Poll: Have I been a jerk?

[wottabout]

"I don't know anything" isn't more correct or logical than "I don't know nothing". Someone just decided one day that people shouldn't use double negatives in English. The first thing they hammer home in university linguistics is that you're not better than anyone for obsessively adhering to the rules of standard grammar. You're just limiting yourself and being a classist tool.

I was just about to say this. In fact, double negatives were commonly used in earlier forms of English to create a more intense negative. Many of our language rules are arbitrary and are not actually followed by native speakers of English. There can be negative consequences for using non-Standard English in certain situations (writing an essay, giving a lecture, going to a job interview, etc.), but generally grammar doesn't matter as long as it can be easily understood.

And I don't know about correcting adults, but I have read that correcting children rarely causes a change in their speech patterns. (For those who love sources, this was in Language Files: Materials for an Introduction to Language and Linguistics, 11th Edition, pages 314&318.) I imagine that adults are better at consciously changing their speech, but for the most part people seem to unconsciously pick up their speech from whatever they hear around them. OP, if you really want to change your mother's speech it might be better to just speak "correctly" to her as often as possible so that she might pick up the habit as well.

 

[spartan231490]

Yeah, you're kind of a jerk. Correcting grammar in writing is one thing, in speech it's much more obnoxious and jerk-ish to constantly correct people

 

[Cazza]

In private no. In public yes. If you're doing it all the time you will be annoying. If you're correcting things when you're having an argument then you are. It means you don't have a good counter point and you're being very low.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Yes, yes you are. Especially since it's to your own mother. I get if you legitimately didn't understand what they were saying and are asking for clarification but correcting speech just for the fuck of it is simply dickish. It's not like she's having a job interview, she's having a casual conversation with her son.

Besides, your mom has made it pretty clear that she doesn't like what you're doing. Doing it just reinforces the fact that you aren't very nice.

 

[Dimitriov]

I can't believe all the people here who said "yes."

If your own mother is going around making herself look like a retard, then you certainly owe it to her to correct her whether she likes it or not.

I correct my mother's grammar and pronunciation because she asks me to. If your mother is happy with the way she speaks and she is capable of conveying her meaning then yes, it is arrogant and innapropriate to keep correcting her.

"I don't know anything" isn't more correct or logical than "I don't know nothing". Someone just decided one day that people shouldn't use double negatives in English. The first thing they hammer home in university linguistics is that you're not better than anyone for obsessively adhering to the rules of standard grammar. You're just limiting yourself and being a classist tool.

But they ARE logically different. If I "know nothing" then nothing is what I know. If I "don't know nothing" then nothing is what I don't know...

Why do I have to point this out? they are complete fucking opposites.

 

[Smiley Face]

Depends on how you do it and why you do it. If you do it because you find hearing poor grammar is annoying, and you say it in a way that is considerate of the fact that other people find corrections to be annoying, then there's nothing wrong with what you did. A thing annoys you, and you made an effort to correct it, so that you, and thus people collectively, might be happier. If you forced yourself to stay quiet every time you wanted to correct someone, you wouldn't be doing anyone any favours, you'd just be driving yourself nuts.

Moreover, it's important that you don't do it all the damn time. Best if you leave it for when it genuinely obscures the meaning of what's being discussed (you need to think for a second to get what's being said).

 

[Loop Stricken]

My mum always uses incorrect words and grammar when she is talking. I always strive to correct her, but a few days ago, she got really pissed off when I corrected her on a double negative, saying that 'I just do it to feel big' and that 'I'm the one who comes out of the situation looking stupid'. Have I been a jerk all along? Or is she over-reacting?

As a man who dared to read books, my family scorns me often for actually knowing them long and fancy wordings. I'm often accused of doing it solely to inflate my own sense of self-worth, when in reality I do it so I don't sound like yet another shit-thick Brummie.

You shine on, you crazy diamond.

