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Comment by jmull | Hacker News Reader

If you really like nitpicks: you can also just say irregardless.

https://www.npr.org/2020/07/07/887649010/regardless-of-what-...

A dictionary lists all the words people use. It does not curate the words people should use. Therefore, a words presence in a dictionary is not proof of anything other than the word has been used before.

Whether people “should” use a particular word is your subjective aesthetic judgment.

The purpose of language is to communicate. Adding words which mean exactly the same thing as existing (shorter) words consumes cognitive resources without enhancing the language's ability to communicate. Therefore, objectively, people shouldn't use them.

You use hard words to say simple thing. This cost a lot of mind power. Why?

"Sometimes words, you no need use but need need for talk talk."

There are prescriptive and descriptive schools of linguistics, with one trying to gently nudge/direct/drive/correct the use of a language, while the other concentrates on documenting it as it happens in the wild.

> There are prescriptive and descriptive schools of linguistics

That’s not true. There are no “prescriptivists” whatsoever in the modern science of linguistics.

Interesting to hear! What happened to those guys?

What guys? Did they ever exist? Can you name a prominent “prescriptivist linguist”?

I’m pretty sure there was never a “prescriptivist school” of linguistics, or if there was it was never mainstream. There have been prescriptive grammarians of course but AFAIK they never called themselves “linguists”.

This is definitely my ignorance showing, so you'll have to bear with me, but what is the difference between grammarian and linguist?

I did find a linguistics course note which does seem to indicate that such a debate existed, even if in the past: https://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/ling001/prescription.html

I have no idea what your point is here. Which, I guess, proves mine.

So you’re categorically against the existence of synonyms?

There are very few true synonyms. Most have some cases where you'd want to use one or the other.

One might say such word choices are ungood.

Is it subjective in this case? There is a logic to how this word is constructed: regard-less means without regard. Irregardless violates that logic: ir-regard-less, not without regard?

It’s true that you can’t logically predict the meaning of “irregardless” from its smaller components.

However, that’s true of virtually all words. Ones where the etymology makes the meaning obvious are the exception.

Human languages aren’t math or programming languages; you can’t apply the same kind of logic to them.

Meh, you can say whatever the hell you want.

If English actually had language police, I'd press charges against everyone who enters a conversation with "I mean, ..." or "So, ...". [0]

But that's only in my little fantasy world :) In the real world, there's no agreed-upon arbiter of "acceptable" English.

[0] And the "rule" about omitting final punctuation, in sentences that end with a quote, is stupid and I won't write that way. Now get off my lawn!!!

> If English actually had language police, I'd press charges against everyone who enters a conversation with "I mean, ..." or "So, ..."

What about starting a conversation with "Meh" ?

> What about starting a conversation with "Meh" ?

Oh dear.

> you can also just say irregardless.[1]

Please stop using that word.

[1] https://www.etymonline.com/word/irregardless

Notice that while “etymonline” may not like it, serious dictionaries like OED give its meaning without any value judgments.

Because scientists who study language seriously understand that trying to stem the tide of random language change is futile and pointless.

Lexicographers are neither linguists nor philologists, and any among the latter two worth their salt will tell you that "irregardless" is an erroneous and contradictory word, and further point out that whomever the neologist was that originally coined it made the mistake of double negative, such that "irregardless" must mean "with regard" as opposed to "regardless," and, as such, is superfluous.

If enough people use a word, it’s a word. Many words were formed as mistakes, “apron” and “tornado” for example.

Dictionaries follow how people are actually speaking, not the other way around.

> If enough people use a word, it’s a word.

Whether or not it is a word is not at issue. Any group of letters forms a word. "Hsyxff" is a word I just made up. The point is "irregardless" is an incorrect word, and no matter how many say wrong is right, it can never change the fact that wrong is still wrong.

> Many words were formed as mistakes, “apron” and “tornado” for example.

These words are not self-contradictory, nor were they formed "as mistakes."

> Dictionaries follow how people are actually speaking, not the other way around.

Dictionaries do not specify which words are spoken, they merely list words in alphabetical order along with their definitions. Dictionaries contain many words that are no longer spoken, such as overmorrow, lunting and groak, counter-examples that prove your assertion wrong.

In order for something to be recognized as a word, it needs to have meaning and be understood by more than 1 person. For brevity's sake, when I said "it's a word", I really meant "it's a word that's used and recognized by a large subset of people, large enough that lexicographers at dictionaries have taken notice".

"Irregardless" is not incorrect if enough people start using it that way. That's simply how languages work. You can have an opinion on specific words, but you cannot -assert- that using them is "incorrect". It's your opinion, not fact. Everyone also understands people when they use irregardless.

"These words are not self-contradictory, nor were they formed "as mistakes.""

Apron was originally "napron". It formed this spelling from people misunderstanding "a napron" as "an apron". Tornado should be tronado, because it comes from spanish tronada. Regardless (or irregardless? :)), the English language has many, many such words. My point is English already has so many words that are "mistakes", so arguing about "irregardless" doesn't make sense. No language used by humans is without illogical things.

"[Dictionaries] merely list words in alphabetical order along with their definitions"

Yes. They have criteria for when a -new- word becomes used enough that it enters the public lexicon, or an existing word gains a new usage. Like "literally" and "irregardless". You can't say it's wrong anymore when enough people are using it that way.

You are simply wrong, at least about linguists.

You are wrong on both accounts.

Please cite any mainstream linguist who agrees with your take.

   When a word is nonstandard it means it is “not conforming in pronunciation, grammatical construction, idiom, or word choice to the usage generally characteristic of educated native speakers of a language."[0]

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/irregardless

You proved my point. That says it doesn’t correspond to the usage of a particular social group (educated people), which is a scientific statement. It doesn’t say it’s “wrong”, which is a value judgment.

Obviously, linguists don’t dispute the existence of more or less prestigious varieties of languages.

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