Language purism may or may not be an actual thing, but it’s the best two-word description of my opinions on language I could find.
What do I mean by language purism? Basically, I do not see any reason to adapt words, spell them differently (except for comedic/pun purposes) or, generally, let language “evolve” out of laziness. Excusing one’s linguistic laziness as “evolution of language” is just stupid (and lazy). The problem is: I am one person and language is not a matter of objectivity. It is intersubjective. If the group decides to be lazy and drop “two” and “too”, only to use “to” there isn’t a way I can communicate the subtlety of “too” through “too” itself any longer. If “too” becomes useless, I will then drop it from my vocabulary, and so the process continues.
Sticking “to” my example (pun very intentional), I cannot see a reality where merging “to”, “too” and “two” into one form makes life any easier for anyone. It requires inference at best and is downright ambiguous at worst. The problem lies herein. Ambiguity is never good when communicating. The point of language is to be specific. If there were no need for specificity, hand signals would have sufficed. Rule setting, telling stories etc. are examples where (unintentional) ambiguity is best avoided. However, language also allows us to create intersubjective abstractions such as a “company” that allow us to collaborate more fruitfully. Even when creating the abstract via language, specificity is required because ultimately, a noun, to use “company” as an example, is still governed by rules. A company is not a car. This rule is tacit, but it is nonetheless a rule that exists. By the way, I’m not saying that every noun (concrete or abstract) can be described through negative rules, like the example I gave of a rule above.
Grammar is also an important part of language. Without grammar a language would be a pile of car parts instead of a car. Our intuition of language and therefore grammatical rules is guilty of making us suspect that grammar is unnecessary and pointlessly tedious. That is both praise and criticism to our intuition. It’s amazing that we never have to pick up a textbook to talk with our parents, but this does not mean that grammar is not important. The rules still exist, whether you learnt them from a textbook or pure intuition. Ambiguity occurs when these rules are broken, just like with words. That doesn’t mean you have to be a grammar nazi. Everyone makes mistakes, but you should try to minimise grammatical errors in your own speaking and writing as much as possible to avoid ambiguity. I know I try my best, but please correct if I’m wrong. It’s likely I’ve made the same mistakes dozens of times throughout my posts, because I’ve never learnt the correct formulation of a certain grammatical structure.
If you think something sounds good, say it “sounds good”. “Sounds good” can be translated as “without thinking too much about it, my immediate reaction is that it’s good”. I must elucidate because, while I strive to eliminate ambiguity, I do not strive to eliminate the flow and figurative speech such as the phrase “sounds good”. A single sound only enters your mind’s sphere of experience for a fraction of a second before either being lost forever or becoming a memory. There is no space in which to delve deeper into the sound, much like when you respond “sounds good”, there is no real time to give it thought before constructing a response. Perhaps that example is stretching a connection between the phrase and it’s literal meaning, however it enables one to see that even though I’m not talking about the literal sound of someone’s voice, the underlying meaning is not ambiguous due to an accepted shortcut.
Language is the basis for everything we do as human beings. We think in language. You might as well get better at stamping out ambiguity when you use language because it literally controls what you say, think and do. Not to mention the unfortunate confusion you may cause others when speaking ambiguously.
