Grammatical mistakes & Kalbouss

[William Derbyshire]

In a message dated 10/17/2011 4:59:03 P.M. Mountain Daylight Time,  
anne_mariedevlin at HOTMAIL.COM writes:

As a  linguist and someone working in the area of 
sociolinguistics/pragmatics, I  take offence at naming linguistic variation as 'atrocious grammar'.  
The  terms mentioned are variables.  
Let's please not get too defensive about this very interesting discussion. 
Prof.. Kalbouss merely commented on what Ms. Devlin calls variables 
and which he has heard in Ohio. To his ears the forms which he quoted 
sound terrible. Is there something wrong saying with that? 
I would think that a sociolinguist would find such comments of  interest
rather than to take offense to them, i.e. the reaction of native speakers 
to variants of his/her own language which sound uneducated, wrong, 
or whatever term one might wish to use.
I, for instance, find greatly amusing, a plural form of the pronoun "you" 
in common use in the western part of my home state Pennsylvania,  
namely in and around Pittsburgh. One hears "yuonse" ["you ones"], 
hardly an acceptable form in standard English. A local variant - fine 
and good, just like "ya'll" so common in the South.
One of my areas of specialization is South Slavic, and I could not 
begin to count the number of times that a speaker from one or 
another part of the Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian speaking area has 
asked me to speak in "their" language: it's "hleb"not "kruh", speak 
ekavski not (i)jekavski, etc., etc., because, apparently, one variant 
sounds atrocious to the ears of the other variant speaker (not to 
mention the political implications).
I also find it most peculiar to hear an educated Russian utter the 
imperative form "pojexaj" or the genitive plural "sosedov",  quite 
normal formations, but hardly acceptable in the literary language.
All I can say is "Vive la difference!!" but let's not forget that 
languages have literary norms, and deviations from a norm may 
strike other speakers as totally unacceptable.

William W. Derbyshire
Professor Emeritus - Rutgers  University
freelance translator - Slavic  languages


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