# Mistakes made by native speakers - are they mistakes or not?



## tFighterPilot

*<< Moderator note: moved from a thread in the Hebrew forum. >>*

It's not a mistake if native speakers say it.


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## dukaine

tFighterPilot said:


> It's not a mistake if native speakers say it.



I don't know about that.  Natives speak their own language incorrectly all the time.


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## tFighterPilot

dukaine said:


> I don't know about that.  Natives speak their own language incorrectly all the time.


A person can't speak his own language incorrectly, otherwise you could say not a single person in the world speaks his language correctly since the way they speak it is different than what their ancestors spoke a thousand years ago.


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## dukaine

tFighterPilot said:


> A person can't speak his own language incorrectly, otherwise you could say not a single person in the world speaks his language correctly since the way they speak it is different than what their ancestors spoke a thousand years ago.



Once can, however, speak a standardized language incorrectly.  But that's for another thread.


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## arielipi

Please autopilot, dont you hear people mistake with numbers+sex? tozizi tokrivi, there are many mistakes and people sure do make them alot.


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## David S

In my opinion, if educated people regularly use an "incorrect" word or expression, even if only in casual conversation with their close friends and family, then it is NOT a mistake.

The example of "zoti" (vs. the more prescriptively correct "zot") was brought up in a thread where a university professor used it in a lecture:
http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1652055

The President of France might say something like "C'est pas lui" (omitting the NE), hence this is NOT incorrect French, however one could say that it is an expression that might only be found in Conversational French.


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## berndf

If native speakers agree something is a mistake, it's a mistake, even when said by other native speakers. Languages need some minimum amount of standardization. Otherwise it cannot serve its purpose as a means of communication.


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## tFighterPilot

berndf said:


> If native speakers agree something is a mistake, it's a mistake, even when said my other native speakers. Languages need some minimum amount of standardization. Otherwise it cannot serve its purpose as a means of communication.


But two people speak to each other with the same "mistake" that they don't even notice? For example saying "you and me" instead of "you and I". Is it still a mistake then?


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## jawiljebrood

What do you define as a mistake? Can a mistake be saying something 'wrong' when one does not know it is wrong, or only when one is aware it is wrong?


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## tFighterPilot

jawiljebrood said:


> What do you define as a mistake? Can a mistake be saying something 'wrong' when one does not know it is wrong, or only when one is aware it is wrong?


I don't think anyone knowingly talks wrong. Sometimes people confuse words and correct themselves immediately after, I am of course not talking about that.


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## killerbee256

I've been working with alot afrcan americans in my new job and I've been thinking about this. I was in brazil teaching english and coming back to the US hearing people speak with so may errors bothers me. At the same time it's part of the their cuture and the only reason it's "wrong" and my english is "correct" is a matter of standard. So basicly I'm not sure.


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## berndf

tFighterPilot said:


> But two people speak to each other with the same "mistake" that they don't even notice? For example saying "you and me" instead of "you and I". Is it still a mistake then?


As long as there is a consensus it is a mistake, it is a mistake. As soon as people agree this to be correct, it is language evolution. E.g. once _He saw you and me_ was correct and _You and I saw him _was wrong. Correct was_ Ye and I saw him_. Then _you _in the nominative became considered correct.


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## LilianaB

Of course if something does not conform to some rules of standard grammar and usage, it is a mistake, even if a native speaker says it or a group of native speakers say it. There are some expressions which don't follow strict grammar rules but they have been conventionally used for years in this form and are considered idiomatic expressions. Those are not mistakes. Just regular wrong usage of a word or grammatical structure by a native speaker is a mistake.


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## perevoditel

LilianaB: 
Actually, now I felt like in school with kids arguing with their mother-tongue teacher: if they heard something on TV or from an older person, it has to be right. I could actually say that I speak better Polish then most of TV presenters, and they're (together with actors and politicians) main reason of mistakes in commonly-used language.


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## LilianaB

Yes, many more local languages --more local than English-- are deteriorating, because many people in those countries use English more often which has an influence on their own language. There are also new idiolects around, which was less common, I think, in the past, although this is just my own observation. Native speakers make mistakes, it is true. Some of those mistakes which keep being repeated over and over become idiomatic expressions.


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## Copperknickers

It depends entirely on the context. If you are in a context of standard British English and you start talking in some Jamaican dialect, you are wrong. If you are merely speaking to friends or with people from your area in a local dialect, then you can hardly be 'incorrect'.


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## perevoditel

@LilianaB: 100% agree. It is very noticeable in Scandinavia with its escalation of dialects, where dialectal forms become to be used in official speeches etc...

@Copperknickers: "when in Rome, do as the Romans do"?


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## Copperknickers

Quite so, perevoditel. And I feel that in that spirit, I should tell you that '*when* in Rome, we do as *the *Romans do'.


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## perevoditel

Oops. Corrected. Sorry, too much Norwegian in last time


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## merquiades

berndf said:


> As long as there is a consensus it is a mistake, it is a mistake. As soon as people agree this to be correct, it is language evolution. E.g. once _He saw you and me_ was correct and _You and I saw him _was wrong. Correct was_ Ye and I saw him_. Then _you _in the nominative became considered correct.



I've been hearing way too much "you and I" as the direct object of a verb:  He saw you and I at the concert.  It drives me crazy.  Even when everyone says it, it will still be a mistake.


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## tFighterPilot

merquiades said:


> I've been hearing way too much "you and I" as the direct object of a verb:  He saw you and I at the concert.  It drives me crazy.  Even when everyone says it, it will still be a mistake.


I think that would count as "hyper correction". People think of "you and I" to be generally more correct than "you and me" so they even use it when it's the object. As a non native English speaker who learnt English mainly from TV, video games and at later phase the internet, whatever sounds right to native American English speakers would probably sound right to me, so I'm quite likely to confuse "you and me" with "you and I" as well. If you look at all the weird rules some languages have, there's little doubt that many of them came from mistakes such as this one which became official.


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## francisgranada

berndf said:


> If native speakers agree something is a mistake, it's a mistake, even when said my other native speakers. Languages need some minimum amount of standardization. Otherwise it cannot serve its purpose as a means of communication.


I agree. Finally, if I speak English "my way" then we could say, depending on our point of view:
1. My English is incorrect, because the others consider it mistaken 
2. My English is linguistically correct, but then it's a different language/dialect/variant ..., and not what we call English (by consensus)


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## berndf

tFighterPilot said:


> I think that would count as "hyper correction".






tFighterPilot said:


> ...there's little doubt that many of them came from mistakes such as this one which became official.


