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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ichabod" data-source="post: 400481" data-attributes="member: 1257">Yes, really. It has been shown (read Chomsky) that the amount of information a child recieves growing up is not sufficient to teach the child language. That means there must be something in the wiring of the brain that facilitates the learning of language. And the fact that adults have a harder time learning second languages is futher evidence. That is, there are changes in the brain as humans mature which remove some of the qualities that make language easy to learn.Language doesn't change rapidly because it wouldn't be useful if it did. But it does change, and you can't stop it. If it didn't change, we'd all be speaking Old English, or proto-Indo-European.And how do you decide what is improper? What you understand, someone else may not, and vice versa. Which of you gets to decide what is right? Do we let some stuffy professors in an English university decide? Why?The fact of the matter is, what is proper is what native speakers of english think is proper. And as it matters what the individual thinks, there will be variation.Just because it is widely considered bad english doesn't mean it is. Truth is not the same thing as public opinion. As I said, dialects are rarely called such for scientific reasons. People speaking Chinese "dialects" often have a harder time understanding each other than some people speaking different northern European "languages."What you are advocating is a proscriptive approach to language. But language is not something some guy invented. It grew and evolved, and continues to evolve. A proscriptive approach is like deciding that heavier objects fall faster, and then when they don't, calling it "bad physics." You can say that ebonics is not the same as standard english, but to say it is bad is to apply a subjective, pejorative term to an objective reality. It's like saying people who have red hair have bad hair because most people don't have red hair.</blockquote>

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