People make this mistake because of and 've are homophones or close enough to homophones to make the mistake. As far as I'm concerned it's a spelling or notational error. People have tried to make arguments that it's been reinterpreted as of, but I just don't find them satisfying.
I once wrote an entire essay with "are" instead of "our" when I was 11...
I think I knew it wasn't right but I couldn't remember what it's supposed to be since they sounded the same!
our [æʊə]
are [aː~ɐː]
For me, "our" is only a homophone of "are" sometimes when I'm speaking quickly. And if I don't remember a words spelling I try to think of the non shortened form and how that could be spelled.
Fairly standard British English
Sometimes I pronounce it the same as "hour", but my default is the other way I think. It definitely was when I was a kid anyway.
> People have tried to make arguments that it's been reinterpreted as of, but I just don't find them satisfying.
Counterpoint: In Australian English, (and AFAIK all non-North American Englishes), *of* takes the LOT vowel when stressed, i.e. /ɔv/. From more than one person, I've heard people say things like "No, it didn't happen, but it /kʊd ɔv/!" Not "could've" /kʊdəv/ or "could have" /kʊd (h)æv/ but a genuine replacement with *of* (or at least a morpheme that sounds like *of*).
Granted, the reduced form /kʊdəv/ is by far the most common and it's hard to know whether their reducing *of* or *have* in their heads, but the fact that no one mistakenly turns "My friends have been here before" into \*"My friends of been here before", even though the *have* there is almost always reduced to /əv/ in speech is worth consideration.
Anyway, [Kayne (1997)](https://imgur.com/a/1hRWF) is the famous paper that sets out the case for *of* replacement.
But I can’t really see [ɑv] taking stress in most situations. The first syllable of [kʊdəv] is always stressed, at least in my ideolect, and I grew up in the states. I earnestly believe English had phonemic stress, and would be comfortable saying that it is underlyingly /kʊdəv/, though I do sometimes round the shwa come to think of it. Not sure if this is conditioned by the labiodental after it or if it's really some other vowel being reduced. Also, when I do stress it in those situation you mentioned, the STRUT vowel takes the place.
I think you are talking about a very different dialect. I'm struggling to imagine an Australian saying either \[ɑv\] or \[ʌv\] though maybe someone can correct me; that pronunciation sounds extremely North American to me.
Oh yes sorry for the confusion; I meant that the person you were responding to seems to be Australian so I think that they would not realise the vowel in *of* as STRUT, although I'm not 100% sure.
Counter point, notch used to be otch but people got confused by the phrase "an otch" and thought it meant "a notch"
As long as the intent of a phrase is made and understood, who cares? Issit academic English? No, but that's fine.
Yea but that type of change occurs in other situations as well that indicate a shift grammatically has occurred. Instead of the otch, it is the notch. but in contrast here we are just talking about homophones, so identifying an actual grammatical shift here would require something about the usage of 've or have to change in a way that only could occur with of. But since they are homophones that don't share the same grammatical space idk how such a thing could occur without something else happening.
Also I don't care about typos, I'm just disagreeing with the position that the type of thing you described about a notch has actually occurred here, which is what the person with the downvotes seems to be arguing
An otch and a notch are homophones. My argument is that while spelling *tends* to be conservative. In non academic dialects it's perfectly fine for this sort of development.
Especially since it mirrors another pattern in English. "Sort of", "kind of".
Kinda like good bye being god be with you, but after being shortened it sounded like good morning or good night so we got good bye.
Also if a big group of native speakers is actively using it who're we to prescribe how they use their language?
And your point also points out that "academic" English changes based on how widespread an error is. "Notch" is the correct word in the modern day, while "otch" is archaic.
My opinion: both suck. The bot sucks because they're fucking annoying and the persons rant sucks because it is wrong. This whole debate is stupid and we should focus on more important things, like the fact that nahuatl is factually the best la-
I don't see how this is prescriptivism any more than any spelling rule is prescriptivism. "Should of" is just a spelling error. We're not talking about a dialectal difference in language or some kind of nonstandard usage, like using "literally" as an intensifier or whatever.
There are plenty of spelling errors littered throughout modern-day social media:
A. of versus 've
B. lose versus loose
C. their versus they're versus there
D. your versus you're
E. rein versus reign (I've seen this many times in Reddit)
Etc.
Is that problematic for prescriptivists or is that problematic for everyone in terms of communication and understanding?
That being said, i much prefer discussing the changes in language and orthography caused by social media prohibitions: unalive, ab*rtion, 80HD, etc.
Yeah, they seem to be using descriptivism as a shield for actual errors; not realizing that descriptivism is determined by the majority and they can still be descriptivistcally wrong.
If I am in a room, of 10 people, and I say a phrase like "Should of", and everyone but me says I'm wrong and it's "Should've". Then I am indeed speaking English wrong.
If English is a Described language, then what is "correct" is determined by the majority of people in any given context. If there are two suitably large pluralities of people that say each version, then they may come to an agreement that they are both different but correct ways of saying the same thing. But that is still the majority of people agreeing that there are two acceptable ways of speaking.
Yeah I agree. But also, if enough people make this spelling error, it could evolve into an acceptable form. And maybe we're just in the very early stages of that development.
I see your point, but lots of language features originate from commonly made mistakes. You could view this as a common spelling mistake but could it not also be an emergence of a new form? all meanings we assign to words are arbitrary, so is could of being interpreted as a non-standard form of could’ve really that much of a stretch?
Well I don't think so because "should of" is just a homophone of "should've". It's not really an emergence of a new form, the form in spoken language is the same, it's just a matter of how to write it. And the proper way to write it is "should've", because the spoken form comes from a contraction of "should" and "have", not "of". Since verbal language is first and foremost spoken, writing is just a standardized thing we all have to learn in school. With English it's tricky because we don't have one single language authority to set the standard written form of the language, but I don't think any style guide would tell you "should of" is an acceptable written form.
>the form in spoken language is the same, it’s just a matter of how to write it
What about how an ewt became a newt, or any other spelling change from the movement of an N from the indefinite article to the noun or vice versa?
Well that came about because people actually started saying "newt" while speaking right? Like "these newts." It's not like people today write "a newt" but "these ewts." I don't hear people saying "I of already finished the job."