I agree on both counts.


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## tonyspeed

Each person, family, community has their own unique standard of speech. 

If a person's speech is correct according to any one of those standards it is correct. So the question really is: according to which standard?

If the expectation is set for a certain standard and that standard is not followed, then it can be considered incorrect.


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## tonyspeed

Copperknickers said:


> It depends entirely on the context. If you are in a context of standard British English and you start talking in some Jamaican dialect, you are wrong. If you are merely speaking to friends or with people from your area in a local dialect, then you can hardly be 'incorrect'.



In Jamaica, we don't speak a dialect, we speak a Creole. Please stop perpetuating this prejudiced nonsense.


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## LilianaB

If a speaker of Jamaican English speaks in accordance with the rules of usage and grammar, but probably even more of usage, of Jamaican English, he or she does not speak English with mistakes, but rather Jamaican English.


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## Egmont

LilianaB said:


> If a speaker of Jamaican English speaks in accordance with the rules of usage and grammar, but probably even more of usage, of Jamaican English, he or she does not speak English with mistakes, but rather Jamaican English.


That sounds reasonable. There are many versions of English. The lightweight metal  is "aluminum" in AE, "aluminium" in BE, with the other being an error in both cases. What, however, of someone who writes "aloominum? Is that not universally an error? Even if it is written by a native speaker, is it not still an error? I would say it is. If that spelling becomes adopted by many people, it may eventually be considered correct, but it isn't today.

The real question is about that awkward stage where it's on the way to being accepted. How many people have to write "aloominum" for it to become correct? For that matter, in the absence of a governing body for the English language, who is to say that it is correct? Several years will go by between its acceptance by one serious dictionary and its acceptance by all of them. Or, at what point does "website" become an acceptable alternative to "Web site?" I don't know.


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## LiseR

In Latvia, we often have this issue - there are some expressions, which are not gramatically incorrect but they would make no sense for an immigrant of for a person who lived here 200 years ago. Some of them are a direct translation from Russian and lately from English, for example some would say something like 'what do you have in view?' = what do you mean? from что ты имеешь в виду? and so on.


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## cloudgazer

Some might enjoy listening to Stephen Fry's 22 Dec 2008 podcast "Language" (length: 33m 9s). Boing Boing gives a brief review under the title "Stephen Fry on the beauty of 'incorrect' language and the *snip* futility of linguistic pedantry" here. Fun and insightful


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## tFighterPilot

cloudgazer said:


> Some might enjoy listening to Stephen Fry's 22 Dec 2008 podcast "Language" (length: 33m 9s). Boing Boing gives a brief review under the title "Stephen Fry on the beauty of 'incorrect' language and the *snip* futility of linguistic pedantry" here. Fun and insightful


Yes, very good, that's exactly what I was talking about. True linguists should appreciate changes that occur in a language.


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## Hulalessar

merquiades said:


> I've been hearing way too much "you and I" as the direct object of a verb:  He saw you and I at the concert.  It drives me crazy.  Even when everyone says it, it will still be a mistake.



As things stand, the use of "you and I" as the direct object of a verb cannot be said to conform to the canons of standard English. However, I do not think we can say that it will never be correct.

Consider the sentence: _I was given a book_. No one is going to argue that that is incorrect standard English. However, analysis shows that the subject of the sentence is "book" and that "I" is the indirect object. Turn the sentence round and you cannot say: *_A book was given (to) I._ You have to say: _A book was given (to) me._ The reason why _I was given a book _arose is easily explained.

Many speakers who may say: _John took Mary and I out to dinner_ would never say: *_John took I and Mary out to dinner. _
_John took Mary and I out to dinner_ is no more than a continuation of the drift there has been in English from synthesis to analysis. The "and" after "Mary" is enough to break any idea that the first person pronoun which follows it needs to be "me". Whilst the day may a long way off, we cannot rule out the possibility that eventually _John took Mary and I out to dinner will be considered _acceptable and even one day the only acceptable form - just as _I was given a book_ is now considered acceptable and *_Me was given a book_ is no longer considered acceptable. Any language is a convention and there has to come a point where when a change is accepted by the majority it becomes correct. To hold otherwise to believe that language change only happens in the past.

The question posed here can be cast in two different forms.

If we ask: _Do some native speakers of a language when using the standard version of that language say things that do not conform to the currently and generally accepted conventions of the standard version?_ the answer is clearly "yes".

If we ask: _Do some native speakers of a language when using their own variety of that language say things that do not conform to that variety?_ the answer is both "yes" and "no".

It is "no" because in a given speech community at any given moment language is a convention that everyone accepts. If you do not follow the convention you risk being misunderstood.

It is "yes" because it is an inescapable fact that language changes and any change must start off as a "mistake".

The paradox is resolved in practice because change takes place at such a speed that one generation always understands the generation that precedes or follows it. The purpose of language - communication - remains paramount.

Of course you need to ask what you mean by "own variety" and "speech community". At one extreme you have all the speakers of a language (however you define language) considered together and at the other the idiolects of all those speakers. In the context of this thread neither extreme is a useful object of study, but you still have to decide at what level you pitch your enquiry. The best you can do when studying a given level is simply to note the differences you find.


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## merquiades

Hulalessar said:


> As things stand, the use of "you and I" as the direct object of a verb cannot be said to conform to the canons of standard English. However, I do not think we can say that it will never be correct.
> .



Interesting analysis.  Well put.  You clearly prove your point.  Grammar is forever changing and the process is unstoppable.  The fact that it's no longer studied in schools probably will make the process accelerate.

This makes me think of another example  where social use might have prevailed over logic.
People now say "aren't I?" instead of "***amn't I?" or "am I not?"  Clearly it's wrong. They would never say "are I?" or "I are".
Probably some time ago "*amn't I?" (I'm not sure if this form ever existed. Now it obviously doesn't) changed to "ain't I?"  There is actually some logic for the use of "ain't" in this case yet unfortunately it gained a vulgar connotation, a very uneducated ring to it, probably when some speakers extended the use of "ain't" to mean "isn't, aren't, haven't, don't, doesn't".  I remember a teacher writing on the chalkboard in big letters "Ain't is not a word in English!"  So they created the "aren't I?" forms that are equally incorrect but socially sanctioned.

