Most modern linguists consider “should have” to be a completely valid variation of should’ve / should have.
Yes, it does contradict what your english teachers in school taught you, and according to that world view “if we don’t have those rules then we wouldn’t be able to understand each other”. But the hundreds to thousands of languages where those rules don’t even exist and people understand missing/“incorrect” meaning from context, as well as the fact that you can proudly stand on your “i know what’s right” soapbox and say that “should of” is wrong, only serve to prove that these rules aren’t actually rules or part of the english language and are more like the linguistic equivalent of fashion.
Again, you understood exactly the meaning OP meant, enough that you could confidently barge in and tell them they’re “wrong”, and tell them what they should have used instead to fit your fashion rules.
Basically, absolutely nobody saw this meme, saw “should have” instead of “should have”, and thought “hmm, i don’t know what’s supposed to be being said in this case.” You dislike “should have” because you were told you were supposed to, and that if you didn’t stick to these rules nobody would respect you or understand what you’re saying. Now, you do the same thing and lose respect for people who didn’t (while also understanding what they are saying exactly). That has nothing to do with the language, and is, again, more akin to “you wore white after labor day” or “you wore socks with sandals” or whatever other fashion faux pas you committed — none of which are related to actual linguistics or the natural way through which languages evolve (or whether or not your outfit looks good on you on any given day)
To understand it, and how and why it evolves over time, just like any other study. There’s no such thing as prescriptivist physics, or math, or biology, or etc etc. We don’t get to tell the world how it works, and pretty much no science is focused on that assumption other than historical linguistics.
we could all just speak however we want as long as we understood
We do speak however we want, and we do understand, because we pick up new trends in language on an unconscious level and this is the way languages have always worked and evolved.
then we end up with an uncountable number of dialects and creoles
We’ve already ended up there, and that’s nothing new. Sure, new languages/dialects/creoles creep into the world, but that’s how all languages evolve — instead, the lines between “what’s a language”, “what’s a dialect”, and “what’s a creole” get grayed and more blurry and fuzzy.
The thing is, humans developed language a very very long time ago, and those languages evolve and split off due to large-scale trends in the lives of humans speaking those languages, for a multitude of reasons that interact and make the process essentially random.
Here’s one way to look at it: it’s the opposite of the “jurassic park” problem, instead of “your scientists were preoccupied with whether or not they could, they never stopped to ask whether they should”, linguists spent so much time arguing over prescriptivist/descriptivist arguments, and never asked whether prescriptivism actually can control the evolution of a language.
Anybody, even some random teen in some random neighborhood in any english speaking country, can come up with a new word, and it can catch on and eventually become a new accepted and widely-used word. That’s because it’s a “you can use this if you want” situation, whereas the prescriptivist version is “if you use ___ you are wrong, if you want to be right use ___ only”.
It should be obvious why telling someone they can do something is an easier argument than that they can’t, and this is why prescriptivism has failed. especially because, again, nobody saw “should of” in this post and thought “oh god i don’t know what this is supposed to mean”; instead people either understood and said nothing, or they understood but jumped in to tell people they’re wrong for making them understand in a way that contradicts what their own english teachers in school said they SHOULD be able to understand.
Speed limits are a not a good analogy to language rules, partly because they are generally intentionally designed rather than a product of an evolutionary pattern, partly because there is a clear and accepted authority that sets and enforces them with actual penalty, and partly because the consequences for not having them are often deadly.
By contrast, there is no clear authority that “owns” a language and can enforce it’s rules. Some government or academic body might in some cases declare that it has that authority, but they don’t really have any ability to set more than guidelines for how people working for them or producing documents on their behalf must write. Unlike speed limits, which simply would stop existing in a meaningful sense if governments stopped existing, languages existed before any such “authorities” did and would continue to exist if those organizations ceased. As such, I’d argue that linguistic rules aren’t really rules at all in the normal sense, there’s no-one with actual accepted authority to create, repeal, impose or enforce them, they’re just guidelines, loose ones at that, that one should follow if one’s intent is to be understood by someone else using the same or sufficiently similar guidelines. If you understand what someone is saying, which in cases like “should of”, people calling it against the rules clearly do, then they have succeeded in that goal, so it cannot really be a failure at being literate.
I reject any notion that this will eventually overcomplicate language to the point of it being too difficult to learn or use, because ultimately, people are not born knowing it, they must all learn, so any language too complex to learn wont be learned and therefore won’t be used, and similarly, any language too complicated and unclear to be used to communicate, can’t be used, and so won’t be. The complexity of language is inherently self-limiting at a level that prevents it from becoming useless.
Or for a TLDR: we don’t have to change the rules to accommodate people breaking them, because there aren’t really any rules at all.
Most modern linguists wouldn’t take a position on this at all, and would tell you that you’re conflating Language and spelling. Most linguists don’t study writing systems, because they are a different thing from Language. Language is an evolving system that is always changing, and people develop the ability just by being around other people as they grow up, whether someone is teaching it to them or not. It just happens naturally. Reading/writing is more formalized, has to be taught, and many people in the world never master it. Many languages don’t even have an official written form. It’s not the same sort of thing.
Most modern linguists consider “should have” to be a completely valid variation of should’ve / should have.