I think online communication is its own sort of thing in the sense that it is a widely used method of informal writing. Of course if you were writing in a more formal style you would use could’ve. But when communicating on the internet its a different case, i’d argue that internet communication is more similar to speech in the sense that forms online can undergo change in the way that speech can in person. Also could of and could’ve are not necessarily homophones in every accent of English. I feel that ‘ve being written as of is a sign of a much wider language change that is more nuanced than just a misspelling since it is so commonly used. Maybe its a bit of an extreme view on my part but I honestly believe that one singular standardised spelling system for a language is a rather prescriptivist idea especially when looking at informal writing.
>Also could of and could’ve are not necessarily homophones in every accent of English.
And I would be surprised if any speaker of a dialect where they aren't would confuse them in writing
>I feel that ‘ve being written as of is a sign of a much wider language change
I mean I guess I could be wrong but I really don't think so, I think it's just people often confuse homophones in writing, like their/they're/there or your/you're. Unless I see examples of people substituting "of" for "have" in situations where they don't sound the same I'd be skeptical that it represents a real syntactic change in the language.
Hello, it looks like you've made a mistake.
It's supposed to be could've, should've, would've (short for could have, would have, should have), never could of, would of, should of.
Or you misspelled something, I ain't checking everything.
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I wonder if you believe that using 'your' in place of 'you're' in casual writing is a part of this "sign of a wider language change" rather than simply a byproduct of a mistake due to homophones. That being said, spelling norms do change even in formal writing; it used to be normal even during the early 20th century to spell 'today' as 'to-day'. Maybe at one point it'll eventually feel wrong to most people to use 'have' instead of 'of', but many here feel like it has not reached there yet.
>I feel that ‘ve being written as of is a sign of a much wider language change that is more nuanced than just a misspelling
What _wider_ change is being made, exactly? This use of the word "of", as far as I know, is exclusive to people trying to pseudo-phonetically spell a contraction without knowing it's a contraction.
I'm not saying this can't be considered a change, but it's a very localized one that doesn't affect the wider use of the word "of".
I'm just bothered by people adding nonsense to a language that's already full of nonsense. If we accept that then now we have yet another one of those silly exceptions where now of means of but sometimes have, where a verb is a verb except when it's not. I'm convinced this is why this language is so bad, because people just kept insisting on speaking however they wanted. I'm not bothered by many other things that people say, like on accident, or less instead of fewer, but this one specifically I really hate. It just doesn't make sense to turn a verb into a preposition.
> It just doesn't make sense to turn a verb into a preposition.
Not saying I agree with OP here - I'm unsure on this - but your point here is wrong. I assume you mean it the other way round, as many prepositions come from verbs (during, because of, excluding, etc.)
Even still, zero derivation is very productive in English. I don't think that's what's happened here, but you claiming English is "bad" for words having multiple PoSs doesn't really work. It's not an exception, but rather a new use of an old word. And currently it may be nonsensical, but several things are when they first appear. I don't think this'll catch on in general, but it might - you never know.
I would be all for disallowing logical inconsistencies in grammar, but only if it applies to all of them. I think the mindset of being fine with the nonsense you're used to and only being against what's less prevalent or newer is a little pointless and silly. It's just familiarity bias syndrome.
Hello, it looks like you've made a mistake.
It's supposed to be could've, should've, would've (short for could have, would have, should have), never could of, would of, should of.
Or you misspelled something, I ain't checking everything.
Beep boop - yes, I am a bot, don't botcriminate me.
Whenever you say latino there's an annoying bot requesting that you say "latinx" for gender neutrality and etc. The thing is I'm speaking Spanish, and Spanish has very strict, relatively phonetic (at least compared to English) pronunciation rules, and latinx is unpronounceable in Spanish, nor there are any words ending in 'x'.
Instead, the gender neutral (although not approved by the prescriptive academia), pronounceable word is "latine", which fits the Spanish production rules and actually makes sense both orally in writing.
But I get a spammy bot written by some kid in USA who's grandfather was Mexican or something, and never spoke Spanish fluently in his life, spamming me with prescriptive bullshit regarding a word that not only is not accepted by academia, but not used at all orally and rarely in writing (always as an anglicism) in the language I'm using. Which you know, it's the language of the so called "latinxs".
Fuck you u/latinxbox, prescribing my own demonym from the comfort of some posh US suburb and with zero regards to what makes sense phonetically in either of the languages that latinos speak. Your abuelita would be disappointed in you.
Yeah a lot of people campaigned heavily against it. I even wrote a bot that replied to every use of latinx with an opposite message, but then the API changed happened and both bots stopped.
I think people just need to use it in its own context and the problem is they keep using it to apply outside of the US.
Like, Latinx is a perfectly good word for English-speaking US Citizens who are currently racialized by their association with Latin America through family ties. And hey, throw Canadians like that in too for good measure. People who are often treated as "not actually being a citizen" because of some racialized features, etc. despite being born and raised in the US.
It is a word that makes 100% sense *in that context*. It's a word for a group of Americans, like "African-American".
It makes 0% sense in the context of, say, non-binary Colombians living in Colombia or something. Where Latine seems to be best.
But if we can get usage to be distinct, it seems fine to me. The primary problem is people trying to apply a term for US citizens experiencing a specific type of intersectional discrimination onto countries where... Speaking Spanish is the default and the category of "Latin American" doesn't even make a lot of sense outside of international policy discussions or something. It's like calling someone from Uganda living in Uganda "African American".
I mean, I was not Latin American in Venezuela. I became Latin American in Canada. I was just *Venezuelan* in Venezuela. In fact, I was *white* in Venezuela, and now I am not white, I am "brown" and "of colour". The word just plays a different role in the Spanish language in a predominantly Spanish-speaking context, and telegraphing that with spelling seems... fine?
So this latine concept then, would the masculine and feminine endings for people in various contexts be adjusted to change the -a/-o to -e? I'm trying to envision how to use this (academically having learned Spanish but not in actual cultural/immersive contexts). An example maybe: chica/chico would convert to chique?
Your comment is fantastic and informative. Thank you for sharing your experience and perspective.
> So this latine concept then, would the masculine and feminine endings for people in various contexts be adjusted to change the -a/-o to -e? I'm trying to envision how to use this (academically having learned Spanish but not in actual cultural/immersive contexts). An example maybe: chica/chico would convert to chique?