Maybe English should have an academy like French and Spanish.  It might bring about some order or coherence.


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## Arath

Language is a means of communication. Anything that causes miscommunication, even between native speakers, is a mistake. I'll give an example in Bulgarian, because we have T-V distinction.

If speaker A doesn't use the polite V form when addressing speaker B, and speaker B interprets that as rudeness, although speaker A doesn't intend to be rude, then it's a mistake, because there is a misunderstanding.


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## Ironicus

Hulalessar said:


> Consider the sentence: _I was given a book_. No one is going to argue that that is incorrect standard English. However, analysis shows that the subject of the sentence is "book" and that "I" is the indirect object. Turn the sentence round and you cannot say: *_A book was given (to) I._ You have to say: _A book was given (to) me._ The reason why _I was given a book _arose is easily explained.



Wolfgang Pauli would have said this is not even wrong. I concur.


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## francisgranada

> _I was given a book_. No one is going to argue that that is incorrect standard English. However, analysis shows that the subject of the sentence is "book" and that "I" is the indirect object.


In present it's "I am given a book" and not *"I is given a book". So which is the subject? ....

*Moderator note: Further discussions on this topic can be found here.*


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## merquiades

francisgranada said:


> In present it's "I am given a book" and not *"I is given a book". So which is the subject? ....



I am given a book???  Doesn't sound right.
I am being given a book.  Better
I have been given a gook.  Better still

Try it with a more natural sentence and context.
I am being presented to the queen tomorrow.  yes
I was presented to her.

The subject is book....   The book has been given to me.   I have been given the book.  (It would certainly seem more grammatical to say  "To me has been given the book" but it's no longer possible to start a sentence in English with "to...me, to... you, to... her")
In my sentence the subject is indefinite or unknown.  Someone is presenting me to the queen tomorrow.

EDIT:
"I am" instead of "I is".... probably just automatism comes into play.  "I is" does not sound right in any context so people naturally switched it to "I am".  This is obviously not logical

*Moderator note: Further discussions on this topic can be found here.*


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## francisgranada

I wanted to use the simplest possible example ... Though e.g. "I am given a book by the teacher" may be acceptable ... (I've found a lot of occurrences also on the net).

But the substance of the "contradiction" can be shown using your example:

I am being presented to the queen - it is me (I) who is presented, that's why I am  ....
I am being given a book - it is the book that is given, inspite of  I am ...

*Moderator note: Further discussions on this topic can be found here.*


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## Hulalessar

Ironicus said:


> Wolfgang Pauli would have said this is not even wrong. I concur.



Not clear what you are saying is not wrong. If it is *_A book was given to I _then it is not correct standard English. It is however perfectly acceptable in some varieties of English.

*Moderator note: Further discussions on this topic can be found here.*


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## Hulalessar

Arath said:


> Language is a means of communication. Anything that causes miscommunication, even between native speakers, is a mistake. I'll give an example in Bulgarian, because we have T-V distinction.
> 
> If speaker A doesn't use the polite V form when addressing speaker B, and speaker B interprets that as rudeness, although speaker A doesn't intend to be rude, then it's a mistake, because there is a misunderstanding.



Whilst one cannot necessarily make a hard and fast distinction between the two, there is a difference between being grammatically correct and using socially correct forms. If speaking a language with a T-V distinction you say to someone: "You are standing on my foot" and use the wrong from you have communicated what you want to say even if you cause offence.


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## Hulalessar

_<...>

_*Moderator note: Contents moved here.*


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## francisgranada

_<...>

_*Moderator note: Contents moved here.*


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## merquiades

_<...>

_*Moderator note: Contents moved here.*


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## francisgranada

merquiades said:


> The explanation is perfect ... Can something be correct by consensus? ...


It is rather a philosophical question, but I tend to say that in languages _not._ I.e. not everything is possible, or at least, not every "solution" is stable enough to survive. In other words, the genetically codified property of the human capacity "to speak" implies a fundamental logic in the "background" (even if not always fully understood), otherwise it could not be functional (and our discussions on this forum would be about "rules" given by authorities and not about languages). 

Thus, if I am right, not _whatever _grammatical construction is possible or functional. I wouldn't like to be misunderstood: I do not contradict to Hulalessar's explanation, I only think that there is something more "behind" the English constructions like "I was given ..." (that's why I think that it could be discussed in a separate thread).


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## Ben Jamin

tFighterPilot said:


> A person can't speak his own language incorrectly, otherwise you could say not a single person in the world speaks his language correctly since the way they speak it is different than what their ancestors spoke a thousand years ago.



Yes, a native speaker can speak his/her language incorrectly, and most people do it everyday. The most common are lexical mistakes, when people change the meaning of a word because they have never learned the correct, or precise meaning of it. It happens mostly with more learned words, but also with quite common word. The users can often argue that “that’s how we speak in our family, neighbourhood, village”, but then they have to concede that the “language” they speak is not the same as in another family of neighbourhood. But, if many people make the same mistake repeatedly, and it eventually gets into general use, that is more than 50% of speakers begins to use the word, then the mistake becomes a norm (but still usually not accepted by older people). Let’s take the example of Vulgar Latin, where people began to use the word “testa” (cooking pot) for a “head”, instead of “caput”. First it was a joke, and youth slang, but then everybody began to speak so in Italy and Gaul. That’s why we have “tête” in French and “testa” in Italian. The Iberians never accepted this joke, and made their own word “cabeza” from “caput”. A native speaker makes a language error when he/she is not understood correctly by another speaker of the same language. The problem occurs if we try to define what “the same language” is. Here we have just extremely fuzzy transitions to face.


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## Hulalessar

Ben Jamin said:


> A native speaker makes a language error when he/she is not understood correctly by another speaker of the same language.



This cannot be literally true. As noted in another thread, if two Germans enter a hotel room and one declares: "Liebe Gott! Die Decke ist dreckig!" he may may be referring the blanket being dirty but the other may look up at the ceiling, "drecke" in German meaning both "blanket" and "ceiling".

As a general proposition, we can say that only learners (be they children or foreigners) make mistakes. Adult native speakers have the grammar of the variety they use completely internalised and know what all the words in general use in their speech community mean; they know and have control of the conventions. This does not mean that when in a heightened emotional state they do not get mixed up and get things wrong. Further, if people are "guilty" of solecisms, barbarisms, malapropisms and the like it is only because they have wandered into unfamiliar territory.

