I think it more helpful to recognize that some dialects of English are sufficiently different from the formal SAE register that teaching it requires teaching people basic language features and areas of grammar that normally only have to be taught to foreign language speakers. (i.e. No one has to explain to kids growing up around English that it is SVO order. They get that all on their own.)

If we recognize that we have to teach written English like a foreign language to some people (very specifically for Deaf people it will always be a foreign language) then perhaps we can work better at getting them to be able to produce it when the audience deems it appropriate.

English was actually degrading before the Norse and Norman invaders...

This is a matter of orthography, not grammar.

Orthography has good rules to follow, tighter than grammatical objections. But at the same time, the spelling of "principle" vs "principal" is entirely arbitrary, and the assignment of denotation is entirely arbitrary. And thus there is no good "rule" between them, except convention.

As per the sibling post, and quoting from a cousin post of mine:

It's called Negative Agreement.

"I don't have any books" is ok, but "*I have any books" is wrong.

"I didn't go anywhere" is ok, but "*I went anywhere" is wrong.

Replacing "any" with "no" to form Negative Agreement doesn't actually change the state of the negation. It just changes the term used to construct Negative Agreement.

It's called Negative Agreement.

"I don't have any books" is ok, but "*I have any books" is wrong.

"I didn't go anywhere" is ok, but "*I went anywhere" is wrong.

Replacing "any" with "no" to form Negative Agreement doesn't actually change the state of the negation. It just changes the term used to construct Negative Agreement.

Indeed! And agreed!

AH YES! The past perfect form... the form that literally says "this happened, but is over now"

"When I was fooled, it was because I wasn't careful enough."

There's a different word between "were" and "was" in the conditionals, and so humans want and desire to create a reason for why they are different. Sometimes, they're just two different ways of saying something.

Indeed, the situation is more nuanced than one pithy little quote can do justice to. It's just a phrase that linguists tend to use, because they are confronted almost constantly by people insisting that some language is just a dialect or some dialect is actually a language. Often, this is for political reasons (which I shortened to reinforcing the "us" vs "them" cultural difference.). I am aware that Moldova has since changed their official language to Romanian, not Moldovan, so there's some recognition coming to the area in the last 10 years since I studied linguistics in college...

But yes, everything you posted here is awesome, thank you for expanding upon my original post.

"mutually intelligible" is unfortunately a continuum, rather than a binary quality. It stands though that Scandinavian languages are closer to each other than some Spanishs or Arabics.

I wouldn't because I don't know "redneck" dialect well enough. But if two people speaking a common dialect wish to celebrate a contract in a dialect other than the formal register of the country in which they live, then I say, go for it!

Contracts, resumes, etc, are all written in a certain register (smaller than a dialect) because that is the appropriate register for the audience. However, would you walk into an urban depressed neighborhood and go around using the Received Pronunciation register? No, it's not appropriate, because of audience mismatch.

But punishing a group of people just because the formal register of power in their country is significantly more different from that spoken by a privileged class that need not learn the hojillion needling rules... that's not right.

After I learned German, "wherefore" stopped confusing me. "dagegen" "darüber" "danaben" all of them composed of "there" and a preposition. The corresponding question words for them are "wogegen" "worüber" "woneben". Or "where-preposition". And where is used even when the preposition doesn't refer to a location, but an idea. (persons are composed of "preposition who"). "Wofür hast du das gemacht?" (For what purpose did you do that?)

Knowing how German works yields great insight into the grammatical usage of the English used by Shakespeare. Because English has been traveling towards a "creole-like" grammar for a very long time... i.e. before the norman invaders, and before the norse invaders.

Actually, watching Beowulf (the "horrible" CGI one, which for amateur linguists wasn't horrible at all, because OMG OLD ENGLISH THIS IS AWESOME!), I was kind of actually able to understand Grendel... or more accurately, with subtitles I could pick out words whose meaning I could accurately place in them.

Right, but I didn't SELL him the illegal property, I just CONVEYED it to him without monetary compensation.

I'm read under the law, trust me, it's exactly what happens when you take "agreed-on standards and meanings" to the programmer level of pedantry.

Again, if you write a boilerplate contract where the other party is only allowed to take it or leave it, not negotiate terms, then the courts will read everything against you if it allows to be read that way.

If you were writing a contract, and knew that an ambiguity were going to be resolved against you, how would YOU write a contract?

"Fuck him, and the horse in on which he rode."

You know, just because it's hilarious to correct this sort of thing in this thread... ;)

And in AAVE "he be workin'" and "he workin'" have very different verb moods.

But everyone seems to insist that it's lazy English... so...

And no "*If I was rich..." doesn't make any sense when you allow for use of subjunctives. It's a wrong mood verb stuck into a sentence. It's like saying "I were a good girl!" instead of "I was a good girl!"

The use of "was" as in past tense and "was" as in the subjunctive are actually in mutually exclusive use. That's why English even bothered to lose the subjunctive in the first place.

Note also, if you take the subjective, "I think that he were walking to the store" is the proper way to say it. Because "think that" means it's the opinion of the speaker, and thus not guaranteed fact, thus subjunctive usage. c.f. French subjunctive use.