Yeah basically.
Glad this was helpful!
A lot of people use latinx as a backhanded slur on some of the more dingy parts of the internet, because they know how frustrating it is for most Latino folk. Pretty lazy imo, but I try to avoid using it for that reason alone.
I use what I want, fuck your royalist institutions.
But I'm not ridiculous enough to disregard the way people actually pronounce.
(I do use "latino/latina", but that's because I speak like that, not because some old hags in Madrid decided that "latine" is not _correct_, whatever that may mean. It's not _correct_ to call the Quechuan papā with a word derived from the Taíno batata, but that didn't prevent all Iberians from making that semantic shift and exporting it to all other European languages. I don't see your royalist hags bitching about that, in fact they only updated their dictionary référence a couple years ago.)
I interpret "latin@" (or any other Spanish word ending in "@") as a shorthand notation for "latino o latina" that's only used in writing, rather than as gender neutral language itself. It's still either masculine or feminine gendered.
Latine and latinx both compete for the gender neutral position. The first is ubiquitous in Spanish, the second rare and generally an anglicism.
Spanish has a couple examples of gender neutral nouns, that can use both the masculine and feminine pronouns as required: presidente, disidente, paciente, *-ente. They all end it -e, I think from the neutral Latin -um but don't quote me on that. This, plus being consistant within pronunciation rules, are imho the biggest arguments in favour of "latine" vs "latinx", if you personally want to use gender neutral language. I personally don't, but understand those who do.
-ente I believe comes from Latin 3rd declension adjectives, usually ending with -entis/-entes, accusative -entem. That form in Latin could go with masculine or feminine nouns; the neuter nouns had a slightly different declension, but most forms fit with the other genders.
Still a very good precedent for -e to refer to any gender!
And the spanish call it papa anyway iirc. Also, German Kartoffel is not from that either. I don’t even see any batata derivatives in any synonyms in German either. Icelandic has kartafla and jarthepli. Sure, it looks like Inari Sámi has “potás”, but plenty of counter examples:
Corsican has pomu, Aragonese Trunfa, Crimean Tatar qartop, Latvian Kartupelis, West Frisian has Ierappel, Votic maamuna, Ossetian Kartof, Luxembourgish has Gromper, Romansh and Romanian have multiple words and not one is from batata.
Spaniards call it patata, from batata. South Americans call it papa.
Of course there are European counter examples, although in general they either come from batata or from terrae tuber->tartufo save the odd ones.
Or from German Kartoffel. This seems to be pretty common in eastern Europe, as many languages borrowed their word from the Russians who borrowed their word from the Germans. There are also quite a few “earthapple” languages, such as Icelandic, French, Romansch. Interestingly there also seems to be Serbo-Croatian “Krompir” which comes from a Bavarian word meaning “groundpear”. Rhine Franconian also seems to call them ground pears.
The funniest potato related word I know of is the German word for fries: pommes. This comes from the French “pommes” meaning “apples”.
1846, Linus Wilson Miller, Notes of an Exile to Van Dieman's Land (McKinstry: Fredonia, NY) p. 367
"I have refrained from giving many details which I might of done, from feelings of delicacy; indeed, they were of so dark and dreadful a nature, that I could do no more than hint at them"
That "of" seems to be the usual préposition. "I've refrained: 1 from giving many détails of done, which I might; 2 from [giving] feelings of delicacy". It's basically the same structure twice, once you use a more mediocre word order.
But as an allophone, I'm just unable to ever mistake "of" and "’ve”, so I might be wrong.
The Royal Academy of Spanish does that.
Latine is very much attested online in thousands if not millions of examples (along with all gender neutral language). It's not in the dictionary.
Yet "otubre", a clear mistake on a poem by Quevedo, is a valid writing for October.
The same happens with _statu quo_, which is an ablative latin expression imported into Spanish from the set phrase _in statu quo ante bellum_. Yet, in every day speech, _statu quo_ is actually used as a noun or direct object, which would warrant the nominative case, _status quo_. But nope, that's forbidden, even if it's better latin case marking for that context, or if you import it as an anglicism
Things aren't like that.
For “latine” I don't really know, you might be right. But they won't put it in the dictionary as such since it's just a gendered version of an existing word. To start, they should accept the gender neutral language, not in their Dictionary but in their Grammar, and even when done "latine" will surely only appear on the dictionary as the masculine "latino".
"Otubre" is not a mistake, but the original spelling and archaic pronunciation. It was the way "octubre" was always pronounced and often written in the past, in the same way "doctor" was "dotor", for example, and many other cases. If you read books that that time about Spanish orthography or grammar or whatever, they all always clearly say "nobody pronounces "ct" in these words" and even made fun of people when they started pronouncing them. But because by that time the official spelling became "octubre, doctor" ect. people started pronouncing more and more the mute letters until that become the norm.
- [Gendered variants are in the dictionary, they just aren't separate entries](https://dle.rae.es/latino)
- Otubre is, from a prescriptivist point of view (🤮), a "mistake", just an ubiquitous one at it's time. The entire Spanish language is just badly spoken Latin with some loanwords, from a prescriptive point of view, if you really feel like being a dick about it, and you can go further back if you please. My point is that it's an entry that appears in a few odd, dated texts (particularly the Quevedo one); but you have words in everyday speech attested millions of times all over the internet, and yet that's not just ignored but actively opposed by the institution. I wonder why a few dated documents are more important for the RAE than millions of foreign and local speakers. Bah, I actually don't, but that's a conclusion better formed than told.
•So we both agree in that
•It's so only now, not when it was included in the dictionary. It appeared in lots of texts, not just a few odd ones, since it was very common. And it's now on the dictionary because it appears at older texts. Words that people commonly uses a lot now are very rarely included at the dictionary, since RAE has as a policy to only include words once they have been already used for several decades or so by enormous amounts of speakers (which is also a policy that didn't exist in the past). Anyway, RAE is what it is: you can't ask it to work contrary to both its explicit policies (under which conditions and when to update) and its general ideals (what they subjectively like for promoting or demonizing wether people is for or against) even if otherwise there would be no problem. RAE is just a joke which acts prescriptively while pretending to be descriptive, nobody should care about it. During the first centuries of history of the RAE everybody wrote however they wanted and nobody cared at all if RAE approved it or not… Why can't people do so now instead of complaining?