This still leaves us with the conundrum of how to explain language change except in terms of earlier "mistakes" because if generation A following generation B does something different from generation B, generation B will regard it as a mistake, assuming it notices it. To Cicero, and indeed the man who supplied Cicero's vegetables, all the Romance languages would be mangled Latin. The best you can do is when investigating the history of a language to think in terms of change, but when looking at a language at a given moment in time to note differences.


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## LilianaB

I don't agree with you Hulalessar. Adult natives speakers make many mistakes as well, maybe more as far as word usage is concerned than grammatical structures, although that happens, too. It  is a myth that the competence of a native speaker is perfect and fully developed at a certain time in his or her life, and that it also cannot be lost to a certain extent. It is not like walking - perfect, and you cannot lose it, only perhaps due to some kind of disease or accident.

It may be less noticeable if you are thinking about English  native speakers only. There are so many thesauri, dictionaries, word references on the internet, that the level of English among native speakers might be higher than if you take other languages into consideration.


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## Ben Jamin

Hulalessar said:


> This cannot be literally true. As noted in another thread, if two Germans enter a hotel room and one declares: "Liebe Gott! Die Decke ist dreckig!" he may may be referring the blanket being dirty but the other may look up at the ceiling, "drecke" in German meaning both "blanket" and "ceiling".
> 
> Adult native speakers have the grammar of the variety they use completely internalised and know what all the words in general use in their speech community mean; they know and have control of the conventions.



This is a theoretical assumption, and can only be true of an abstract "adult native speaker". In practice there are few people that don't make mistakes in their own language. As I said, the mistakes are mostly of lexical character (many words are used just on random, without the speaker ever knowing what the word was supposed to mean), but individually diverging use of grammar rules is not uncommon. You can't say that an individual person has his/her own language with own rules!
One of the examples of "highly educated people" not knowing what they say is a collection of citations of a well known politician and statesman.


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## LilianaB

I agree with you. This has been my observation as well, and this causes a lot of problems for me as a translator.


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## Hulalessar

But what is a "mistake"? It seems to me that the sort of mistakes that LilianaB and Ben Jamin are referring to come within what I refer to as wandering into unfamiliar territory. Is "individually diverging use of grammar rules" not likely to amount to no more than idiosyncrasies of style or some consciously adopted quirks designed to express one's individuality? As for the politician, one has to suspect that on one occasion in the heat of the moment he used the wrong word and it was picked up and that he subsequently made deliberate errors to cultivate an endearing image  - either that or he moved into unfamiliar territory and kept getting it wrong. Describing a dolphin as a fish is not a mistake of language, but an error in taxonomy.

One difficulty is that those of us who discuss these topics in forums such as this will of necessity be highly literate. That implies a "good education" a significant part of which will have been devoted to learning rules which become deeply ingrained. Even if one accepts that non-standard varieties of language ought not to be characterised as inferior, it is still difficult not to shake off notions of correctness. For myself, I cannot help cringing when I hear people say "I done" or "we was".

The problem with regarding a difference as a mistake is that, looking at a language diachronically, you may come to see it as a series of incorrect versions. Writ large, Middle English is nothing but one huge mistake coming between Old English and Modern English; indeed, the very word "middle" implies some intermediate unstable stage. However at any given moment a language is a stable complete system even if it allows differences; if it were not, communication would be rendered difficult and, despite language change being inevitable, communication is never compromised.


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## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> But what is a "mistake"?


A mistake is hat people regard as a mistake. There is no linguistic definition for it.


Hulalessar said:


> However at any given moment a language is a stable complete system even if it allows differences; if it were not, communication would be rendered difficult and, despite language change being inevitable, communication is never compromised.


I wish you wouldn't use such categorical terms. That makes it bit difficult to agree on the facts on which to base the discussion. Of course communication is difficult and misunderstandings happen all the time and of course communication is compromised all the time and much more often than we would like.

This is like the the discussion in philosophy of science where philosophers for centuries regarded it as a primary question in epistemology to ask _How and why can we be sure of what we know?_ whereas the simple fact is that we aren't and the very question doesn't make sense and therefore couldn't be answered. The real question is: _How and why can do science without certain knowledge and how and why is it nevertheless useful?_


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## djmc

It may be unwelcome to grammarians, but he correctness of language is a matter of usage. This is obvious for a language spoken by a small tribe. It will be what the tribe speak. There is very little point for a incomer to say "I know that everyone says *xyz*, but it should be *abc *as that is more regular." Similarly with classical languages the standard is set by the writers accredited as best of the period. When translating into Latin or Greek (Latin or Greek prose composition) if one can demonstrate that Cicero or Plato used the expression then that stands as the highest authority and North Hillard and Botting (writers of grammar books) are writing a description of the languages rather that prescribing how it should be used. The situation is rather different with modern languages, however the grammar of the language exists as a description of usage. It is not a branch of logic - it is no criticism of a particular usage to say that it is illogical. It strikes me that much of traditional English grammar is trying to claim that English works in much the same way as Latin. Latin grammar works admirably for Latin, however it fails dismally in many respects for English.


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## Ben Jamin

djmc said:


> It may be unwelcome to grammarians, but he correctness of language is a matter of usage. This is obvious for a language spoken by a small tribe. It will be what the tribe speak. There is very little point for a incomer to say "I know that everyone says *xyz*, but it should be *abc *as that is more regular." Similarly with classical languages the standard is set by the writers accredited as best of the period. When translating into Latin or Greek (Latin or Greek prose composition) if one can demonstrate that Cicero or Plato used the expression then that
> stands as the highest authority and North Hillard and Botting (writers of grammar books) are writing a description of the languages rather that prescribing how it should be used. The situation is rather different with modern languages, however the grammar of the language exists as a description of usage. It is not a branch of logic - it is no criticism of a particular
> usage to say that it is illogical. It strikes me that much of traditional English grammar is trying to claim that English works in much the same way as Latin. Latin grammar works admirably for Latin, however it fails dismally in many respects for English.


I think that your criticism doesn't concern any contemporary grammarians or linguists, maybe some amateur ones. The opinions you attack here are only known from historical writings.


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## djmc

A lot of the contributions on this forum seem to be written by people who seem convinced that English grammar works in the same way as Latin. Examples of this are the discussions of "you and I" versus "you and me", "than I" versus "than me", "it is I" versus "it is me".


