|
We all have "pet peeves", yet the language continues to change. In the 18th century, if I recall correctly, the verbs "to teach" and "to learn" reversed meanings. It wasn't uncommon in isolated districts in the US to hear "I'll learn you!" when someone was going to punish you for doing something wrong.
My pet peeve is the "All that glitters is not gold" error. It is incorrect, because gold does glitter. The speaker meant to say, "Not all that glitters is gold". I saw it yesterday in a beer commercial, "All beers aren't created equal." Ironically, the writer of that sentence has no clue that what he was saying was that every bottle of his beer tastes different.
We grow up with a language of our time. We add new words as they become necessary, but we tend to "freeze" at a particular point in the language if we do not constantly associate with a much younger generation.
Some evolution is the persistence of errors, like the plural verb for the singular subject [the opposite is true: None and Each are both singular, yet are commonly followed by plural forms of the verb. You are more likely to hear "None are going" instead of the correct "None is going" or "Everyone has their problems" instead of the correct "Everyone has his problems.]
And some of the evolution is simplification (lite for light, nite for night, thru for through). And some is a gradual change over generations that is only detectable by those of us who've been around that long (my aforementioned "boughten" as the past participle of "to buy").
It matters only if the purpose of communication is not served--when the error becomes the focus of attention rather than the message. I admit to being guilty of this, especially in the all-too-common errors of there/their/they're or are/our or others we all could mention, like my most-despised error involving the word myself: "Who is going?" "Myself and Ted" !!!!
Why, that's just ignernt.
|