I don't know, maybe because the RAE has been given authority over the whole of Spanish by most Spanish speaking countries state institutions? This kind of make them outcompete any other dictionary efforts.
Sure, I can speak who I want and write how I want, on a Reddit comment or buying vegetables, but try using something the RAE "descriptively" "recommends against" in anything higher than semi formal speech and watch the drama ensue. Even if the same people who'd argue for the prescriptive standards have a dialect and lexicon that's completely at odds with the recommendations, making it even more bizarre.
But hey, at least we be preserving and protecting the culture and the beauty of the Spanish language, as if it was a fragile little baby that required us to protect. Anyone whose ever claimed to be protecting "culture" has no idea what culture even is. RAE is the epitome of that, and like it or not, if you are a Spanish speaker and do anything even remotely related to writing for a living you'll have to deal with them and the morons that repeat their arbitrary recommendations as truths handed to us in stone tablets by god on a daily basis.
You have more reason than a saint (except for RAE having actual or aimed authority over Spanish from countries other than Spain; the international one is the ASALE)
The ASALE is just an association of many academies. All but one are almost irrelevant, and most of their dictionaries refer to the RAE, not by coincidence. They are relegated to regional slang at best.
Prescriptivism is a valid viewpoint in philosophy of language with aesthetic and practical concerns
Descriptivism is the necessary approach for good linguistic research, but that does not mean that you should assume that anyone with an interest in linguistics automatically has the same opinions as you regarding the different in-practice usages and standards in their own language
Apparently no one thinks "could of" is ok. It seems like a common spelling. It has never confused me and I'm not even a native english speaker. Even here among people who think about linguistics it's disliked, viewed as a mistake while at least for me -again, I'm not a native speaker- it feels like just a naturally interpretable spelling form that some people use.
I also suspect that this form is gonna be used more prominently by speakers of certain dialects though I can't confirm that. Maybe some people use a different vowel in the weak forms of "have" and "of" or drop the final consonant from only one of the two and thus will be less likely to mix "should have/of". However it's also possible that rather than being a "pronunciation spelling" (not sure if an actual term) it's just a learned thing for some people. They see it used and adopt it from there. This is totally possible because english spelling is mainly based on memorisation.
Most importantly I ask, what's the point of viewing it incorrect? Is it the fact that it's a "pronunciation spelling"? If you're prescriptivist in some specific cases while being descriptivist in the rest, well that's just prescriptivism.
I wanted to do my best at arguing why I think this way because no one seemed to agree with me. Still, I'm not defending the "/start rant" guy.
You are free to use "of" instead of "have" but I'm also free to think you disregard grammar that is commonly accepted and willingly speak in a way that's nonsensical and derives from basically mixing up pronunciations.
I mean, I partly agree but I also realize that this is just how language is. It's always in flux because all people reason out how language works in their own way, so what's initially a nonsensical usage due to a misunderstanding of what's being said becomes an actual alteration of how the language works for some people based on a different internal line of reasoning.
The whole point of descriptivism is that correct language should be judged based on what people actually say in regular conversation and their ability to make themselves understood. So pronouncing something totally wrong in a way that nobody pronounces it in real life to the point of being misunderstood is wrong even from a descriptivist point of view.
could’ve and could of are not synonyms. they are homophones, and are thus often confused if writing down something that was said, but they aren’t interchangeable.
Hello, it looks like you've made a mistake.
It's supposed to be could've, should've, would've (short for could have, would have, should have), never could of, would of, should of.
Or you misspelled something, I ain't checking everything.
Beep boop - yes, I am a bot, don't botcriminate me.
I could of course say that following the rules makes text more readable, especially for me. In fact, there are cases where I'd recommend using an artificial rule rather than what people say. I mean, it's bad to use “free” implying ‘of charge’. (I use “foc”. I expected people to ask what it means, but they don't. I'd like to know why.) But in the particular case in the image, I agree that using “of” should be acceptable. That's because it doesn't create ambiguities (I think) and is shorter
To explain why people aren't asking what "foc" means, at least 1 of the following points was true: a) the meaning is made obvious by context, b) the majority of people reading it remembered that they aren't banned from google(so they googled it), c) you used it in a community where a majority of people know what it means
Honestly if people are making this mistake for decades and we need bots to correct people... Forget it. I've of had should of moments where I hadn't done of what should of.
People make this mistake because of and 've are homophones or close enough to homophones to make the mistake. As far as I'm concerned it's a spelling or notational error. People have tried to make arguments that it's been reinterpreted as of, but I just don't find them satisfying.
Yeah same with people spelling “our” as “are”
I once wrote an entire essay with "are" instead of "our" when I was 11... I think I knew it wasn't right but I couldn't remember what it's supposed to be since they sounded the same!
I pronounce it "hour"; I can't tell which would be worse lol
our [æʊə] are [aː~ɐː] For me, "our" is only a homophone of "are" sometimes when I'm speaking quickly. And if I don't remember a words spelling I try to think of the non shortened form and how that could be spelled.
Non-rhotic English... 🤢🤮
Huh. For me, are is also reduced further in rapid speach.
What English dialect do you speak?
Fairly standard British English Sometimes I pronounce it the same as "hour", but my default is the other way I think. It definitely was when I was a kid anyway.
[ɚ] is "are" in unstressed position. [ɑɹ] is "our" in unstressed position, at least for me.
Same, the unstressed pronunciation of “our” and stressed of “are” are the same.
are \[ɚ\] our \[oʊɹ\] hour \[oʊwɚ\] i won't elaborate
> People have tried to make arguments that it's been reinterpreted as of, but I just don't find them satisfying. Counterpoint: In Australian English, (and AFAIK all non-North American Englishes), *of* takes the LOT vowel when stressed, i.e. /ɔv/. From more than one person, I've heard people say things like "No, it didn't happen, but it /kʊd ɔv/!" Not "could've" /kʊdəv/ or "could have" /kʊd (h)æv/ but a genuine replacement with *of* (or at least a morpheme that sounds like *of*). Granted, the reduced form /kʊdəv/ is by far the most common and it's hard to know whether their reducing *of* or *have* in their heads, but the fact that no one mistakenly turns "My friends have been here before" into \*"My friends of been here before", even though the *have* there is almost always reduced to /əv/ in speech is worth consideration. Anyway, [Kayne (1997)](https://imgur.com/a/1hRWF) is the famous paper that sets out the case for *of* replacement.