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## berndf

djmc said:


> A lot of the contributions on this forum seem to be written by people who seem convinced that English grammar works in the same way as Latin. Examples of this are the discussions of "you and I" versus "you and me", "than I" versus "than me", "it is I" versus "it is me".


No, the nominative/accusative distinctions is clearly a historical feature of English, independently of Latin. There is absolutely no doubt possible. The question we discussed here was the demarcation between _mistake_ and _language change_.


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## Hulalessar

Ben Jamin said:


> I think that your criticism doesn't concern any contemporary grammarians or linguists, maybe some amateur ones. The opinions you attack here are only known from historical writings.



Prescriptive attitudes derived from such writings are still alive and well.


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## Hulalessar

berndf said:


> I wish you wouldn't use such categorical terms. That makes it bit difficult to agree on the facts on which to base the discussion. Of course communication is difficult and misunderstandings happen all the time and of course communication is compromised all the time and much more often than we would like.



What I said has to be taken in the context of this thread. Of course there are misunderstandings because people fail to express themselves clearly or say what they mean and such like. I am talking about something quite specific. This thread is about grammatical or lexical errors and they occur at sentence level or below. What I am saying is that at no point in its development does any language approach a soup. For example, all languages must have a way for speakers to distinguish between "the cat chased the dog" and "the dog chased the cat". There are various ways of achieving this. If a language changes from one way to another there will never a period where there is confusion because the need to distinguish between agent and patient is paramount.


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## LilianaB

Yes, I agree, with you Hulalessar, however, some people may not be able to distinguish any more between _a tiger _and _a cat_. This is just to illustrate the point. What for someone is _a cat_ may be _a tiger_ for someone else. The meaning of words becomes vague.


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## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> What I am saying is that at no point in its development does any language approach a soup.


No you didn't. You said _communication is *never* compromised_. There is a whole world of shades of grey between communication _never _being compromised and a language _approaching a soup_. All languages are somewhere in this grey area and do have ambiguous constructs. To take up your example, in German, e.g., there is no lexical, syntactic or semantic way to tell whether the written sentence _Die Katze jagt die Maus_ means that the cat chases the mouse or that the mouse chases the cat  (in spoken language you can use stress to disambiguate). The interesting thing is that we manage to communicate efficiently in spite of the deficiencies of our languages. It makes no sense to deny them.

The question we discuss in this thread is whether and when constructs used by native speakers are considered _mistakes_. And the only sensible criterion of demarcation I can see between _mistakes_ and_ features_ is whether they are _regarded_ as mistakes by the community.


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## LilianaB

Yes, I agree that a large part of communication in general is in the gray area. People are also assigning their own meanings to words, I have in mind native speakers here, especially as far as more specialized words are concerned, or rarely used words.


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## mochalany

Surely it's a question of power structures. The powerful elite of a country/region will define the "correct" usage of a language as the way in which *they* speak it, and any regional or social variation is dialect is thus deemed incorrect. The regional variations have just as much of a historical legacy and legitimacy as the "standard", but over time these people are so denigrated by those in power that they adapt their own way of speaking in order to get ahead, and may then even go on to look down upon the "uneducated" people still making the same "mistakes" back in their home town.


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## Persikov

Berndf said *"The question we discuss in this thread is whether and when constructs used by native speakers are considered mistakes."* Well, can't everyone agree that no, they can not be considered categorically wrong, but yes, native speakers can use language that is inappropriate for the context? Or that individual native speakers can make mistakes, but native speakers as a whole can not?

I think this conversation can become sterile for a number of reasons.

*Two meanings of correct:* There is "correct" according to a recognized authority, and "correct" (as linguists mean) according to the internal logic or the language, the unwritten rules shared by all members of a community. However, even within our own heads we mix up the two meanings of correct; we can't just turn off the formal grammar we learned in school with a switch.
*
Consisent spoken vs. Ephemeral written:* As mentioned above, of course a native speaker can make _lexical _errors, because we learn words until we die. On the other hand, it's hard to believe that native speakers can make *consistent* *spoken* _grammatical_ errors because we have informal social pressure and psychologial need to fit in with others in our community. *Written* language is another topic (I have taught writing to university-level student that cannot write a coherent sentece), and *inconsistent* mistakes are simply accidents.
*
Most grammar rules are just fine:* The unwritten rules of the language and the authoritative rules of the language are 98% identical. It's only at the margins that this conversation has any interest. There are a few official rules that prohibit usages which have been around for hundreds of years (for example, not saying "If I was you" in English). These are nonsense. There are also spoken forms that are only accepted by part of the community. Typically this is an unstable situation - in a generation the forms will disappear or become accepted by everyone. Or they could become permenent espressions in a specific dialect or context (working-class, in prisons, youth-speak only, etc.)
*
Personal complexes: *Everyone knows a mistake that makes them angry, but we should acknowlede that just because it bothers you, doesn't mean it bothers most people.
*
Power relations: *Language of low-status groups will include features that are correct in intra-group communication, and not correct in inter-group communication.


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## Sepia

@*"The question we discuss in this thread is whether and when constructs used by native speakers are considered mistakes."* 


Well, no matter what you all say: It is a proven fact that major newspapers still "waste" money on hiring proof-readers. They have good reasons for doing so, they say.


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## LilianaB

Well, maybe this is less self-evident in English and some other languages, where there are fewer declensional forms and things like that. Native speakers definitely make mistakes: this  is why grammar is taught in schools, editors are hired with newspapers and publishing houses. This is mostly related to literary language -- the language used by newspapers, and media in general. Even if you speak slang there are still grammatical mistakes that can me made. You can use your own words, even, but if you use the wrong case in languages that have declensions, for example, it is still perceived as a mistake.


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## wildan1

A recent mistake made by many native English-speakers is replacing _he_ or _she_ with they (+ a plural verb). Some do it consciously in order to be inclusive of both men and women--this practice started in the US in around the 1970s-80s, when people were becoming more sensitive to gender inclusiveness. 

Nowadays others just do it because they hear others do so.

For example:_ "What would you do if you made a new friend and they were asking you to borrow money?"_

Personally I still consider this a mistake.

Others consider it acceptable, and it may be a representative shift in "correctness."


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## Yondlivend

wildan1 said:


> A recent mistake made by many native English-speakers is replacing _he_ or _she_ with they (+ a plural verb). Some do it consciously in order to be inclusive of both men and women--this practice started in the US in around the 1970s-80s , when people were becoming more sensitive to gender inclusiveness.


