When does poor grammar become evolving language?
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Language is simply verbalizations of concepts, as long as the idea you are trying to relate is understandable, then it isn’t an issue. Most modern languages are called living languages, because they are ever evolving, new words are created almost daily, and then when they reach a certain amount of usage and a high enough rate of adoption by the majority of that languages speakers, they get added to the dictionary and become words.
Poor grammar is really a hold over from the past, when people were divided into castes, and it was easy to distinguish someone that was learned because they spoke “properly,” while the poor and uneducated spoke improperly. The concept is mired in all sorts of classism and racism, but there are many who are just pendants and want the language to be precise.
Now, to answer your question directly, poor grammar becomes proper grammar if enough people use it that way, it’s like the fact that most people use the word good, instead of fine, well, okay, etc… We all should know that good is not something you are, but something you do, however it’s been used “incorrectly” for so long that most people don’t notice it’s “misuse” these days.
Now I’ve studied English for decades, and as much as certain members of the lexicographical society think some things are immutable and cannot be changed by simple misuse, the reality is that is exactly what happens. As an example, look at the word “Irregardless” which etymologically is nonsense, but has now been added to the dictionary meaning the same thing as regardless, because that’s how people use it. Same thing with “literally” so many people use it to mean figuratively, they added that definition to the word a while ago.
With the rate of technological development, necessitating new words, and the every expanding globalization, adding words from other languages to some new super language, it’s safe to say that in a hundred years most of us would not be able to converse in the way the majority of people converse. The idioms would all be different, well maybe a few would remain, but there would be a lot of new ones that were far more popular at the time. Grammar will have changed by then as well lending itself to the most efficient way to express oneself.
There’s a theory that language will get to a point that it’s so complex and cumbersome, that people will just start using it without regard to grammar and “historical” usages of words, so the language will simplify, then begin its journey to becoming a more complex and nuanced language, much like American English split from British English a few hundred years ago. It was mixed with a lot of German and French influence, but rather simplistic, over the proceeding years it has become more complex.
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