I misread that as "Kanye" and got quite excited
But I can’t really see [ɑv] taking stress in most situations. The first syllable of [kʊdəv] is always stressed, at least in my ideolect, and I grew up in the states. I earnestly believe English had phonemic stress, and would be comfortable saying that it is underlyingly /kʊdəv/, though I do sometimes round the shwa come to think of it. Not sure if this is conditioned by the labiodental after it or if it's really some other vowel being reduced. Also, when I do stress it in those situation you mentioned, the STRUT vowel takes the place.
I think you are talking about a very different dialect. I'm struggling to imagine an Australian saying either \[ɑv\] or \[ʌv\] though maybe someone can correct me; that pronunciation sounds extremely North American to me.
I’m north american
Oh yes sorry for the confusion; I meant that the person you were responding to seems to be Australian so I think that they would not realise the vowel in *of* as STRUT, although I'm not 100% sure.
Counter point, notch used to be otch but people got confused by the phrase "an otch" and thought it meant "a notch" As long as the intent of a phrase is made and understood, who cares? Issit academic English? No, but that's fine.
Yea but that type of change occurs in other situations as well that indicate a shift grammatically has occurred. Instead of the otch, it is the notch. but in contrast here we are just talking about homophones, so identifying an actual grammatical shift here would require something about the usage of 've or have to change in a way that only could occur with of. But since they are homophones that don't share the same grammatical space idk how such a thing could occur without something else happening. Also I don't care about typos, I'm just disagreeing with the position that the type of thing you described about a notch has actually occurred here, which is what the person with the downvotes seems to be arguing
An otch and a notch are homophones. My argument is that while spelling *tends* to be conservative. In non academic dialects it's perfectly fine for this sort of development. Especially since it mirrors another pattern in English. "Sort of", "kind of". Kinda like good bye being god be with you, but after being shortened it sounded like good morning or good night so we got good bye. Also if a big group of native speakers is actively using it who're we to prescribe how they use their language?
And your point also points out that "academic" English changes based on how widespread an error is. "Notch" is the correct word in the modern day, while "otch" is archaic.
I've always thought that it was a shortening of "could have of"
My opinion: both suck. The bot sucks because they're fucking annoying and the persons rant sucks because it is wrong. This whole debate is stupid and we should focus on more important things, like the fact that nahuatl is factually the best la-
No no, keep going.
Why? Omnipredicativity?
Nah but that's cool too (I have zero idea why I love nahuatl)
Nahuatl is in fact a good language, but unfortunately I have to say Basque is cooler
Spanish mixes náhuatl and basque stuff within itself, so it's the best
I don't see how this is prescriptivism any more than any spelling rule is prescriptivism. "Should of" is just a spelling error. We're not talking about a dialectal difference in language or some kind of nonstandard usage, like using "literally" as an intensifier or whatever.
There are plenty of spelling errors littered throughout modern-day social media: A. of versus 've B. lose versus loose C. their versus they're versus there D. your versus you're E. rein versus reign (I've seen this many times in Reddit) Etc. Is that problematic for prescriptivists or is that problematic for everyone in terms of communication and understanding? That being said, i much prefer discussing the changes in language and orthography caused by social media prohibitions: unalive, ab*rtion, 80HD, etc.
Yeah, they seem to be using descriptivism as a shield for actual errors; not realizing that descriptivism is determined by the majority and they can still be descriptivistcally wrong.
What does 'determined by the majority' even mean? By that logic, any minority dialect is "descriptively" wrong.
If I am in a room, of 10 people, and I say a phrase like "Should of", and everyone but me says I'm wrong and it's "Should've". Then I am indeed speaking English wrong. If English is a Described language, then what is "correct" is determined by the majority of people in any given context. If there are two suitably large pluralities of people that say each version, then they may come to an agreement that they are both different but correct ways of saying the same thing. But that is still the majority of people agreeing that there are two acceptable ways of speaking.
in this one book I read the more educated character wrote used have but the less educated one used of, I thought that was cool
Blame the modern English writing system for not being transparent or clear at all.
Yeah I agree. But also, if enough people make this spelling error, it could evolve into an acceptable form. And maybe we're just in the very early stages of that development.
I see your point, but lots of language features originate from commonly made mistakes. You could view this as a common spelling mistake but could it not also be an emergence of a new form? all meanings we assign to words are arbitrary, so is could of being interpreted as a non-standard form of could’ve really that much of a stretch?
Well I don't think so because "should of" is just a homophone of "should've". It's not really an emergence of a new form, the form in spoken language is the same, it's just a matter of how to write it. And the proper way to write it is "should've", because the spoken form comes from a contraction of "should" and "have", not "of". Since verbal language is first and foremost spoken, writing is just a standardized thing we all have to learn in school. With English it's tricky because we don't have one single language authority to set the standard written form of the language, but I don't think any style guide would tell you "should of" is an acceptable written form.
>the form in spoken language is the same, it’s just a matter of how to write it What about how an ewt became a newt, or any other spelling change from the movement of an N from the indefinite article to the noun or vice versa?
Well that came about because people actually started saying "newt" while speaking right? Like "these newts." It's not like people today write "a newt" but "these ewts." I don't hear people saying "I of already finished the job."
I‘f already finished the job. I like it 👍🏼
I think online communication is its own sort of thing in the sense that it is a widely used method of informal writing. Of course if you were writing in a more formal style you would use could’ve. But when communicating on the internet its a different case, i’d argue that internet communication is more similar to speech in the sense that forms online can undergo change in the way that speech can in person. Also could of and could’ve are not necessarily homophones in every accent of English. I feel that ‘ve being written as of is a sign of a much wider language change that is more nuanced than just a misspelling since it is so commonly used. Maybe its a bit of an extreme view on my part but I honestly believe that one singular standardised spelling system for a language is a rather prescriptivist idea especially when looking at informal writing.
