When does poor grammar become evolving language?
In: 1546
It depends on the language. It’s basically what others have already said, but, since you didn’t specify a language, I wanted to add that English scholars tend to be more descriptivist, so English evolves fast, as grammatical “errors” become accepted. Descriptivism roughly means the standard for the language readily accommodates the way speakers form the language. For instance, the philosophy of many dictionary companies in English is to *describe* the meaning of words as they’re used, not to ascribe meaning to them. So, what is considered the English *language* evolves fast.
Some other languages, like my native Spanish, have a more prescriptive nature. We have what are called “academies of the language,” which are basically offshoots in almost every Spanish speaking country of the one and only Spanish Royal Academy in Spain. They all *prescribe* or dictate speakers how to speak the language. Actually, the motto of the Royal Academy is to “purify, fix, and dignify” the whole of the Spanish language. So, the standard for Spanish doesn’t really accommodate for *peoplespeak*. Ours is a very slowly evolving language by design, with the elites fixed in their purpose that all Spanish speakers be able to read Cervantes in its original form. That would be like demanding all English speakers abide by Shakespearean English as the standard.
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