Hate to be that guy, but it’s “Should’ve” and not “Should of”.
Good meme btw
Which is “should have” when spelt out.
Yea crap you’re right, I wish I could correct the title
You can edit titles on Lemmy
You can on lemmy!
You should of spelt it correctly
I like the post but had to downvote it because the English is atrocious
Most modern linguists consider “should have” to be a completely valid variation of should’ve / should have.
Yes, it does contradict what your english teachers in school taught you, and according to that world view “if we don’t have those rules then we wouldn’t be able to understand each other”. But the hundreds to thousands of languages where those rules don’t even exist and people understand missing/“incorrect” meaning from context, as well as the fact that you can proudly stand on your “i know what’s right” soapbox and say that “should of” is wrong, only serve to prove that these rules aren’t actually rules or part of the english language and are more like the linguistic equivalent of fashion.
Again, you understood exactly the meaning OP meant, enough that you could confidently barge in and tell them they’re “wrong”, and tell them what they should have used instead to fit your fashion rules.
Basically, absolutely nobody saw this meme, saw “should have” instead of “should have”, and thought “hmm, i don’t know what’s supposed to be being said in this case.” You dislike “should have” because you were told you were supposed to, and that if you didn’t stick to these rules nobody would respect you or understand what you’re saying. Now, you do the same thing and lose respect for people who didn’t (while also understanding what they are saying exactly). That has nothing to do with the language, and is, again, more akin to “you wore white after labor day” or “you wore socks with sandals” or whatever other fashion faux pas you committed — none of which are related to actual linguistics or the natural way through which languages evolve (or whether or not your outfit looks good on you on any given day)
Basically, absolutely nobody saw this meme, […], and thought “hmm, i don’t know what’s supposed to be being said in this case.”
Me, who’s not a native english speaker, did have exactly that problem.
So no, not everybody knows what OP intended to say.
Your phone auto correct has a preference as well it seems.
I mean sure, linguistic descriptivism is relevant for the evolution of language. However, why study language at all if that’s the sum-total of your perspective on language? We could all just speak however we want as long as we are understood… except then we end up with an uncountable number of dialects and creoles a la mainland china. This is also how you end up with linguistic rules that are basically impossible to teach I suspect.
Just my 2 cents.
I mean, we kinda already do speak however we want, people saying such speaking breaks the rules doesn’t really stop people from doing it anyway
Speaking is sort of a different animal. “Should of” is a malapropism that is a homophone for “should’ve”. There is no transformation of language from that, it’s just an error. If you accept an alternate written version though, you’re creating an alternate conjugation for the conditional perfect tense. There’s no reason for this at all: it’s accommodating failings of literacy by adding complexity to language rules for one, and creating a new (and faulty) evolution point for two.
It’s like saying “oh, the speed limit is 55, but everyone drives 60, so let’s make the law so the police can’t ticket you unless you go over 60 since 55 or 60 is correct”. What does it mean when you see a sign that says 25 now? You can accept that people break the rules, but that doesn’t mean we should change the rules to describe the situation in every circumstance.
Speed limits are a not a good analogy to language rules, partly because they are generally intentionally designed rather than a product of an evolutionary pattern, partly because there is a clear and accepted authority that sets and enforces them with actual penalty, and partly because the consequences for not having them are often deadly.
By contrast, there is no clear authority that “owns” a language and can enforce it’s rules. Some government or academic body might in some cases declare that it has that authority, but they don’t really have any ability to set more than guidelines for how people working for them or producing documents on their behalf must write. Unlike speed limits, which simply would stop existing in a meaningful sense if governments stopped existing, languages existed before any such “authorities” did and would continue to exist if those organizations ceased. As such, I’d argue that linguistic rules aren’t really rules at all in the normal sense, there’s no-one with actual accepted authority to create, repeal, impose or enforce them, they’re just guidelines, loose ones at that, that one should follow if one’s intent is to be understood by someone else using the same or sufficiently similar guidelines. If you understand what someone is saying, which in cases like “should of”, people calling it against the rules clearly do, then they have succeeded in that goal, so it cannot really be a failure at being literate.
I reject any notion that this will eventually overcomplicate language to the point of it being too difficult to learn or use, because ultimately, people are not born knowing it, they must all learn, so any language too complex to learn wont be learned and therefore won’t be used, and similarly, any language too complicated and unclear to be used to communicate, can’t be used, and so won’t be. The complexity of language is inherently self-limiting at a level that prevents it from becoming useless.
Or for a TLDR: we don’t have to change the rules to accommodate people breaking them, because there aren’t really any rules at all.
Alrighty so… I think you’re full of shit.