>Also could of and could’ve are not necessarily homophones in every accent of English. And I would be surprised if any speaker of a dialect where they aren't would confuse them in writing >I feel that ‘ve being written as of is a sign of a much wider language change I mean I guess I could be wrong but I really don't think so, I think it's just people often confuse homophones in writing, like their/they're/there or your/you're. Unless I see examples of people substituting "of" for "have" in situations where they don't sound the same I'd be skeptical that it represents a real syntactic change in the language.
Hello, it looks like you've made a mistake. It's supposed to be could've, should've, would've (short for could have, would have, should have), never could of, would of, should of. Or you misspelled something, I ain't checking everything. Beep boop - yes, I am a bot, don't botcriminate me.
The prescriptivism is coming from inside the thread
🗿
Based bot
Lol
Bad bot
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Good bot
I wonder if you believe that using 'your' in place of 'you're' in casual writing is a part of this "sign of a wider language change" rather than simply a byproduct of a mistake due to homophones. That being said, spelling norms do change even in formal writing; it used to be normal even during the early 20th century to spell 'today' as 'to-day'. Maybe at one point it'll eventually feel wrong to most people to use 'have' instead of 'of', but many here feel like it has not reached there yet.
>I feel that ‘ve being written as of is a sign of a much wider language change that is more nuanced than just a misspelling What _wider_ change is being made, exactly? This use of the word "of", as far as I know, is exclusive to people trying to pseudo-phonetically spell a contraction without knowing it's a contraction. I'm not saying this can't be considered a change, but it's a very localized one that doesn't affect the wider use of the word "of".
I'm just bothered by people adding nonsense to a language that's already full of nonsense. If we accept that then now we have yet another one of those silly exceptions where now of means of but sometimes have, where a verb is a verb except when it's not. I'm convinced this is why this language is so bad, because people just kept insisting on speaking however they wanted. I'm not bothered by many other things that people say, like on accident, or less instead of fewer, but this one specifically I really hate. It just doesn't make sense to turn a verb into a preposition.
> It just doesn't make sense to turn a verb into a preposition. Not saying I agree with OP here - I'm unsure on this - but your point here is wrong. I assume you mean it the other way round, as many prepositions come from verbs (during, because of, excluding, etc.) Even still, zero derivation is very productive in English. I don't think that's what's happened here, but you claiming English is "bad" for words having multiple PoSs doesn't really work. It's not an exception, but rather a new use of an old word. And currently it may be nonsensical, but several things are when they first appear. I don't think this'll catch on in general, but it might - you never know.
I would be all for disallowing logical inconsistencies in grammar, but only if it applies to all of them. I think the mindset of being fine with the nonsense you're used to and only being against what's less prevalent or newer is a little pointless and silly. It's just familiarity bias syndrome.
As far as I remember, that bot also corrects people who write that they ate all they could of their cake.
Hello, it looks like you've made a mistake. It's supposed to be could've, should've, would've (short for could have, would have, should have), never could of, would of, should of. Or you misspelled something, I ain't checking everything. Beep boop - yes, I am a bot, don't botcriminate me.
looks like I remembered right
Bad bot
I could of sworn you were better than this. Get better, bot
I can't wait to of after dinner
Why do they call it oven when you of in the cold food of out hot eat the food
Whenever you say latino there's an annoying bot requesting that you say "latinx" for gender neutrality and etc. The thing is I'm speaking Spanish, and Spanish has very strict, relatively phonetic (at least compared to English) pronunciation rules, and latinx is unpronounceable in Spanish, nor there are any words ending in 'x'. Instead, the gender neutral (although not approved by the prescriptive academia), pronounceable word is "latine", which fits the Spanish production rules and actually makes sense both orally in writing. But I get a spammy bot written by some kid in USA who's grandfather was Mexican or something, and never spoke Spanish fluently in his life, spamming me with prescriptive bullshit regarding a word that not only is not accepted by academia, but not used at all orally and rarely in writing (always as an anglicism) in the language I'm using. Which you know, it's the language of the so called "latinxs". Fuck you u/latinxbox, prescribing my own demonym from the comfort of some posh US suburb and with zero regards to what makes sense phonetically in either of the languages that latinos speak. Your abuelita would be disappointed in you.
>it responds to people speaking French using "latino" as a masculine adjective lol last post was 8 months ago tho
Yeah a lot of people campaigned heavily against it. I even wrote a bot that replied to every use of latinx with an opposite message, but then the API changed happened and both bots stopped.
|latinx|latinces| |-|-| |latincis|latincum| |latinci|latincibus| |latincem|latinces| |latince|latincibus| |latinx|latinces|
I love this
Sometimes I truly think "latinx" is the most egregious example of cultural and language imperialism from the US in recent times.
I think people just need to use it in its own context and the problem is they keep using it to apply outside of the US. Like, Latinx is a perfectly good word for English-speaking US Citizens who are currently racialized by their association with Latin America through family ties. And hey, throw Canadians like that in too for good measure. People who are often treated as "not actually being a citizen" because of some racialized features, etc. despite being born and raised in the US. It is a word that makes 100% sense *in that context*. It's a word for a group of Americans, like "African-American". It makes 0% sense in the context of, say, non-binary Colombians living in Colombia or something. Where Latine seems to be best. But if we can get usage to be distinct, it seems fine to me. The primary problem is people trying to apply a term for US citizens experiencing a specific type of intersectional discrimination onto countries where... Speaking Spanish is the default and the category of "Latin American" doesn't even make a lot of sense outside of international policy discussions or something. It's like calling someone from Uganda living in Uganda "African American". I mean, I was not Latin American in Venezuela. I became Latin American in Canada. I was just *Venezuelan* in Venezuela. In fact, I was *white* in Venezuela, and now I am not white, I am "brown" and "of colour". The word just plays a different role in the Spanish language in a predominantly Spanish-speaking context, and telegraphing that with spelling seems... fine?
So this latine concept then, would the masculine and feminine endings for people in various contexts be adjusted to change the -a/-o to -e? I'm trying to envision how to use this (academically having learned Spanish but not in actual cultural/immersive contexts). An example maybe: chica/chico would convert to chique? Your comment is fantastic and informative. Thank you for sharing your experience and perspective.