This usage is far older than that.  If you look under Merriam-Webster's videos for "The Awkward Case of His or Her," you'll hear an old example (from 1611) of its usage and the reason why it became viewed as incorrect (18th century grammarians).  They gave examples of sentences that are phrased in such a way as to avoid using "they" as a singular pronoun.  Quoting from the video (emphasis mine):


> ...But all this effort to avoid *a usage that's centuries old *strikes some of us as strange...


_Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language_ has this to say about it (once again emphasis mine):


> For hundreds of years, people used "they," "them," and "their," to refer to people in general, whether one or more, male or female.  Although "they" was originally plural when English borrowed it from Old Norse around 1200, *people began using it as a singular in the 1300s* to refer to a generic person, an everyman (or everywoman).  Here's an example from Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_ (1395):  "And whoso fyndeth hym out of swich blame, / They wol come up and offre on godes name." (In case your Middle English is rusty: "And whoever finds himself without such blame, / They will come up and offer on God's name.")  Great writers, including Shakespeare, Defore, Swift, Fielding, Richardson, Goldsmith, and Johnson all made great use of the sexless, numberless "they/them/their" without raising eyebrows.


I can't see this usage as a mistake since many people apply it consistently, and are not confusing number at all.  As you said, it's consciously done to avoid specifying gender.


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## mataripis

It is not mistake. It is their style to express words giving respect or right criticism to someone.


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## Ben Jamin

Will anybody comment on the following quotation from a post by a native speaker:
"I want to *cajole *someone for not mentioning it was their birthday. In English I'd probably say something like, "You loser (or "you punk"), why didn't you tell me it was your birthday!?""
Is this a mistake or a new dialect in "statu nascendi"?


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## LilianaB

Persikov said:


> Berndf said *"The question we discuss in this thread is whether and when constructs used by native speakers are considered mistakes."* Well, can't everyone agree that no, they can not be considered categorically wrong, but yes, native speakers can use language that is inappropriate for the context? Or that individual native speakers can make mistakes, but *native speakers as a whole can not*?



Hi. What do you mean by "native speakers as a whole"? There is no such as thing as "native speakers as a whole", unless they spoke in a chorus. Also the "mistake making" has to be considered in relation to something -- a certain standard, a particular variety of a language, an idiolect. Speakers of the East New York variety of English do not make mistakes if you consider the different grammatical forms in relation to their variety of the language. Some highly educated native speakers don't make any mistakes if you compare their speech, and writing of course, to the language found acceptable by various style manuals -- such as the Chicago Manual of style, for AE, for example. So, if someone is referring to the standard language (so called), which is used as the basis for editing by some publishing houses, speakers of that language in a wider sense (who speak different varieties, even if this is their L1), make a lot of mistakes. Perhaps everyone is a native speaker of his or her own language . In this case, we cannot really talk about mistakes -- perhaps only if the person were using his or her idiolect inconsistently.


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## Hulalessar

Ben Jamin said:


> Will anybody comment on the following quotation from a post by a native speaker:
> "I want to *cajole *someone for not mentioning it was their birthday. In English I'd probably say something like, "You loser (or "you punk"), why didn't you tell me it was your birthday!?""
> Is this a mistake or a new dialect in "statu nascendi"?



I said above that people can be "guilty" of solecisms, barbarisms, malapropisms and the like, particularly if they wander out of familiar territory. Clearly "cajole" is not being used "correctly" here because it does not conform to the generally accepted convention adopted by the people who use the word "cajole". What we do not know here is if the writer just happened to type one word when he meant another, or if he had never properly got to grips with the meaning of "cajole", i.e. wandered into unfamiliar territory, thought that seems unlikely as whilst it is not an everyday word is still well-known. It is possible that the writer meant "cudgel" and that what we have is a spelling error.


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## Hulalessar

wildan1 said:


> For example:_ "What would you do if you made a new friend and they were asking you to borrow money?"_
> 
> Personally I still consider this a mistake.



Interested to know how you would put it.


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## merquiades

Ben Jamin said:


> Will anybody comment on the following quotation from a post by a native speaker:
> "I want to *cajole *someone for not mentioning it was their birthday. In English I'd probably say something like, "You loser (or "you punk"), why didn't you tell me it was your birthday!?""
> Is this a mistake or a new dialect in "statu nascendi"?



Maybe they wanted to say something like  "cajole someone into mentioning it was their birthday?" and that got crossed with "tease someone for not mentioning it was their birthday".   Cajole, coax sweetly by flattering and kidding, becomes just kidding someone sweetly with insistence??  Getting wires crossed? I just have to guess.  Cajole is a word most educated people know very well but it might not be that common in certain types of informal conversation, so it might be easy to misuse it especially when certain people make an attempt at the word when normally it's not part of active vocabulary??  But then again, maybe the word is mutating in meaning and I don't know.
Another possibility is they just changed their thought in mid-stream but didn't go back to proofread.  I do that.  That's why there are lots of edits under my posts


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## Ben Jamin

Hulalessar said:


> I said above that people can be "guilty" of solecisms, barbarisms, malapropisms and the like, particularly if they wander out of familiar territory. Clearly "cajole" is not being used "correctly" here because it does not conform to the generally accepted convention adopted by the people who use the word "cajole". What we do not know here is if the writer just happened to type one word when he meant another, or if he had never properly got to grips with the meaning of "cajole", i.e. wandered into unfamiliar territory, thought that seems unlikely as whilst it is not an everyday word is still well-known. It is possible that the writer meant "cudgel" and that what we have is a spelling error.


Can you just simply answer, is this a mistake or not?


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## Hulalessar

Ben Jamin said:


> Can you just simply answer, is this a mistake or not?



Only with reluctance!

If I were a teacher of English and saw it in an essay I was marking I would double underline it and put two question marks in the margin.

Otherwise, until you define "mistake", I will say no more than that it does not conform to the generally accepted convention adopted by the people who use the word "cajole".


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## e2-e4 X

Hulalessar said:


> Consider the sentence: _I was given a book_. No one is going to argue that that is incorrect standard English. However, analysis shows that the subject of the sentence is "book" and that "I" is the indirect object.


That is, you could ask: "I was given a book, wasn't it?"


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## Hulalessar

e2-e4 X said:


> That is, you could ask: "I was given a book, was it?"



The tag question has to follow the form of what goes before: "I was given a book, wasn't I?"


