Learning correct grammar so you can make mistakes on purpose and not by accident is a Chad move. It’s like learning fluent French so you can go from being unable to speak French to being unwilling to speak French.
learning to speak french with a west african accent and correcting european french speakers on their pronunciation
I remember in highschool when I foolishly signed up for French instead of Spanish, a language with actual practical use-cases in America which could have given me access to the cultural products of 90% of the countries on the side of the planet I live on*, I distinctly remember being relieved when the “listen to a native speaker” would cut to someone in West Africa instead of some Parisian fuck because West African speakers actually enunciated their words, while the Fr*nch would muddle 3 syllables into one that didn’t even have a distinctive consonant sound. Terrible accent, impossible for my 15 year old ears to understand.
*Being on Xiaohongshu and seeing how effective mandatory English classes were at teaching the people of China English at a conversational level, I am now a “12 years of mandatory Spanish education” guy. Been looking for after school classes in my area for my kid but unfortunately it’s all private tutoring or companies that will set up classes for a school who has decided to do so. Wish there was more demand for it.
Can your kid make a language buddy? Any shops around you where the people there speak Spanish, or Spanish-speaking people in your neighborhood?
There are Spanish speaking people in my town of course, not sure about my neighborhood specifically but it’s America- I don’t know almost any of my neighbors, everything is so atomized.
A shop where people speak your target language also sounds like a place to practice a language you already know at least a little, I’d think? It doesn’t seem like an effective substitute for daily classroom practice.
What is a language buddy? Is that like, someone who speaks your target language natively and wants to learn your native language? If so that does sound really helpful but I’m not sure how you’d find such a person. A specialized website maybe?
but it’s America- I don’t know almost any of my neighbors, everything is so atomized.
A shop where people speak your target language
Yeah I was just thinking like maybe there’s a place where the people are super lovely and will say hi to your kid and will teach a few words just to say hello and what’s your name and stuff, certainly not classroom instruction but any level of exposure is better than none, especially listening. This would be better if u had a lil background yourself so that you could help your kid learn the words
language buddy
Yeah that’s what I was imagining, maybe there are native Spanish speaking parents around who want to improve their English or their kids’ English and so there could be an exchange? Or maybe someone in your town is willing just to make a few bucks on the side? I’m kind of picturing like, meeting parents at the playground who are speaking Spanish and telling them you want your kid to learn and seeing if you can set up a playdate or something haha.
Or maybe you could post on Craigslist / flyers in cafes / etc and try to start an exchange group!
I dunno, I don’t have kids so I’m just spitballing! I totally hear you on the lack of a proper education on this topic (none of my language teachers in school were native speakers of the subject language and nobody took the classes seriously) but community fills the void!!!
Hoping u can find something that works!
You should look into Language Transfer! It’s based on developing conversational fluency quickly and giving you the mental tools to be able to keep learning through conversation with people. It was designed by an anarchist linguist fed up with crappy school-based language instruction. IT’s only tapes you listen to and think hard about. Probably suitable for a middle schooler or precocious upper elementary student because it directly references elements of English grammar. I used it to be able to talk with my students.
Maybe later, my oldest is still in early elementary.
There IS a place that will set up classes after school around here if requested by a school, considering going to a school board meeting to ask about it.
That’s the easiest time for new language learning! I hope you can get it going.
The people begging me to put commas in my paragraphs
Me never using commas
You’ll make me use an oxford comma when you snatch my phone from my hands and type it yourself; on the other hand, I enjoy abusing semicolons.
You’ll make me use an oxford comma when you snatch my phone from my hands,
if you really want to drive yourself insane, learn the difference between further and farther, and then enjoy seeing people screw it up every single day.
Further more like fuhrer amirite?
Merriam-Webster says further is fine in basically any situation you could use farther, and farther is for physical distance only.
I feel like people around here mostly use further so it’s not really being “misused?” Never heard someone talking about farthering their goals, sounds very unnatural to my ear.
Sorry but an editor mentioned this to me when looking over my writing a few years ago and it’s lasered itself into my brain ever since.
