The way things are. - eviltoast
  • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    That’s a textbook appeal to popularity fallacy. Just because many people make the same mistake doesn’t mean it becomes correct.

    The most popular electric car brand is Tesla. That doesn’t mean that Teslas don’t have the build quality of a 1980s Yugo and the price tag of a brand new Jaguar.

    Don’t use other people being stupid as an excuse to be stupid, is what I’m saying.

    • Belastend@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      No, that is just how linguistics work. Language is decided descriptively, not prescriptively

      • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Nope, both descriptivism and prescriptivism have merit, depending on the specific case.

        A lot of people using a word as having the opposite meaning out of pure ignorance and/or carelessness is one case where prescriptivism is warranted.

        I’ll die on this fucking hill 😄

        • Belastend@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          And you will die on a linguistically untenable hill. Redefining words had happened throughout history and language hasnt died out and its not gotten worse.

          • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            And you will die on a linguistically untenable hill

            Is this your way of warning me against going hiking in Wales? 😉

            language hasn’t died out

            Of course not. That’s literally impossible. Don’t be fatuous, Jeffrey.

            and its not gotten worse.

            That’s of mixed veracity at best.

    • nieminen@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      This is a bad comparison. Language absolutely works as described in the previous comment. While certain trends such as using “literally” to mean “figuratively”, are personally super annoying, that doesn’t change the fact it’s 100% correct when enough people do it.