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## e2-e4 X

Hulalessar said:


> The tag question has to follow the form of what goes before: "I was given a book, wasn't I?"


Therefore the subject is _I_, right?


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## berndf

*Moderator note: Discussion of this dispute (#77, #78) can be found here.*


e2-e4 X said:


> Therefore the subject is _I_, right?


Right.


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## Hulalessar

*Moderator note: Discussion of this dispute (#77, #78) can be found here.
*


e2-e4 X said:


> Therefore the subject is _I_, right?



No.

"I was given a book" is a special form where the usual rules of word order do not apply and where "I" is allowed to replace "me". It is clearly the book which is undergoing the giving and therefore the subject of the sentence. If we ask what the indirect object of the sentence is it is "I" because it is "I" who is getting the book.

Compare the examples given above:

_ Daniel was given a book. 

Daniel was given to the lions.
_ 
In the first case it is not Daniel who is being given, but the book. In the second case it is Daniel who is being given.


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## LilianaB

"I was given a book -- Someone gave me a book -- A book was given to me". _Me_  is definitely an object here. so, semantically _I_ is a receiver.(theta roles) I am not sure about the tag questions here. I personally believe they should be as follows: 1. Wasn't I. 2. Didn't he/she? 3. Wasn't it?


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## No_C_Nada

_
What about when someone corrects your correctness?

You say to somebody, "You and I can go to the movies and then, to dinner" and the person answers, "Yes, you and me can do that."

_


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## merquiades

No_C_Nada said:


> _
> What about when someone corrects your correctness?
> 
> You say to somebody, "You and I can go to the movies and then, to dinner" and the person answers, "Yes, you and me can do that."
> 
> _



Yes, that is certainly incorrect, but I prefer it so much more to the ultracorrection we referred to before:  The book is for you and I.


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## mataripis

No_C_Nada said:


> _
> What about when someone corrects your correctness?
> 
> You say to somebody, "You and I can go to the movies and then, to dinner" and the person answers, "Yes, you and me can do that."
> 
> _


they understand the flow of their conversations. the same is true to many speakers and listeners.


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## Ben Jamin

The whole controversy about mistakes made by native speakers may be avoided if we realize at least two issues:
1. A language error is always relative to a variety of the language.
2. A language error is a fuzzy phenomenon. It begins when someone breakes a rule in a variety of a language, and it ends when this variety fully accepts the "error" as a legitimate change. Most errors exist in long time somewhere in between those two points.


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## Dr. Fumbles

Ok, if you say so, but maybe thou speakst English incorrectly when thou usest the second person plural objective form to mean the second person singular nominative or objective forms.  In other words when thou usest the word you instead of thou or thee.

The point I'm trying to make is:
A: language is in a perpetual state of evolution, and prescriptivists try and hold back the inevitable change languages go through, key word being try, and no matter how much retardation takes place, it won't stop completely.  Any foreign borrowed words used to be pluralised with 's: for example pizza's and banana's were the correct plural forms 100 years ago give or take (Wikipedia, Apostrophe, Superfluous Apostrophes and go to cite 58 Truss, Lynne. Eats, Shoots & Leaves. pp. 63–65.)

B: if someone grew up hearing: I don't never find nuttin wrong wichur talk.  vs someone else that grew up with: I won't ever find anything wrong with your speech/way of speaking, then they're both right. Because both dialects dictate that that is the correct way of speaking.  Only a non-native speaker can say anything incorrectly.  Personally, my spoken English would be considered non-standard to incorrect, wrong, lazy, and whatever else have you, whereas my written English really tends to be formal, as you can probably tell by what I've written here.

And one final note to elaborate what tFighterPilot said: 1,000 years ago English speakers said: Ic ne cann noht singan.  and now we say: I can't/cannot sing.

OH! And since I'm editing before I forget, the only time I consider someone to have committed an error as a native speaker is when they hypercorrect, such as saying between you and I, to sound more polite/formal/correct, etc. because they think that saying between me and you, etc. is wrong.


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## Ben Jamin

Dr. Fumbles said:


> 1. Only a non-native speaker can say anything incorrectly.  Personally, my spoken English would be considered non-standard to incorrect, wrong, lazy, and whatever else have you, whereas my written English really tends to be formal, as you can probably tell by what I've written here.
> 
> 2. I consider someone to have committed an error as a native speaker is when they hypercorrect, such as saying between you and I, to sound more polite/formal/correct, etc. because they think that saying between me and you, etc. is wrong.



Your statement 1. and 2. contradict each other.

If we assume that you are right, what makes then any speaker's error an error, and not a beginning of a langauge change? Why should non-native speakers be treated in a different way?


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## sound shift

If I mis-hear a set expression and then produce my bastardised version of it, it's a mistake.
But if someone then overhears me and copies me, it becomes "usage" and deserves to be listed in the dictionary as a "variant".


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## Dr. Fumbles

Ben Jamin said:


> Your statement 1. and 2. contradict each other.
> 
> If we assume that you are right, what makes then any speaker's error an error, and not a beginning of a langauge change? Why should non-native speakers be treated in a different way?



What I meant by only a non-native speaker can commit a mistake, is when they're learning, and I mean specifically when they speak.  For instance, if someone's learning Castilian (Spanish) and they say _me llamo es_, they've just said _I call my self is_, because they learn that _me llamo_ corresponds to _my name is_, they add es even though it's unnecessary because _me llamo_ is saying _I call myself_; the same goes for French, German, etc.  I don't know of any stories of any French/German learners saying _ich heisse ist_ or _je m'appele est_.  I'm sure it's happened somewhere there.  I apologise. I thought I had made what I meant clear, but I'm glad you brought that to my attention.  Also, if we mean that a mistake, at least in terms of language is not natural or anomalous (for lack of a better term), then hypercorrection is definitely a mistake, I honestly don't know of any past hypercorrections being so wide spread as to cause new structures within a languages grammar, at least in the case of English or any other language.  And I wasn't saying that non-native speakers should be treated differently, but just as we correct children for saying something "anomalous," we do the same for learners so they can have more natural speech. (we goed to the store mommy, I've heard many we goed examples from learners, I always point it out but never be mean about it)

I hope that clears up any misconceptions.  I've done my best to clear up the best I can.  If I've said anything that still doesn't make sense, let me know.

OH! Before I forget, hypercorrection is when you say something that you think is right, but what you've tried to correct was actually right all along or the way everybody normally says it.  Between you and I is a perfect example (it's between you and me for anyone reading this that doesn't already know).  I've never heard anyone that naturally says between you and I, the best I can tell is that anyone that does is trying to sound more proper, or correct, or what have you.


