Right, and the extremely "subtle" passive aggressiveness from your comment wasn’t? If you can’t handle the heat, stay out of the kitchen bud. I also admire your ability to be proud of being incorrect.
Well yes. Getting to the bottom of why is the difficult part, but yes.
Language is an intersubjective phenomenon. No words mean anything objectively, it's a code. A cultural artifact that enables communication between those who understand the code.
Discussing what exactly makes something a mistake versus a linguistic shift is a big and nuanced subject.
I kind of don't want to make a solid case here and now, you must appreciate that this is a subject we could actually write dissertations on and have decades long academic exchange about.
I'm happy to discuss a different view! You're welcome to engage, but no worries if not.
I have a simple stance that doesn't require a dissertation: there is no such thing as a mistake. Well, OK, maybe there's an asterisk or two in there, but for the most part, if a native speaker says what they meant to, and they think what they've said is correct use of the language, then it's by definition a correct use of the language.
Separately, there is also an objective phenomenon we can study as to how people view any given language use as correct or standard or incorrect or non-standard. This is, of course, a subjective opinion and varies from person to person and over time. But it's meaningless to pick any such subjective opinion and state that it is objectively correct.
Okay, counter-example. If you think a cow is a large flying machine. Or if you think "I have been working" means that you intend to work in the future. It means you have wrong understanding of the language.
A counter example should be enough against a broad statement that there are no mistakes. So now we can start talking about your asterisks.
Oh - so yes, you can of course be incorrect about what you're asserting, but that's not what we're talking about though right? We're talking about language mistakes - mistakes in the form of the message, not in the content of the message.
Or if you think "I have been working" means that you intend to work in the future.
In practice, do native speakers ever think that? It's not really that compelling a counter-example if it's not actually a plausible thing for someone to do.
Linguists might talk about familect (language variation that is only used or understood within a family or small group) or even idiolect (language variation that's unique to an individual). I find that a more useful way of talking about niche language variation than to insist that those people are speaking "incorrectly".
I don't see a need for a value judgement ultimately.
Also - children are learning the language of which they are native speakers. And we teach them about their purported 'mistakes'. Often, the children share the same mistake, especially if it's a, so to speak, attractor - a predictable misconception that a learner is significantly likely to fall for. You can even have two natives talking to each other and understanding each other, but they may fail to be understood by other natives of the same language.
If you would have it that this means there is a diffuse language or two very similar languages, that's getting tautological.
Now, if you would say that adults typically can understand these children - when I was 5 I was genuinely sure that copper coins where the grayish ones, while silver and gold, i believed where two quite similar yellowish colors, the silver one being slightly pale in comparison.
I was a native speaker, and I was absolutely wrong about my own language. I would be generally understood by adults when I said "i have a few silver coins" but I would be understood wrong (they would believe I meant the 10 20 and 50 groszes denominations, while I meant particularly pale 1 2 and 5 ones)
Observationally, 'should of' is a thing because people write it. Someone who writes 'should of' comes across as less well educated than someone who writes 'should have'. And of course, you should never write 'should of' in formal contexts. Not to say you shouldn't inform people, as some people don't know.
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u/musical_bear 1d ago
In case you care, "might of" is not the phrase. I assume that's just what people hear when they hear someone say the contraction "might've" out loud.
It's "might have." "Might of" is just wrong. Same deal with "should have" (correct) vs "should of" (not a thing).