[riverkid]

Originally Posted by 2006

riverkid
You implied that my calling the sentence "incorrect" is a matter of opinion (because maybe somewhere what I called "incorrect" is 'standard English'). So we both are expressing opinions about the English language.

Although the rules of a language do slowly change over time, there always are widely accepted rules as to what constitutes correct spelling, grammar, etc of the language. One cannot have a language with no rules, where nothing can be called "incorrect".

Of course there are rules; I dare say millions. imagine the countless nuances that we can express that are lost to ESLs.

Finally my comment on "language fact". If one is studying a language as a research project, one can say that the fact is that this variation of the language is spoken here and that variation is spoken there. (even so, there will be a lot more that is the same than is different)


So when one is teaching a language, one cannot teach that anything can be correct and that nothing is incorrect. What you call "standard" is correct for the language spoken in that particular place and is largely correct for other places too.
That's my opinion.

I never said "anything goes". I said that using "correct" is misleading, especially for ESLs. They constantly come here with questions relating specifically to these normal everyday uses by native speakers.


"The standard language embraces a range of styles, from formal through neutral to informal. A satisfactory grammar must describe them all. It is not that formal style keeps to the rules and informal style departs from them; rather, formal and informal styles have partially different rules."

The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language



It's just as easy and more accurate and especially less misleading for ESLs to describe language without loaded terms. Of course, this doesn't mean that we can't guide them to Standard uses for Standard situations, like tests, formal written papers, etc. but to deny them access to what educated speakers often use in casual speech risks "a danger that the student of English will not be taught how to speak in a normal informal way, but will sound stilted and unnatural, like an inexpert reader reading something out of a book". [CGEL]