this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2023
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Hate to be that guy, but it's "Should've" and not "Should of".
Good meme btw
Most modern linguists consider “should have” to be a completely valid variation of should’ve / should have.
Yes, it does contradict what your english teachers in school taught you, and according to that world view “if we don’t have those rules then we wouldn’t be able to understand each other”. But the hundreds to thousands of languages where those rules don’t even exist and people understand missing/“incorrect” meaning from context, as well as the fact that you can proudly stand on your “i know what’s right” soapbox and say that “should of” is wrong, only serve to prove that these rules aren’t actually rules or part of the english language and are more like the linguistic equivalent of fashion.
Again, you understood exactly the meaning OP meant, enough that you could confidently barge in and tell them they’re “wrong”, and tell them what they should have used instead to fit your fashion rules.
Basically, absolutely nobody saw this meme, saw “should have” instead of “should have”, and thought “hmm, i don’t know what’s supposed to be being said in this case.” You dislike “should have” because you were told you were supposed to, and that if you didn’t stick to these rules nobody would respect you or understand what you’re saying. Now, you do the same thing and lose respect for people who didn’t (while also understanding what they are saying exactly). That has nothing to do with the language, and is, again, more akin to “you wore white after labor day” or “you wore socks with sandals” or whatever other fashion faux pas you committed — none of which are related to actual linguistics or the natural way through which languages evolve (or whether or not your outfit looks good on you on any given day)
Your phone auto correct has a preference as well it seems.
I mean sure, linguistic descriptivism is relevant for the evolution of language. However, why study language at all if that's the sum-total of your perspective on language? We could all just speak however we want as long as we are understood... except then we end up with an uncountable number of dialects and creoles a la mainland china. This is also how you end up with linguistic rules that are basically impossible to teach I suspect.
Just my 2 cents.
I mean, we kinda already do speak however we want, people saying such speaking breaks the rules doesn't really stop people from doing it anyway
Speaking is sort of a different animal. "Should of" is a malapropism that is a homophone for "should've". There is no transformation of language from that, it's just an error. If you accept an alternate written version though, you're creating an alternate conjugation for the conditional perfect tense. There's no reason for this at all: it's accommodating failings of literacy by adding complexity to language rules for one, and creating a new (and faulty) evolution point for two.
It's like saying "oh, the speed limit is 55, but everyone drives 60, so let's make the law so the police can't ticket you unless you go over 60 since 55 or 60 is correct". What does it mean when you see a sign that says 25 now? You can accept that people break the rules, but that doesn't mean we should change the rules to describe the situation in every circumstance.
Speed limits are a not a good analogy to language rules, partly because they are generally intentionally designed rather than a product of an evolutionary pattern, partly because there is a clear and accepted authority that sets and enforces them with actual penalty, and partly because the consequences for not having them are often deadly.
By contrast, there is no clear authority that "owns" a language and can enforce it's rules. Some government or academic body might in some cases declare that it has that authority, but they don't really have any ability to set more than guidelines for how people working for them or producing documents on their behalf must write. Unlike speed limits, which simply would stop existing in a meaningful sense if governments stopped existing, languages existed before any such "authorities" did and would continue to exist if those organizations ceased. As such, I'd argue that linguistic rules aren't really rules at all in the normal sense, there's no-one with actual accepted authority to create, repeal, impose or enforce them, they're just guidelines, loose ones at that, that one should follow if one's intent is to be understood by someone else using the same or sufficiently similar guidelines. If you understand what someone is saying, which in cases like "should of", people calling it against the rules clearly do, then they have succeeded in that goal, so it cannot really be a failure at being literate.
I reject any notion that this will eventually overcomplicate language to the point of it being too difficult to learn or use, because ultimately, people are not born knowing it, they must all learn, so any language too complex to learn wont be learned and therefore won't be used, and similarly, any language too complicated and unclear to be used to communicate, can't be used, and so won't be. The complexity of language is inherently self-limiting at a level that prevents it from becoming useless.
Or for a TLDR: we don't have to change the rules to accommodate people breaking them, because there aren't really any rules at all.
Alrighty so... I think you're full of shit.
What you say is true for passed down spoken language because errors like the ones we are talking about are transparent. Once you can write it down, the rules are evident and persistent. Nobody has to own them to say that as we transcribe language X these are the rules for conjugation, pluralization, etc. you can break them if you want, but as you say nobody owns the language: you need not be accommodated in your mistakes. Spoken language can change and the rules can follow, but being shit at writing (even if lots of people have the same problem) isn't something written language must accommodate.