Comment by janalsncm
6 months ago
I think you meant to criticize “its just an unnecessary exception” and were autocorrected.
Reading it without an apostrophe it looks unusual but the meaning is still very clear.
Further, there are many words like “don’t” and “doesn’t” and can’t” where the apostrophe doesn’t even provide any disambiguating value.
There is "wont" and "cant" but theyre rather rare nowadays. Probably others too, but Im (...im?) not able to remember any easily.
The closest I can think of thats maybe confusing is plurals vs possessive... but thats usually pretty clear from context, and when both are combined its often handled specially and thats weird but not usually confusing - English often has other in-sentence (and in-context) markers for plurality. You can of course construct ambiguous sentences, but thats true of many things that are accepted as "legal English".
It would be a shame to lose y'all'd've though.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wont
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cant
No, I’m just bad at spelling poorly. What’s wrong with following the rules of a language? If I don’t use Rust properly, it won’t compile. Why make exceptions for human language?
Human languages have less "rules" and more "patterns that improve communication", and they constantly change. And even languages with like legitimate rules-bodies overseeing it still see variation in normal use.
Prescriptivism is an option of course, but it's inherently futile to some degree. Unleſſ you intend to maintain thiſ for all time, and even then your choice of what to canonicalize iſ pretty arbitrary outside of conlangſ (ſo maybe you have a chance with Eſperanto)