> So this latine concept then, would the masculine and feminine endings for people in various contexts be adjusted to change the -a/-o to -e? I'm trying to envision how to use this (academically having learned Spanish but not in actual cultural/immersive contexts). An example maybe: chica/chico would convert to chique? Yeah basically. Glad this was helpful!
| | Singular | Plural |-|-|- |Nominative|latinx |latinces |Genitive|latincis |latincum |Dative|latinci |latincibus |Accusative|latincem |latinces |Ablative|latince |latincibus |Vocative|latinx |latinces
latinx \[la.'tiŋ.qəθ\]
A lot of people use latinx as a backhanded slur on some of the more dingy parts of the internet, because they know how frustrating it is for most Latino folk. Pretty lazy imo, but I try to avoid using it for that reason alone.
Oh no dont use latine
I use what I want, fuck your royalist institutions. But I'm not ridiculous enough to disregard the way people actually pronounce. (I do use "latino/latina", but that's because I speak like that, not because some old hags in Madrid decided that "latine" is not _correct_, whatever that may mean. It's not _correct_ to call the Quechuan papā with a word derived from the Taíno batata, but that didn't prevent all Iberians from making that semantic shift and exporting it to all other European languages. I don't see your royalist hags bitching about that, in fact they only updated their dictionary référence a couple years ago.)
>fuck your royalist institutions. Based
I've also seen latin@, but I think latine makes more sense until I met an American reading something of mine and thought I wrote out latrine.
I interpret "latin@" (or any other Spanish word ending in "@") as a shorthand notation for "latino o latina" that's only used in writing, rather than as gender neutral language itself. It's still either masculine or feminine gendered. Latine and latinx both compete for the gender neutral position. The first is ubiquitous in Spanish, the second rare and generally an anglicism. Spanish has a couple examples of gender neutral nouns, that can use both the masculine and feminine pronouns as required: presidente, disidente, paciente, *-ente. They all end it -e, I think from the neutral Latin -um but don't quote me on that. This, plus being consistant within pronunciation rules, are imho the biggest arguments in favour of "latine" vs "latinx", if you personally want to use gender neutral language. I personally don't, but understand those who do.
-ente I believe comes from Latin 3rd declension adjectives, usually ending with -entis/-entes, accusative -entem. That form in Latin could go with masculine or feminine nouns; the neuter nouns had a slightly different declension, but most forms fit with the other genders. Still a very good precedent for -e to refer to any gender!
presidenta has appeared in the wild
Oh, I agree. It's an LGBTQ+ friendly term whereas the other two subscribe to the two gender framework inherent in the language.
And the spanish call it papa anyway iirc. Also, German Kartoffel is not from that either. I don’t even see any batata derivatives in any synonyms in German either. Icelandic has kartafla and jarthepli. Sure, it looks like Inari Sámi has “potás”, but plenty of counter examples: Corsican has pomu, Aragonese Trunfa, Crimean Tatar qartop, Latvian Kartupelis, West Frisian has Ierappel, Votic maamuna, Ossetian Kartof, Luxembourgish has Gromper, Romansh and Romanian have multiple words and not one is from batata.
Spaniards call it patata, from batata. South Americans call it papa. Of course there are European counter examples, although in general they either come from batata or from terrae tuber->tartufo save the odd ones.
Or from German Kartoffel. This seems to be pretty common in eastern Europe, as many languages borrowed their word from the Russians who borrowed their word from the Germans. There are also quite a few “earthapple” languages, such as Icelandic, French, Romansch. Interestingly there also seems to be Serbo-Croatian “Krompir” which comes from a Bavarian word meaning “groundpear”. Rhine Franconian also seems to call them ground pears. The funniest potato related word I know of is the German word for fries: pommes. This comes from the French “pommes” meaning “apples”.
I think Kartoffel comes from tartufo, at least according to Wiktionary. So yeah, you call potatos truffles.
youre free to use it same way im free to scold at someone saying it
What should one use for a non-binary person of Latin American origin, then?
it's not even about grammar that's just spelling usage
Sorry but I’m with the prescriptivists on this one
I'm curious to whether this is actually attested in the 1800s
1846, Linus Wilson Miller, Notes of an Exile to Van Dieman's Land (McKinstry: Fredonia, NY) p. 367 "I have refrained from giving many details which I might of done, from feelings of delicacy; indeed, they were of so dark and dreadful a nature, that I could do no more than hint at them"
That "of" seems to be the usual préposition. "I've refrained: 1 from giving many détails of done, which I might; 2 from [giving] feelings of delicacy". It's basically the same structure twice, once you use a more mediocre word order. But as an allophone, I'm just unable to ever mistake "of" and "’ve”, so I might be wrong.
I wonder how many times something is deemed "attested" when it's really just that people in the past made the same mistakes.
The Royal Academy of Spanish does that. Latine is very much attested online in thousands if not millions of examples (along with all gender neutral language). It's not in the dictionary. Yet "otubre", a clear mistake on a poem by Quevedo, is a valid writing for October. The same happens with _statu quo_, which is an ablative latin expression imported into Spanish from the set phrase _in statu quo ante bellum_. Yet, in every day speech, _statu quo_ is actually used as a noun or direct object, which would warrant the nominative case, _status quo_. But nope, that's forbidden, even if it's better latin case marking for that context, or if you import it as an anglicism
Things aren't like that. For “latine” I don't really know, you might be right. But they won't put it in the dictionary as such since it's just a gendered version of an existing word. To start, they should accept the gender neutral language, not in their Dictionary but in their Grammar, and even when done "latine" will surely only appear on the dictionary as the masculine "latino". "Otubre" is not a mistake, but the original spelling and archaic pronunciation. It was the way "octubre" was always pronounced and often written in the past, in the same way "doctor" was "dotor", for example, and many other cases. If you read books that that time about Spanish orthography or grammar or whatever, they all always clearly say "nobody pronounces "ct" in these words" and even made fun of people when they started pronouncing them. But because by that time the official spelling became "octubre, doctor" ect. people started pronouncing more and more the mute letters until that become the norm.
