On Thu, 24 Jun 2010, Kim Cascone wrote:
Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
Perhaps, but you still should have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
which begs the question: does common and widespread usage of a grammatical mistake make it correct given enough time? ;)
Well, I don't consider it to be grammatical, it seems to be a vocabulary issue instead, but in any case, it happened very often that mistakes become correct given enough time, and in fact, much of today's definitions and vocabulary started with things that sounded plain wrong and was frowned upon. But to make it correct, you first have to kill everybody who considers it wrong ;) or wait till they die on their own (the latter of which is what usually happens... but not all of the time !)
An example of grammatical "mistake" is to end a sentence with a preposition, but it's sort of a reverse case, because it's a change of opinion, not a change of grammar : ending sentences with propositions is traditional English, and a myth has been running around to justify a covert reform. But when using English, as much as I can be annoyed by many things, ending sentences with a preposition is obviously something I have never had a problem with.
Par contre, en français, on saurait pas ce que tu parles de.
(This is a common joke about how people often speak French in certain areas of Canada...)
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