this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2025
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Language is indeed for communication, which is why both ways of saying it work...
Except one way is better, and that's the way that the person you're speaking to understands best.
If I say Barcelona with a lisp, or without, 99.9999% of people that know what Barcelona is will understand me, you're being unnecessarily pedantic. Anyone who seeks to control language should talk to a linguist. Language isn't prescriptivist as much as non linguists like to think so. It is fluid and ever changing. People will choose how they want to speak and it will either work or it won't. If people understand what someone is saying, nothing else matters as much as many like to think.
Yes, Barcelona is a place that people have heard enough of the two versions to know the "strange" version that isn't natural to their language. But, what about Zaragoza? I doubt most English speakers would understand what you meant if you dropped the Castillian version of that into a sentence when speaking English.
Of course not, that's why the names of places in English don't sound like the names used locally. If it were prescriptivist there would be no Munich, only Munchen. No Prague only Praha, no Geneva, only Genève. Only someone who doesn't understand how languages work would think that it's appropriate to say "Barcelona" with a "th" sound when speaking English.
You said "of course not" and then ended with a prescriptivist point of view, you're lost mate.
Edit: I think you need to read a bit more about the difference between prescriptivism and descriptivism and maybe read something by a linguist, or watch one of their YouTube channels. Just because you're rejecting one prescriptivist point of view, if you take up another prescriptivist point of view in counter, it's still prescriptivist. The point is, enforcing language in any direction is a pointless task, language will never do what you want it to do, all you're doing by trying, is making sure everyone is annoyed with you.
I think you need to do some more research. Nothing I said was prescriptivist.
Saying people should say things a specific way is prescriptivist. Descriptivist is, language gets defined by its users rather than rules. As soon as you set a rule, you're a prescriptivist.
Yes, and saying people should say things so that other people understand them isn't. I'm saying people should say thing so that other people understand them.