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Comment by sph | Hacker News Reader

Not until my dying breath. The English language is a mess because of its haphazard evolution mostly driven by immigration over centuries.

Which is what bugs me about native grammar mistakes: only native people make them. No one that has learned English as second language could ever construct "could of" as it makes no sense. And the act of being defiant is very very different than being definite about something. Yet people get this wrong all the time, as if they never learned grammar at school, or let alone read ONE book.

(My pet peeve is native speakers unable to pronounce "aesthetics" correctly. Drives me nuts. )

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I do see where you are coming from but alas, language is an ever moving democracy. As much as many would like to define it in certain terms - it is largely beyond control.

This is why the English of Shakespeare doesn't hold up today because we are constantly adding and changing these things in a wonderfully organic fashion. It just makes it difficult to define.

The question is should we define it or is it like catching the wind with a net?

Another example is the word Monetize. It used to mean to turn a item into a form of money like currency. Almost nobody uses it like this nowadays. Decimate is another one.

Decimate meaning "kinda reduce the number" instead of "kill one person in 10"? I think it's been used with the first meaning in every language (including latin ones) for a long while.

> Which is what bugs me about native grammar mistakes: only native people make them

Why does it bug you? They are different classes of mistakes but both have driven the language over the centuries. Why are native mistakes wrong but immigrant mistakes good?

Because in my limited experience (I am fluent in only two other languages apart from English), "native grammar mistakes" only happen to native English speakers.

For example, I know Italian and French, yet I cannot think of any weird misspelling only native Italian or French speakers do. I always wondered if it's because of education or how grammar is taught in Anglosaxon countries that is ultimately the root cause of these errors. It is a peculiar phenomenon.

I'm French. I can't list them off the top of my head right this moment, but there definitely are annoying errors that natives do that are in the same category as "could of".

> The English language is a mess because of its haphazard evolution mostly driven by immigration over centuries.

No. Every language evolves, even those in countries with zero to very little immigration.

Usually towards simplification. I've lived enough to notice my native Romanian getting 'dumbed down' and we can count immigrants here on just a few hands.

However, in the 2000s I've ran across a collection of 1920s articles written by someone complaining romanian is changing and getting dumbed down. His examples of correct language felt overcomplicated and pointless, and his examples of 1920s dumbed down were academy style in the 2000s :)

> Which is what bugs me about native grammar mistakes: only native people make them. No one that has learned English as second language could ever construct "could of" as it makes no sense. And the act of being defiant is very very different than being definite about something. Yet people get this wrong all the time, as if they never learned grammar at school, or let alone read ONE book.

Agree with that one though :)

Every language evolves. English evolved haphazardly, and gained all its rules, inconsistent pronunciation, and exceptions because of its very history and immigration by Angles, Saxons, Celts, Franks, Vikings in a period where a reference text like the King James bible didn't exist yet. At least that's how I understand it.

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