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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)?

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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