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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   4725 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 19, 2023

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Question for Motteizeans who natively speak a language with cases(I know we have at least a few Russians and East Indians and one German, Finn, and Hungarian apiece)- in English, there's a pattern of young speakers mistaking cases which is shared with more-poorly educated ones, eg "Me and John got a burger" where the correct would be "John and I got a burger".

Is difficulty with cases English specific? I am a fluent Spanish speaker and it seems like most people speaking Spanish have no difficulty distinguishing "yo" from "me", but I also don't interact with children in it very much compared to in English and most of my Spanish communication is relatively unambiguous and/or omits or implies pronouns, either because of the verb or because it's obvious from context. I have some experience communicating in Latin but we can assume people who know Latin to be IQ selected and also using careful phrasing- does the average Russian or Tamil or Finn have some trouble figuring out how to use cases growing up, and is making errors with it a hallmark of a stupid or poorly educated speaker(which statistically must exist) as opposed to simply a second language speaker(which there are probably also plenty of)?

What's happening is linguistic evolution, in real time.

Old English used to have an extensive case system, which changed to the limited form that we currently have. The use of 'me' is the example you gave is just a continuation of that evolution. There's nothing wrong with 'me and John got a burger' because it sounds perfectly fine to native speakers. And if it sounds right, it is right. Language is formed by consensus. 'Me got a burger' sounds wrong, so it is wrong. But if enough people said it, it would become correct.

In English, a bunch of historic linguists tried to make the language work in the same way Latin does, leading to absurd rules like 'you can't end a sentence with a proposition'. Real languages laugh at prescriptivists' petty rules.

Devil's advocate time. I think there's an is/ought conflation here. Is it the case that languages change, meaning that "Me got a burger" could one day be accepted as "normal?" Yes. But whether that's a good thing, or whether something is lost by those changes, are different questions.

I'm very sensitive to correct grammar usage and accurate diction (by writing this, I have now guaranteed that there will be at least one egregious mistake in this comment). I use both as indicators of conscientiousness, and as a conscientious person myself, I give greater weight and credence to the words of people who can follow grammatical rules and use words correctly. I think it's good to have grammatical rules and "correct" definitions for words for this reason, even if they're just conventions and there's no platonic world of word meanings we can appeal to. to which we can appeal.

Another, narrower argument is that the trend in English evolution seems to be towards simplification. As pointed out elsewhere, English used to have cases. We express the same meanings without cases today, though probably less precisely. And although we have added many words to our language, I'd wager they're mostly describing new things, and at the same time we have lost many colorful synonyms and their subtle shades of meaning.

There's also what appears to me to be an egalitarian pressure (that may not be unique to English, I'm not sure) where rhetoric has gotten simpler and coarser over time. Compare American political speeches written around the 1860s, with those written in the first half of the 20th century, with those written in the second half, with those written today. The only reliable source of eloquence in American government today seems to be our higher courts. Some of our Supreme court justices are still a pleasure to read.

Edit: Found and corrected four mistakes.

Generally, complaints over grammar or language use are held up as examples or causes of society degrading. Pointing out that language changes isn’t so much about is/ought, as it is to say that this change isn’t new.

I agree that grasp of the rules is an indication of conscientiousness, but you also have to acknowledge that those rules are arbitrary. I would dress nice when showing up for a date to signal my competence as a mate, but I also know that the specific character of my clothes is arbitrary. Chances are my grandparents would find jeans and a henley vastly too casual, but it works today.

If I had to be held to a standard, I would say that the only way a language could get worse is if it somehow lost the ability to express certain ideas or concepts. But as far as I can tell any idea can be expressed in every language, so that seems unlikely to happen.

Another, narrower argument is that the trend in English evolution seems to be towards simplification. As pointed out elsewhere, English used to have cases. We express the same meanings without cases today, though probably less precisely.

IIRC old and Middle English had word order rules of their own that were different from modern English rules and in practice a lot of the cases were pronounced the same anyways.

And although we have added many words to our language, I'd wager they're mostly describing new things, and at the same time we have lost many colorful synonyms and their subtle shades of meaning.

My impression is that it’s actually the opposite case, and modern English actually has a meaningfully richer vocabulary- hence why the King James Bible and Shakespeare use a relatively smaller lexicon- with words generally having more specific meanings and far fewer awkward phrases and calques(eg orange used to be called ‘red-yellow’ until the word was borrowed from Dutch, ‘evil’ used to be a generic antonym of good whereas it now has a specificity towards the moral valence, ‘happy’ used to mean any of a half dozen related concepts).