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## berndf

Dr. Fumbles said:


> What I meant by only a non-native speaker can commit a mistake, is when they're learning, and I mean specifically when they speak.


Absolutely not. Your view would declare each and every little mistake I make by the dozens every day a language evolution. This is indeed a misconception but on your side. I can only repeat what I said in the beginning and which has nothing to do with "prescriptivism":





berndf said:


> If native speakers agree something is a mistake, it's a mistake, even when said by other native speakers. Languages need some minimum amount of standardization. Otherwise it cannot serve its purpose as a means of communication.


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## Ben Jamin

I don't agree with you. If you begin to speak in a different way that everybody else (using your own grammar, or meaning of words, etc), it is an error (mistake) if you are the only one. It is still a mistake if most other people react and consider it to be a mistake. If the number of negative reactions and actual usage of your mistake begings to be equal, then it is something dubious. If your supporters take overhand it is no longer a mistake.


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## Ben Jamin

berndf said:


> Absolutely not. Your view would declare each and every little mistake I make by the dozens every day a language evolution. This is indeed a misconception but on your side. I can only repeat what I said in the beginning and which has nothing to do with "prescriptivism":


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## LilianaB

Dr. Fumbles said:


> What I meant by only a non-native speaker can commit a mistake, is when they're learning, and I mean specifically when they speak.  For instance, if someone's learning Castilian (Spanish) and they say _me llamo es_, they've just said _I call my self is_, because they learn that _me llamo_ corresponds to _my name is_, they add es even though it's unnecessary because _me llamo_ is saying _I call myself_; the same goes for French, German, etc.  I don't know of any stories of any French/German learners saying _ich heisse ist_ or _je m'appele est_.  I'm sure it's happened somewhere there.  I apologise. I thought I had made what I meant clear, but I'm glad you brought that to my attention.  Also, if we mean that a mistake, at least in terms of language is not natural or anomalous (for lack of a better term), then hypercorrection is definitely a mistake, I honestly don't know of any past hypercorrections being so wide spread as to cause new structures within a languages grammar, at least in the case of English or any other language.  And I wasn't saying that non-native speakers should be treated differently, but just as we correct children for saying something "anomalous," we do the same for learners so they can have more natural speech. (we goed to the store mommy, I've heard many we goed examples from learners, I always point it out but never be mean about it)
> 
> I hope that clears up any misconceptions.  I've done my best to clear up the best I can.  If I've said anything that still doesn't make sense, let me know.
> 
> OH! Before I forget, hypercorrection is when you say something that you think is right, but what you've tried to correct was actually right all along or the way everybody normally says it.  Between you and I is a perfect example (it's between you and me for anyone reading this that doesn't already know).  I've never heard anyone that naturally says between you and I, the best I can tell is that anyone that does is trying to sound more proper, or correct, or what have you.



There are thousands of mistakes native-speakers make everyday, especially in writing. Otherwise, English teachers in elementary schools and high schools would just teach literature and composition (nothing related to grammar, or vocabulary), and editors would have nothing to do -- there would not even be such a profession.      

Native speakers can use words in the wrong way as well -- if they are not familiar with the real meaning of the word, and they assume that the word means something else. (especially words that are not that often used).


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## Hulalessar

LilianaB said:


> There are thousands of mistakes native-speakers make everyday, especially in writing. Otherwise, English teachers in elementary schools and high schools would just teach literature and composition (nothing related to grammar, or vocabulary), and editors would have nothing to do -- there would not even be such a profession.
> 
> Native speakers can use words in the wrong way as well -- if they are not familiar with the real meaning of the word, and they assume that the word means something else. (especially words that are not that often used).



Your reference to writing is a reminder that writing and speech are two different things. Whilst the correlation is not exact, "writing" tends to be equivalent to the standard language and "speech" something different, even if in many cases close to the written standard. In any society with writing there exists a state of diglossia. The term is relative. In some cases the difference between the two varieties is extreme with the written language being undeniably a different language from the generally spoken language. In other cases the difference is not so extreme with the spoken language language on a continuum where at one end there is no, or is not perceived to be any, significant difference between spoken and written varieties. Where that is the case and the way some native speakers speak does not quite match the written standard there is the possibility of considering the spoken variety to be sub-standard. When those with insufficient command of the written standard "write as they speak" and it fails to conform with the conventions of the written standard it is legitimate to characterise the differences as "mistakes", but only in relation to the written standard. The same mistakes made in speech are not "mistakes" if they conform to the speaker's variety. If the speaker wanders into unfamiliar territory and uses words he is unfamiliar with incorrectly then he is probably wandering outside his variety and into the realm of the written language.


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## LilianaB

I agree that there are fewer mistakes in spoken language than in the written form, because written language requires proper grammar, punctuation and spelling, which features are  not that obvious in speech, where punctuation can also be detected, but you cannot really say that someone makes punctuation mistakes when speaking.  

Nevertheless, native speakers (not just of English -- I have even more proofs to support my claim from other languages) make mistakes as well -- especially with regard to word usage, grammatical endings, sometimes, and other grammatical structures. Some people just basically speak in idiolects, so if you were to compare that language with some standard they would be making a lot of mistakes, but they really don't within their idiolect. I agree that we can look at mistakes only in relation to some standards. Sometimes it is, however, hard to tell whether someone is speaking a very poor version of the standard language, or some idiolect of their own.


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## Hulalessar

Is the point not that if someone not fully conversant with the standard gets it wrong he is in the same position as a foreigner getting it wrong?


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## LilianaB

I am not sure, Hulalessar. The only thing I know is that if they used certain constructions some native speakers use in an essay, or during any language test, some non-standard forms would be marked _wrong_ regardless whether the authors were native speakers of the language or not. Mistakes may only apply, in fact,  to the standard of any language -- to the literary form. Then anyone could use whatever they please in colloquial language, creating their own idiolect at same, no matter whether native or not, a sort of pidgin, perhaps.


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## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> Is the point not that if someone not fully conversant with the standard gets it wrong he is in the same position as a foreigner getting it wrong?


If you take this view, you end up with everybody being a native speaker of a language which has exactly one speaker: himself. I think all these over-rigorous definitions take us nowhere. A mistake is what people in a given context consider a mistake. That's it.


----------

