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Muscalp t1_jabk4q0 wrote

Reply to comment by The_Star_Bringer_527 in Humen is a more logical plural to human than humans. It’s men and women, not mans and womans. by frenglish_man

It is language changing. They‘re and there sound so similar people start confusing the two so often they become interchangable. Eventually it will become one word. Just like people mixed humain and man and made human. Being stingy about grammar will not stop that development. All change in language started with a grammatical or semantic error.

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The_Star_Bringer_527 t1_jabqeww wrote

But it's not going to work in the end

I get your point about how language changes through misuse,yes

But this is just not one of those. Many reasons contribute to this

Most notably the fact that the definitions are very well cemented and established. Also for the fact that a lot of confusion can occur in certain scenarios

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Muscalp t1_jabume0 wrote

I don‘t think there is much potential for confusion. The fact that you can easily spot wrong usage of the words even if they‘re used explicitely against definition proves that they can be distinguished based on context alone. Although I‘d be happy to see a scenario where confusion arises.

You are right though that established definitions and rules might influence the Development. Back when people had no school and no one to tell them how language was supposed to work they probably were way more accepting of other ways to use language. On the other hand, in my mother language I saw wrong grammar being established as the Norm within my lifetime (which is not much) and the teaching changing accordingly. So I‘m not convinced that established rules really have any control.

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The_Star_Bringer_527 t1_jabyfjl wrote

If you spot it as wrong,then it's not going to adapt

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Muscalp t1_jabzcnv wrote

Yet people are using it wrong and don‘t care if it‘s wrong. Here the languages could diverge or the majority overrides the minority.

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The_Star_Bringer_527 t1_jaclrk0 wrote

People do care,just not the ones doing it wrong

After all we're still having this discussion

Thus we care and that's what makes language and it's faults beautiful

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