Yes, it does contradict what your english teachers in school taught you, and according to that world view “if we don’t have those rules then we wouldn’t be able to understand each other”. But the hundreds to thousands of languages where those rules don’t even exist and people understand missing/“incorrect” meaning from context, as well as the fact that you can proudly stand on your “i know what’s right” soapbox and say that “should of” is wrong, only serve to prove that these rules aren’t actually rules or part of the english language and are more like the linguistic equivalent of fashion.
Again, you understood exactly the meaning OP meant, enough that you could confidently barge in and tell them they’re “wrong”, and tell them what they should have used instead to fit your fashion rules.
Basically, absolutely nobody saw this meme, saw “should have” instead of “should have”, and thought “hmm, i don’t know what’s supposed to be being said in this case.” You dislike “should have” because you were told you were supposed to, and that if you didn’t stick to these rules nobody would respect you or understand what you’re saying. Now, you do the same thing and lose respect for people who didn’t (while also understanding what they are saying exactly). That has nothing to do with the language, and is, again, more akin to “you wore white after labor day” or “you wore socks with sandals” or whatever other fashion faux pas you committed — none of which are related to actual linguistics or the natural way through which languages evolve (or whether or not your outfit looks good on you on any given day)
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To understand it, and how and why it evolves over time, just like any other study. There’s no such thing as prescriptivist physics, or math, or biology, or etc etc. We don’t get to tell the world how it works, and pretty much no science is focused on that assumption other than historical linguistics.
We do speak however we want, and we do understand, because we pick up new trends in language on an unconscious level and this is the way languages have always worked and evolved.
We’ve already ended up there, and that’s nothing new. Sure, new languages/dialects/creoles creep into the world, but that’s how all languages evolve — instead, the lines between “what’s a language”, “what’s a dialect”, and “what’s a creole” get grayed and more blurry and fuzzy.
The thing is, humans developed language a very very long time ago, and those languages evolve and split off due to large-scale trends in the lives of humans speaking those languages, for a multitude of reasons that interact and make the process essentially random.
Here’s one way to look at it: it’s the opposite of the “jurassic park” problem, instead of “your scientists were preoccupied with whether or not they could, they never stopped to ask whether they should”, linguists spent so much time arguing over prescriptivist/descriptivist arguments, and never asked whether prescriptivism actually can control the evolution of a language.
Anybody, even some random teen in some random neighborhood in any english speaking country, can come up with a new word, and it can catch on and eventually become a new accepted and widely-used word. That’s because it’s a “you can use this if you want” situation, whereas the prescriptivist version is “if you use ___ you are wrong, if you want to be right use ___ only”.
It should be obvious why telling someone they can do something is an easier argument than that they can’t, and this is why prescriptivism has failed. especially because, again, nobody saw “should of” in this post and thought “oh god i don’t know what this is supposed to mean”; instead people either understood and said nothing, or they understood but jumped in to tell people they’re wrong for making them understand in a way that contradicts what their own english teachers in school said they SHOULD be able to understand.
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I mean, we kinda already do speak however we want, people saying such speaking breaks the rules doesn’t really stop people from doing it anyway
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Speed limits are a not a good analogy to language rules, partly because they are generally intentionally designed rather than a product of an evolutionary pattern, partly because there is a clear and accepted authority that sets and enforces them with actual penalty, and partly because the consequences for not having them are often deadly.
By contrast, there is no clear authority that “owns” a language and can enforce it’s rules. Some government or academic body might in some cases declare that it has that authority, but they don’t really have any ability to set more than guidelines for how people working for them or producing documents on their behalf must write. Unlike speed limits, which simply would stop existing in a meaningful sense if governments stopped existing, languages existed before any such “authorities” did and would continue to exist if those organizations ceased. As such, I’d argue that linguistic rules aren’t really rules at all in the normal sense, there’s no-one with actual accepted authority to create, repeal, impose or enforce them, they’re just guidelines, loose ones at that, that one should follow if one’s intent is to be understood by someone else using the same or sufficiently similar guidelines. If you understand what someone is saying, which in cases like “should of”, people calling it against the rules clearly do, then they have succeeded in that goal, so it cannot really be a failure at being literate.
I reject any notion that this will eventually overcomplicate language to the point of it being too difficult to learn or use, because ultimately, people are not born knowing it, they must all learn, so any language too complex to learn wont be learned and therefore won’t be used, and similarly, any language too complicated and unclear to be used to communicate, can’t be used, and so won’t be. The complexity of language is inherently self-limiting at a level that prevents it from becoming useless.
Or for a TLDR: we don’t have to change the rules to accommodate people breaking them, because there aren’t really any rules at all.
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Me, who’s not a native english speaker, did have exactly that problem.
So no, not everybody knows what OP intended to say.
Most modern linguists wouldn’t take a position on this at all, and would tell you that you’re conflating Language and spelling. Most linguists don’t study writing systems, because they are a different thing from Language. Language is an evolving system that is always changing, and people develop the ability just by being around other people as they grow up, whether someone is teaching it to them or not. It just happens naturally. Reading/writing is more formalized, has to be taught, and many people in the world never master it. Many languages don’t even have an official written form. It’s not the same sort of thing.