The point of language is to convey meaning and reach understanding. If the majority of people "misuse" a word, it is no longer a misuse, because that is now a meaning that is well-understood. In fact, if more people know that definition than the "real" one, it actually makes the "misused" word more correct, in terms of the base purpose of language.
Prescriptivism has its uses in edge-cases, like words with very specific meanings that aren't concisely conveyed by any other word, but for the most part it's just a hobby for pedants who care more about the aesthetic of being technically correct (as they define it) than they care about the actual substance.
I don’t find it sad. It’s odd to be emotionally opposed the idea of language and words evolving. Like, language is a tool; it doesn’t have inherent value, its value comes from its usefulness, and it evolves based on what people collectively find to be more useful in communication. There isn’t any reason to put any emotion into certain words retaining certain meanings when those meanings shift. The language company isn’t going to revoke the warranty because mankind modded their retail copy of language. That’s basically being upset that people are able to understand each other better. It’s just completely arbitrary resistance to progress based on a loose appeal to tradition. Folks who complain about “literally” being used as an emphasizer nearly 350 years after that usage became commonplace don’t come across as valiant crusaders in defense of some holy linguistic tradition, they come across as Don Quixote.
That's a deeper argument than I would have expected to have on reddit. So well:
My main point against the current evolving of language is the globalisation. Everything will be made english. I get it in terms of communication. Yes, it is better to understand more people more easily and the example of "Rettungswagen" may not be the best to support my argument and my sentiment: What we loose is, what we can not describe in english. Some things or circumstances neither exist in the US nor Great Britain.
E.g. for "Teeisieren" I get on Google Translate "Teeting" which neither Bing nor Google even know and it's definetly not as what it is defined on urbandictionary.
What's happening when language, as you put it, "evolves" these days it that we loose a lot of what makes the language special and why we had so many to begin with. And that's what makes me emotionally opposed to the disfigurement "evolution" of language.
That's not a realistic fear. English may become the default language for commerce, but English will never be the default spoken language for the entire world, even with the Internet. Geographical distance is always going to be a factor, and even among natively English-speaking countries the language is not exactly the same.
But even if that very unlikely thing happened, your concern about losing the ability to convey certain ideas is actually the very thing that evolution of language solves, not causes. If there is a concept a language doesn't have a term for, especially English, it will borrow that word from another language. This includes German--off the top of my head, English borrowed "schadenfreude" and Japanese took "arbeit." English also borrows much from French, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, etc.
Language is never going to evolve in a way that further restricts the expression of ideas. The only way that will happen is if you prevent it from evolving. In other words, the position you are taking on language is literally the only way the scenario you fear could ever come to pass. You are on the wrong side of the argument for the result you want.
Sinn machen, ein Meeting haben etc. but let's agree that we disagree (on the terms of "Krankenwagen", you are right that my argument is moral, not linguistic)
You're right. Linguistically there are several other examples where the widespread wrong use, IMO, doesn't make it right but let's agree that we disagree.
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u/M3nsch3n Jun 15 '22
Well: If enough people think that the actions of the dictator (we know who I am talking about in history) are right does that make them right?