My mom taught me if you can’t count it, like milk, then you don’t make it plural. I was to add more chopped onion, not onions, more berries, not berry. Maybe it’s a regional thing because you were taught differently. My family is from Ohio. But my husband from Maryland agrees with me. We were surprised you pluralized onions but not berries.
John, you'll remember being a guest on Econtalk with Russ Roberts some years ago. Russ has occasionally joked about his Russian friend who when asked "How are you?" replies "Fine, like all Americans."
Hi John. I was pleasant surprised when you played form Saratoga the end of the podcast. I was involved a few years ago (30!) with the attempt to update Saratoga not the musical but the original 19th century play at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego. The book was by Terrence McNally and the music was incidental and for the most part Stephen Foster. It was supposed to go to Broadway but it was so unwieldily that the Broadway producer Liz Mann (I think) bailed on the project. It was nonetheless a fun project and sumptuously stage and costumed but at 3 hours long it didn't work. Thanks for bringing that memory to mind.
The return of lie/lay made me want a more general episode about sticklerism, one that goes beyond the usual descriptivist’s dismissal (Sticklers don’t get it! Language is always changing!) to acknowledge that sticklers might be a necessary part of the process. Maybe colloquial drift needs resistance; maybe any language of sufficient size *must* maintain a standard flavor distinct from its vernaculars, and the emergence of self-appointed custodians to resist the drift is just as natural a phenomenon as the drift. Successful innovations make it through the gauntlet. Others pass away or remain forever nonstandard. In other words, isn't sticklerism a *feature* of language evolution that good descriptivists ought to describe, and not prejudicially reject?
I'm as laissez-faire as the next guy, but aren't we all kinda glad the NYTimes doesn't describe uptrends as "rad" or disasters as "hella messed up"?
Possible title: Descriptivists don’t get it! Language is always resisting change!
An adjacent topic that might fold into the same episode: in-group/out-group detection—not a secondary effect of language but a first-order feature. See *shibboleth*. Guardianship of "correct" English might be best understood as in-group identification, as practiced by the "well-educated."
Ok, yes, I get it now. Your argument is that we (native English speakers) all learned the difference between count nouns and mass nouns, etc. as toddlers and can’t remember having done so. On the other hand, we all remember the Language Arts teacher explaining the difference between lie (intransitive) and lay (transitive) and, so, correct use of these verbs is not truly native. But I also remember that moment fondly. “Ah, that makes sense, like liegen, lag, gelegen versus legen, legt, gelegt”! So I vote to retain.
My mom taught me if you can’t count it, like milk, then you don’t make it plural. I was to add more chopped onion, not onions, more berries, not berry. Maybe it’s a regional thing because you were taught differently. My family is from Ohio. But my husband from Maryland agrees with me. We were surprised you pluralized onions but not berries.
John, you'll remember being a guest on Econtalk with Russ Roberts some years ago. Russ has occasionally joked about his Russian friend who when asked "How are you?" replies "Fine, like all Americans."
Hi John. I was pleasant surprised when you played form Saratoga the end of the podcast. I was involved a few years ago (30!) with the attempt to update Saratoga not the musical but the original 19th century play at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego. The book was by Terrence McNally and the music was incidental and for the most part Stephen Foster. It was supposed to go to Broadway but it was so unwieldily that the Broadway producer Liz Mann (I think) bailed on the project. It was nonetheless a fun project and sumptuously stage and costumed but at 3 hours long it didn't work. Thanks for bringing that memory to mind.
The return of lie/lay made me want a more general episode about sticklerism, one that goes beyond the usual descriptivist’s dismissal (Sticklers don’t get it! Language is always changing!) to acknowledge that sticklers might be a necessary part of the process. Maybe colloquial drift needs resistance; maybe any language of sufficient size *must* maintain a standard flavor distinct from its vernaculars, and the emergence of self-appointed custodians to resist the drift is just as natural a phenomenon as the drift. Successful innovations make it through the gauntlet. Others pass away or remain forever nonstandard. In other words, isn't sticklerism a *feature* of language evolution that good descriptivists ought to describe, and not prejudicially reject?
I'm as laissez-faire as the next guy, but aren't we all kinda glad the NYTimes doesn't describe uptrends as "rad" or disasters as "hella messed up"?
Possible title: Descriptivists don’t get it! Language is always resisting change!
An adjacent topic that might fold into the same episode: in-group/out-group detection—not a secondary effect of language but a first-order feature. See *shibboleth*. Guardianship of "correct" English might be best understood as in-group identification, as practiced by the "well-educated."
Ok, yes, I get it now. Your argument is that we (native English speakers) all learned the difference between count nouns and mass nouns, etc. as toddlers and can’t remember having done so. On the other hand, we all remember the Language Arts teacher explaining the difference between lie (intransitive) and lay (transitive) and, so, correct use of these verbs is not truly native. But I also remember that moment fondly. “Ah, that makes sense, like liegen, lag, gelegen versus legen, legt, gelegt”! So I vote to retain.