I mean, you're always going to have the prestige dialect of a language, spoken by the powerful and well connected...and then other separate dialects.

Turkish has a case system that can be quite daunting for learners (not because we have weird cases but because of how they interact with the whole suffix based grammar). Natives definitely get them wrong quite often, but when you hear someone make a mistake it’s always very obvious and a bit cringing. A common failure in Turkish is it’s tempting to make very long sentences where the grammar pieces interacting with each other are very far apart from each other. Then you just start forgetting and mixing up cases. If I am writing a formal text then I will definitely vocalise long sentences in my head while proofreading to make sure they sound correct.

We actually have at least three Germans here that post somewhat regularly.

That said, oh boy yes, Germans have trouble with all kinds of grammar. For what it's worth, I'm about as eloquent in my native tongue as I am in English, but I am not knowledgeable about the actual rules of grammar. I can't really pinpoint what it is they do wrong. But there's hardly any need, since they get so much wrong

Now, which Germans are they?

Practically all but some of the old and some speech elitists. Language is in decline, as always.

Older Germans make mistakes because of a lifetime of bad habits. Younger Germans make nothing but mistakes because they never heard anyone speak correctly. Younger Germans also intentionally make mistakes because they're too cool for grammar and vocabulary both, speaking mostly in meme phrases, and stumbling when they're forced to leave that space. Younger Germans additionally do their best to emulate immigrant speech patterns, since those are also considered cooler than any native dialect or high german. And I suppose I needn't mentioned the "Germans".

Even well-educated Germans run roughshod over grammar. Maybe there are some ivory towers of Germanistik somewhere in which the language is still used by the book, but that's nowhere in real life. Politicians and news anchors may sometimes speak flawlessly, but they do so from a very reduced playbook that's hardly suitable for everyday use.

I'm no paragon of grammar myself, mind. But I am saddened by how most just don't care at all, and many actively try to do worse.

My German is not great, so I was quite proud when I was able to identify a grammar mistake on a sign in a grocery store, where I think they used the nominative instead of the dative case.

The worst bullying I ever got in my life was from fellow academics over my german grammar ability.

My grandfather was a hardline grammar conservative and a locally known intellectual on it, among other things. No wonder he got choleric with age.

I grew up bilingual which i think messed with my ability to learn non colloquial grammar rules as both languages are so closely tied in my head, with blurred borders and rules. Thats why i personally think anglicization in the youth is to blame.

Sophisticated grammar checkers have been a godsend(although I didn't use one for this post.) But especially in german seem to fail me quite often.

I consider myself an above average wordcel too, the grammar part of my brain is just irrevocably broken. I'm supposedly a native speaker but memories of akkusativ and dativ classes wake me up in a cold sweat.

I know the Germans like to complain that no one uses genitive case anymore.

However I can't think of adult Russian native speakers that continue to make mistakes with the cases. Well, with one huge exception: cardinal numerals. "I wanted to buy a phone with 64 gigabytes of storage (instrumentative), 128 gigabytes tops, but the sales assistant told me that 128 won't be enough ("не хватит" genitive) and I should l look only buy those with 256 gigabytes" is impossible for the majority of Russians to get right and most people will switch to "a phone on 64" (accusative), "128 is too little" (nominative) and "those that have 256" (accusative again) to avoid complex cases.

Do Russian children make other mistakes with the cases? Yes, but in the language acquisition phase. I can't think of any typical mistakes schoolchildren make.

Do Russian children make other mistakes with the cases? Yes, but in the language acquisition phase. I can't think of any typical mistakes schoolchildren make.

I mean American toddlers say things like ‘I singed you a song tomorrow’, but double negatives and case are the big mistakes a school age child would be expected to make. It sounds like Russian children don’t make errors with case past the level of saying things like that.

Cardinal numbers make sense; I’m actually mildly surprised they’re declinable(in Latin they mostly aren’t and in Spanish only the number one is- because it’s identical to the indefinite article).

Can't help with much in this but I'm not sure I'd agree "stupid or poorly educated" would be my immediate assumption. Nothing is more boring than discussions of descriptive vs. prescriptive grammar, but I don't consider myself either of your adjectives above and might nevertheless be caught saying something like "He's better than me at basketball." Or simply, "He's better than me." Instead of, yes, the correct way. "He's better than I" sounds off. And I never, at the doorbell question "Who is it?" would say "It is I."

This is more contextual idiolect and the linguistic residue of having grown up in the South, I imagine.

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