What you say is true for passed down spoken language because errors like the ones we are talking about are transparent. Once you can write it down, the rules are evident and persistent. Nobody has to own them to say that as we transcribe language X these are the rules for conjugation, pluralization, etc. you can break them if you want, but as you say nobody owns the language: you need not be accommodated in your mistakes. Spoken language can change and the rules can follow, but being shit at writing (even if lots of people have the same problem) isn’t something written language must accommodate.
Slavery was more like the central block two positions upwards from the tiny block indicated. It was their whole reason for secession.
And there should be an even bigger block under it called “Native land and resources that they didn’t have gunpowder to defend”.
It was a the death of 90% of the population to small pox within one generation that allowed colonization. The Europeans were dirty and diseased, untrained peasants. Their firearms at that time were inaccurate single shot rifles, that took minutes to reload. Analysis of indigenous bow techniques showed the common capability to accurately shoot multiple arrows in rapid succession.
And it goes beyond war: Indigenous people didn’t farm as Europeans did, we instead cultivated forests with eidble plant species that complimented each other to kept the soil healthy. The forests across the Americas were thousands of years into a cycle of land management that kept grown food naturally abundant and plentiful, without having to clear the land. Indigenous peoples were expert and managing the population of the animals of their areas as well. We understood which members of an animal population should be hunted, and which should be kept for the health of the species. We then knew how to fully utilize every part of the animals hunted. The core of most indigenous cultures rotated around ethical and efficient management of the land’s resources. What did the Europeans do? Accidentally gave an entire continent a super virus, then stripped the forests clear to plant shitty crops not made for this climate, and hunted countless animal species to extinction. Europeans were not technologically advanced at all. They were just diseased. That’s it.
Rest assured that without smallpox, the Americas would not have been colonized. Population density and technological differences would have made it too dangerous and expensive an undertaking.
ooof, lots of pent-up frustration here.
Europeans were not any more “dirty” or “clean” than any other group, also Native Americans adopted the use of fire arms from the Europeans and would generally trade foodstuffs for firearms, in the end you are only repeating the Noble Savage
The main advantage of early guns wasn’t that they were more powerful, it’s that they were easy to use. You can train someone to fire a gun in a day, while it takes months of training just to get an archer strong enough to draw a bow.
Also the whole “the Europeans were dirty diseased peasants” thing isn’t accurate, and I have to say that IMO the right response to racist depictions of indigenous people as unwashed savages isn’t to just turn around and say “actually the stereotypes are correct it’s just that it’s about the Europeans this time”.
And Indigenous people had more advanced technoglogy than many give them credit for but "The Europeans were technologically behind indigenous people in nearly every way. " is just blatantly wrong.
I do think you’re right though that without smallpox and other diseases the Europeans wouldn’t have colonised the Americas, though there were several other major factors in it.
P.S. I’m not a historian, grain of salt, etc.
The native tribes mostly did have gunpowder by that point, they were very motivated to trade for rifles and ammunition and the US government sold them rifles and ammunition through the Indian Agency.
The only issue with this adaptation of a great comic is that it infers the Confederacy was a well built structure that depended on that one small thing. The Confederacy didn’t exist that long, it even didn’t have a single flag version for longer than a year or so. Change it to the southern states’ economy and it makes more sense.
Then the slavery would be a much bigger piece though, so this meme really makes no sense at all
It’s… blocks haphazardly balanced. Which is completely the point. Do you think that looks like a “well-built structure”?
It’s certainly a chaotic mess, but perhaps knowing the original subject of the comic tarnishes my take on it being used for other things in the same way. Analogies are often tricky.
I think it’s pretty ironic that this meme is trying to make a statement about the confederacy not acknowledging the work/contribution of slavery and having trouble doing so because it’s an uncredited “”adaption”” of someone else’s meme.
slavery is too morally bankrupt to ever have a cool maintainer like the cURL dude
You maybe would think about industrializing too before you split off…
“Stupid northerners and their fancy trains.”
“Hey, how TF they getting all these fuckloads of troops out here so fast?”
If you think slavery has been abolished you haven’t seen prison labor.
To add more: the last chatel slave in the US was freed in 1942. During WWII.
Why? Not because it was the right thing to do, but because the optics of having slaves looked bad and the Japanese Empire (of all institutions) was calling the US out.
People living and running the country to this day fought tooth and nail against the civil rights movement. Slavery is not ancient history, it’s part of what’s allowed a small portion of the current world population to lead a privileged life.
Wow I had no idea, thank you for sharing this.
Something something… stars rights
You forgot the genocide
Stolen land with stolen people
