Comment by PeterisP
3 years ago
Any people wanting to learn the language using these resources (e.g. learning more Scots from the Scots wikipedia) would mean that they learn the altered/false/different language instead of the actual language, and afterward that changes how the actual language is used in practice, propagating the misconceptions onwards and degrading the language.
In a similar way, if some people online are using they/their/they're interchangeably, and then other people (who are learning the language) learn that they are interchangeable and start using them this way, then English gets hurt by being altered in this undesired way.
Some changes to language are considered desirable (e.g. introduction of new terminology for new concepts, or restructuring either as a natural process or top-down reforms that makes it more clear and thus more useful for communication) and some are not (ones that increase confusion such as the they/their/they're example above), and the latter ones are considered to hurt the language.
> Some changes to language are considered desirable (e.g. introduction of new terminology for new concepts, or restructuring either as a natural process
The problem is that what you describe in your first paragraph:
> Any people wanting to learn the language using these resources (e.g. learning more Scots from the Scots wikipedia) would mean that they learn the altered/false/different language instead of the actual language, and afterward that changes how the actual language is used in practice
is just a description of how languages change as a natural process. It's not different in any way. Concluding that in this case it is "damage" and "bad" would require you to conclude that all natural language change is also "damage" and "bad", which is admittedly a popular viewpoint. But it's one you're trying to disavow.
The particular "changes" introduced by the teenager editing Scots wikipedia are very much unnatural, artificial change, and one that is done in a systematic way, "erasing" (by ignoring, simply due to the author not knowing the language) the actual Scots words and replacing them with calques from English.
If other people speaking Scots would start using them because they simply prefer to do so, I could consider that as part of natural change of language; however, if people who want to learn Scots are mislead and instead get taught examples from effectively another unrelated language ("NotScots"? "StupidScots"?) that are falsely labeled as being Scots, then that has nothing to do with natural language change and is pure damage.
> The particular "changes" introduced by the teenager editing Scots wikipedia are very much unnatural, artificial change, and one that is done in a systematic way, "erasing" (by ignoring, simply due to the author not knowing the language) the actual Scots words and replacing them with calques from English.
You say that like that isn't a ubiquitous process. Copying the usage of someone who was unfamiliar with some other usage is... almost the entirety of language change. The rest of it is copying the usage of someone who was being deliberately weird.
I wouldn't say that what happened at Scots Wikipedia is a "natural process". It's one single person lacking language knowledge being given a truly inordinate amount of influence.