhere firmly and closely or loyally and unwaveringly

- to divide by or as if by a cutting blow : split

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cleave

So cleave is it's own opposite. It causes no confusion because context is everything. q.v. homonyms.

Edit: "The word "cleave" has two opposite meanings - either to stick together or to split apart. Are there any other words that do the same thing?" https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-13...

    The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. 

    - James Nicoll

"Literally" has meant figuratively for centuries[0]. It's a language construct known as a contronym[1,2].

Yes, English is not strictly typed, and doesn't conform to a formal spec or mathematical proof. A word can have multiple definitions. A word can have contradictory definitions. The definition of a word can change over time without needing to submit to an approval process. A word can mean something different the next town over. Dialects and creoles and slang exist in wild, flagrant abandon and disregard for your rules. And all of it is valid.

Despite all of this, people manage to be able to comprehend one another, even when using literally to not literally mean literally.

Even the user who used "less" instead of "fewer" upthread that started this. Everyone understood exactly what they meant. The two words mean literally the same thing. But some people insist on maintaining a meaningless formality and insisting upon rules that don't matter, or rather insisting that even in casual conversations, their rules must take precedence over everyone else's.

[0]https://www.thecut.com/2018/01/the-300-year-history-of-using...

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contronym

[2]https://www.quora.com/Etymology-When-did-the-word-literally-...

You're literally doing what you still think I was doing and are literally not realizing the hypocrisy. The "fewer" line was a Stannis Baratheon reference.

Yes it is correct. “Standard” English took one dialect and attempted it enforce it on hundreds of others. It’s authoritarian and not how language works

Yes but I think a soft resistance is still necessary in a society towards language errors otherwise the language becomes too fluid to be usable and understandable. Where to draw the line between information and rudeness is the difficult part.

You don't need to jail or slap someone in the face for using less instead of fewer but you don't want gynecologist to mean oncologist and cancer to mean gonorrhea from one week to another otherwise nobody knows what we are talking about.

Agreed, but is less vs fewer worth anything, really?

You can always shrug it off, possibly what most readers have done.

An odd thing, for a native English speaker to be given advice on the language by someone who is learning it, no?

In English there is both essential plumbing and pointless ornament, and I wish for that distinction to be recognised because confusing the two is damaging.

I am not the one who corrected the comment. I am only someone who said that this correction had a value and I am not telling you how you have to speak english.

My point was thatin my opinion I did not believe the correction had value. I was categorising it as a pointless ornament rather than something actually useful. But I emphasise, that's just my view.

What exactly did you learn? That some people try to enforce made up rules on native speakers and then feel superior for it?

This is a tech forum for discussing technology. This isn't the place for that, and honestly I'd prefer not to have to sift through a bunch of pedantic grammar nitpicking on here.

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