Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

The Dutch may have some "rights" to adapt English. They're #1 in non-native English proficiency for 5 years in a row and surpassed Canada (considered native speakers) on overall English proficiency some years ago.

One point of debate is that English in the Netherlands has become mostly American English over the last decades due to media influence. While originally "school English" in the Netherlands was British English.



I actually go full-descriptivist on this and it erases all the posturing. If you're a speaker of English, native or otherwise, and you say or write something purposefully and don't consider it a mistake then it's correct.

Wether other people will join you in your new usage is yet undetermined but also doesn't really matter. AAVE is the perfect example of this happening large scale in the real world.


There are multiple ways to define “correct”. I tend to favor: having the desired effect. This results in a “correct” that is highly flexible, but doesn’t label anything that one happens to choose as “correct”.


"Wether"—I see what you did there...


> Canada (considered native speakers)

A quarter of the population of Canada is in Quebec where the only official language is French and most people would not be considered native English speakers.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: