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Grammar Vs. Dialect


noexpert

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My roommate and I were having a discussion last night, when he used what is commonly known as a "dangling preposition." Being the son of a former english teacher, I corrected his grammar, as I often do unconciously. When I did so, he countered by asserting that such useage is common to the South, making it a form of dialect. No arguements, certainly people speak as is common to their region, however, I simply do not believe that dialect should trump proper grammar. Now please don't worry about my relationship with my roommate, we have a bit of an antagonistic relationship that keeps both of us sane. So, I wanted to gather opinions of others on this matter. Does dialect really take precedence over grammar, or does the english language stand firm as the champion of everyday conversation?

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I’m reminded of a very old joke. Stop me if you've hear – oh, wait, this isn’t interactive, so here goes:

A man walks into a bar and asks “where’s the bathroom at?”

 

“Don’t end a sentence in a preposition!” someone replies.

 

“OK, where’s the bathroom at, *******?” :)

 

I think your question, noexpert, boils down to the classic “should language be prescriptive, or descriptive?” That is, should language be a collection of rules defining what is a properly formed expression, or should the supreme rule be that expression be efficient conveyor of information?

 

I’m firmly in the “language should be descriptive” camp. My reasoning is that languages change constantly – “drift” – allowing them to adapt to changing needs. Dialect also provide a rich channel of implicit information: the tell the listener that the speaker shares, or does not, share membership in one or more of his cohorts, and often what cohort he does hail from. (didn’t that roll off the tongue better than “from what cohort he does hail?”)

 

The downside of favoring descriptive over rule-bound language is the flipside of its strength: allowing language to drift means people who don’t share dialects may not, in extreme cases, even be able to understand one another. Languages may drift so far they splinter into different languages.

 

This brings to mind the dream of a “lingua franca”, a common language that circumvents national and class boundaries, allowing very people separated by large gaps in geography, culture, and even time to communicate shared ideas and interests effectively. Sadly, in just the past century, this dream seems to have faded along with the widespread acceptance of Latin as a universal language of scholars.

 

I wonder if any of what we’re writing will now, assuming it physically survives and is accessible, would be comprehensible to people like us 50, 100, or 500 years from now?

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  • 2 weeks later...
My roommate and I were having a discussion last night, when he used what is commonly known as a "dangling preposition." Being the son of a former english teacher, I corrected his grammar, as I often do unconciously. When I did so, he countered by asserting that such useage is common to the South, making it a form of dialect. No arguements, certainly people speak as is common to their region, however, I simply do not believe that dialect should trump proper grammar.
English is not Latin. English is a dialect of German. If you want to speak English properly, speak German. :hihi:

 

In germanic languages it doesn't really make sense to call these particles prepositions, they certainly can be at the end of a sentence. The ban on final prepositions was dreamt up only recently by grammatists who insisted that "English should be more like Latin" but, guess what, it just isn't. Like German, English has many phrasal verbs and there are many cases in which this results in a final preposition. IOW it is a myth that they would be ungrammatical. There is an anecdote about Winston Churchill, renowned as an orator and very proud of his style, being furious because an editor had altered a sentence of his to avoid a final preposition. They say he rebuked along the lines of: "This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put."

 

BTW, instead of "correcting" people's grammar, you might do better to correct your spelling from "arguements" to arguments. :P

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