Killing the cop in your head includes editors. It’s one thing to correct for content and overall comprehensibility it’s another to get on this granular elements of style bullshit when the language is in common usage.
“N-N-Nooo, you can’t just follow obscure grammatical rules that no one cares about!”
“Haha, it’s-farther-not-further machine go brrr.”
No difference except from people in the last hundred years trying to will a difference into existence. Farther is a quite bit more archaic here so you’d rarely hear or read it.
I guess I just lose either way, don’t I. I can’t please the hexbears and I can’t please this editor from my past either
It’s ok, buddy, I’m with you. Signed, someone with the same inner editor.
That’s me with fewer vs. less
Fewer more like fuhrer ohgoditneverends
(also yes I know that saying less instead of fewer isn’t actually a “mistake” but my brain likes the distinction ok? let me have my comfort pedantic grammar rule)
I actually did see an example on Hexbear the other day where the fewer/less distinction did actually matter for getting the meaning across. Someone corrected it, which drew my attention to it.
Basically, if you’re saying “fewer [plural noun]” or “less [plural noun]”, even if the former should technically be a count noun and the latter a mass noun, it doesn’t impact intelligibility. But if there’s an intervening adjective, there can be ambiguity.
If you say “less competent people,” the most straightforward interpretation is “[less competent] people”, although with more flexible usage “less [competent people]” is also possible. If you say “fewer competent people” the only possible interpretation is “fewer [competent people].” Bit of an edge case, but it’s something I’m gonna file away in my noggin.
Calling it fascism is a bit much but prescriptive grammar (as opposed to descriptive) is bad
Yeah there’s a whole lot of stuff to say about descriptivism vs prescriptivism, Roland Barthes made his whole career on that, but the formulation of “it’s fascist because vibes and distant past” is just meh.
The closest the argument that prescriptivism is fascism gets to being right is how prescriptivism is used against students who speak a vernacular English associated with a racial minority, equating not talking white with talking wrong.
I would say that’s more of a consequence or a symptom of prescriptivism being fascistic, in the sense that it self-reinforces the policing tendencies of language by engaging with another component of policing racial minorities…
There are points where descriptive grammar drives me up the wall. One that I’ve noticed is that bias is increasingly being used in place of biased. Such as “bias reporting” or “bias person”.
that just parses as incorrect, is that really a dictionary way to use bias?
Accidentally put in the wrong word there.
ah the reverse lol. i do agree with bias tho that’s irritating
The dictionary is the cop of words
I’m reading a really weird fantasy book that I picked up at a used bookstore on a whim right now, called Warriors of Paradise. It takes place in this Grimdark theocratic state, but there’s this tribe of hardcore AnPrims, so hardcore they thing having long term memories, planning ahead, or even having names is fascist. Real John Zerzan shit. Books kinda mid but I’m enjoying the world building so I keep reading.
Bedtimes is fascism too
It goes even deeper than that. Verbs can be either strong or weak.
Even worse, you can have “strongest weaknesses”
I’m on the side of language and linguistics being fluid, and that a strict policing of language is a tool of the state to control the political and social expression of the proletariat.
That being said, maybe calling stuff fascism when it’s just plain old state repression is a bit weird imo. don’t fashjacket people!
We basically have the same kind of people with french over here. Where when I was studying education, we had to pay an exam, sourced by a private entity which sucked ass. We had to study old expressions that no one ever uses, either written or talked. We had to know how to use a verb in the “passé composé” which are sometimes used with a pronoun.
I remember being enrolled into an “french oral practice class” because I was late on the curriculum and the teacher doing it was a fucking European, like “that was the standard French we had to aspire to”. Mind you I’m in North America, I’ll let you guess where. Also in the class where a lot of migrants “coincidentally” from north and west Africa.
Also a couple of us white folks with a stronger provincial accent (diphtong and africation) had a test where we had to talk about our family, and I think I failed that because of the kinda strong diphtong I do.
Whatever, I never finished the program.
Haven’t you heard of the grammar Nazis?
I can’t wait until “consume” is fascist.
oh wait
also please do away with using “solve” as a noun… that is the most fascist shit i ever heard in my life