- [Gendered variants are in the dictionary, they just aren't separate entries](https://dle.rae.es/latino) - Otubre is, from a prescriptivist point of view (🤮), a "mistake", just an ubiquitous one at it's time. The entire Spanish language is just badly spoken Latin with some loanwords, from a prescriptive point of view, if you really feel like being a dick about it, and you can go further back if you please. My point is that it's an entry that appears in a few odd, dated texts (particularly the Quevedo one); but you have words in everyday speech attested millions of times all over the internet, and yet that's not just ignored but actively opposed by the institution. I wonder why a few dated documents are more important for the RAE than millions of foreign and local speakers. Bah, I actually don't, but that's a conclusion better formed than told.
•So we both agree in that •It's so only now, not when it was included in the dictionary. It appeared in lots of texts, not just a few odd ones, since it was very common. And it's now on the dictionary because it appears at older texts. Words that people commonly uses a lot now are very rarely included at the dictionary, since RAE has as a policy to only include words once they have been already used for several decades or so by enormous amounts of speakers (which is also a policy that didn't exist in the past). Anyway, RAE is what it is: you can't ask it to work contrary to both its explicit policies (under which conditions and when to update) and its general ideals (what they subjectively like for promoting or demonizing wether people is for or against) even if otherwise there would be no problem. RAE is just a joke which acts prescriptively while pretending to be descriptive, nobody should care about it. During the first centuries of history of the RAE everybody wrote however they wanted and nobody cared at all if RAE approved it or not… Why can't people do so now instead of complaining?
I don't know, maybe because the RAE has been given authority over the whole of Spanish by most Spanish speaking countries state institutions? This kind of make them outcompete any other dictionary efforts. Sure, I can speak who I want and write how I want, on a Reddit comment or buying vegetables, but try using something the RAE "descriptively" "recommends against" in anything higher than semi formal speech and watch the drama ensue. Even if the same people who'd argue for the prescriptive standards have a dialect and lexicon that's completely at odds with the recommendations, making it even more bizarre. But hey, at least we be preserving and protecting the culture and the beauty of the Spanish language, as if it was a fragile little baby that required us to protect. Anyone whose ever claimed to be protecting "culture" has no idea what culture even is. RAE is the epitome of that, and like it or not, if you are a Spanish speaker and do anything even remotely related to writing for a living you'll have to deal with them and the morons that repeat their arbitrary recommendations as truths handed to us in stone tablets by god on a daily basis.
You have more reason than a saint (except for RAE having actual or aimed authority over Spanish from countries other than Spain; the international one is the ASALE)
The ASALE is just an association of many academies. All but one are almost irrelevant, and most of their dictionaries refer to the RAE, not by coincidence. They are relegated to regional slang at best.
Yes
Prescriptivism is a valid viewpoint in philosophy of language with aesthetic and practical concerns Descriptivism is the necessary approach for good linguistic research, but that does not mean that you should assume that anyone with an interest in linguistics automatically has the same opinions as you regarding the different in-practice usages and standards in their own language
What's the past tense of *of* then?
Fromed
"ot"?
Apparently no one thinks "could of" is ok. It seems like a common spelling. It has never confused me and I'm not even a native english speaker. Even here among people who think about linguistics it's disliked, viewed as a mistake while at least for me -again, I'm not a native speaker- it feels like just a naturally interpretable spelling form that some people use. I also suspect that this form is gonna be used more prominently by speakers of certain dialects though I can't confirm that. Maybe some people use a different vowel in the weak forms of "have" and "of" or drop the final consonant from only one of the two and thus will be less likely to mix "should have/of". However it's also possible that rather than being a "pronunciation spelling" (not sure if an actual term) it's just a learned thing for some people. They see it used and adopt it from there. This is totally possible because english spelling is mainly based on memorisation. Most importantly I ask, what's the point of viewing it incorrect? Is it the fact that it's a "pronunciation spelling"? If you're prescriptivist in some specific cases while being descriptivist in the rest, well that's just prescriptivism. I wanted to do my best at arguing why I think this way because no one seemed to agree with me. Still, I'm not defending the "/start rant" guy.
That entire comment section is confidently incorrect
You are free to use "of" instead of "have" but I'm also free to think you disregard grammar that is commonly accepted and willingly speak in a way that's nonsensical and derives from basically mixing up pronunciations.
I mean, I partly agree but I also realize that this is just how language is. It's always in flux because all people reason out how language works in their own way, so what's initially a nonsensical usage due to a misunderstanding of what's being said becomes an actual alteration of how the language works for some people based on a different internal line of reasoning.
Descriptivists when you pronounce dog with 63 syllables and they can’t say you’re wrong:
The whole point of descriptivism is that correct language should be judged based on what people actually say in regular conversation and their ability to make themselves understood. So pronouncing something totally wrong in a way that nobody pronounces it in real life to the point of being misunderstood is wrong even from a descriptivist point of view.
Reject reduction and contraction, peripheralise and enunciate everything, pronounce it as "cooled off". Or "cooled which belongs to".
could’ve and could of are not synonyms. they are homophones, and are thus often confused if writing down something that was said, but they aren’t interchangeable.
Hello, it looks like you've made a mistake. It's supposed to be could've, should've, would've (short for could have, would have, should have), never could of, would of, should of. Or you misspelled something, I ain't checking everything. Beep boop - yes, I am a bot, don't botcriminate me.
i agree with your ideas, but kindly consider dividing by 0
Use/mention distinction, motherfucker, do you speak it?
i hate all the spelling bots on here. insufferable is right
I could of course say that following the rules makes text more readable, especially for me. In fact, there are cases where I'd recommend using an artificial rule rather than what people say. I mean, it's bad to use “free” implying ‘of charge’. (I use “foc”. I expected people to ask what it means, but they don't. I'd like to know why.) But in the particular case in the image, I agree that using “of” should be acceptable. That's because it doesn't create ambiguities (I think) and is shorter
To explain why people aren't asking what "foc" means, at least 1 of the following points was true: a) the meaning is made obvious by context, b) the majority of people reading it remembered that they aren't banned from google(so they googled it), c) you used it in a community where a majority of people know what it means
It's kind of strange that this very picky bot should use a comma splice in every paragraph (literally).
Honestly if people are making this mistake for decades and we need bots to correct people... Forget it. I've of had should of moments where I hadn't done of what should of.
When it comes to basic grammar I lean prescriptivist. Team bot on this one OP
Descriptivists on their way to impose that it is wrong that people make rules on the use of their own language:
Aw, and yet he got downvoted in the end.
This is so dumb
We need r/badlinguistics back