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If you see the phrase "10 items or less" in
a supermarket and immediately cringe and complain

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that it should be "10 items or fewer"... well,
you are not going to like this week's video.

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There are two types of linguists. Prescriptive
and descriptive. Pretty much every academic

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linguist -- those that study and analyse languages
-- counts themselves as a descriptivist. This

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means that they describe languages, but never
say that they should be a certain way. They

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look, they learn, and they work out how people
communicate.

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On the other side are the prescriptivists.
Who prescribe, in much the same way as a doctor

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prescribes a suppository. They're the people
who say that this is how a language should

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be, damn it, and how on earth are we supposed
to communicate cleary---

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Irony!

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[OFF SCREEN LAUGHTER]

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Can we roll back a little?

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How on earth are we supposed to communicate clearly

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when people keep blurring things and using slang?

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I don't have much time for prescriptivists.
They say that "this way to speak is correct"

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and "this way is incorrect". To which I way:
bollocks. I work on this rule: as long as

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the recipient pays attention to the message
and isn't trying to decipher what you're saying,

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then talk however the hell you want.

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That doesn't mean that you should start sprinkling
apostrophes all over the place, or not caring

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a damn for spelling rules in that essay you're
writing -- they'll get in the way of people

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understanding your message clearly -- but
it does mean that the grammar police out there

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can absolutely go and do one.

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John McWhorter describes English as a "glorious
bastard language". The British Isles have

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been invaded so many times by so many different
groups through history that we've got words,

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and grammar, and spelling rules from all over
the place. From French, from Latin, from Old

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Norse, from Dutch. Then you've got all the
words we've taken on and welcomed more recently.

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Every language does this. But not all of them
welcome it.

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There is, for example, l'Academie Francaise:
the French Academy. They are the authority

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on the French language -- and though it's
not legally binding, their view is very much

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respected by the government and press. Members
of the Academy are known as immortals.

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No, seriously, they call themselves immortals.

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They aim to halt the Anglicisation of French,
to the point where they simply announced one

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day in 2003 that, from now on, the French
word for e-mail will be courriel, and in 2013

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announced that, suddenly, the official French
word for hashtag would be mot-dièse, or sharp-word.

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You can probably guess how much either of
these words is actually getting used in France.

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Pretty much all major languages have an Academy.
Apart from English. Which has gotten along

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just fine.

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Language changes. Regularly and often. The
Oxford English Dictionary -- hailed as the

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authority on the English language -- is descriptive,
not prescriptive. And that's really important. They'll tell

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you what's considered correct, but if popular
opinion changes? So will they and so should

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you. So the next time some pedant complains
"that's not what the dictionary says" -- well,

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then the dictionary probably needs updating.
Or at least theirs does.

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Next time: we'll have a look at some people
who've tried to force changes into English...

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and see exactly how well that went.

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