 

[Tiamattt]

As previously said, you being a jerk kinda depends on your motivation, but regardless of that her reaction is very normal if not totally expected. Helpful or not eventually anyone would get sick and tired of what you're doing, and are much more likely to wish you just shut up instead of changing their ways. Especially since lets face it, incorrect grammar in a conversation between family members isn't worth fighting over. You want to be helpful, save it for when she really screws up in a conversation with someone else and she actually needs the help or when you actually don't know what she just said, otherwise you're just annoying her and not helping anyone.

 

[Aramis Night]

The whole reason behind language is to communicate. If you are unable to decipher someone who uses the same general language as you then it is a sign of your deficient intellect, not theirs. If you're unable to understand context to discern the meaning behind statements made to you, that is an indication of your deficiency, not theirs. If you require correct grammar at all times to be able to have an exchange of ideas, It isn't a sign of intelligence.

Grammar nazi's seem to think of themselves as being smarter because of their supposed mastery of language, but in truth all they are illustrating is how pedantic they can be. Intelligent people are able to prioritize communication over grammar. If they know what they said, and you understood the meaning of what they said, then what is the point of correcting them? Beyond understanding communication, there is no good reason.

 

[kypsilon]

It can be comforting to know that someone is always going to be around that knows their grammar enough to be a helpful hand during those tight deadlines for an English essay, or a term paper of significant grade, or an article to be printed in a popular magazine.

It is on the other hand, the most absurd, mind-numbing, niggling little passive-aggressive bull-shit that you can subject a person to if you do it all the time. It's your Mom, she was here before you were, she should be allowed her eccentricities.

I do realize that you're not intentionally putting her through the ringer, but really...find a better battle to fight. Teach grammar in high school or something. That way, you can even grade the lil' bastards...and fail them if they don't live up.

 

[StBishop]

Yes. I do it too, but it's really fucking annoying; no one likes it.

It's something you need to learn to get past or you need to spend time with people who don't mind. Those are essentially your options. As it's your mum (mom), I'm guessing your only option is to get over it.

You're not a bad person for doing it, but you are behaving in a jerkish, annoying, insufferable manner.

If you're wondering how you can possibly sit/stand there and listen to people make mistakes, my recommendation is to find people, or places, where it's appropriate to correct others (coach children in a sport, you can tell them what to do, or teach an art class or something). I often just correct people in my mind and move on, I acknowledge their mistake, acknowledge that it's unimportant (unless their intention or meaning is unclear), and move on with my day.

 

[Yopaz]

Correcting someone's grammar for no apparent reason when they are talking is kinda a jerk move. Seeing as you claim this is something you always do then yeah, you're a jerk. It shows that she has no interest in learning the correct grammar or that she doesn't learn it anyway. This either means you're bad at teaching her or that you're going about it the wrong way.

Seeing as she has put up with this for some time I am guessing she's got really sick of it and has tried to avoid getting into a confrontation.

If she has managed to put up with you correcting her grammar then you should be able to put up with her incorrect grammar. As long as she can make herself understood leave her be.

 

[Zhukov]

Seriously?

Who the fuck runs around correcting people on double negatives?

If someone did that to me, let alone my own damn kid, then yeah, I'd have a few sharp words for them.

 

[manic_depressive13]

But they ARE logically different. If I "know nothing" then nothing is what I know. If I "don't know nothing" then nothing is what I don't know...

Why do I have to point this out? they are complete fucking opposites.

Not really. Shitloads of expressions in English are idiomatic. When someone says "I don't know nothing" everyone knows exactly what they mean. It is in no way less adequate for conveying meaning than "I don't know anything". In fact in most languages it is correct to say "I don't know nothing". If you tried to say "I don't know anything" in Greek, using the direct tranlation for "anything," that would be wrong. This is an arbitrary convention. Both express the same meaning. This doesn't make English a more logical language than Greek. In fact, I can't think of a less logical language than English.

 

[Dimitriov]

But they ARE logically different. If I "know nothing" then nothing is what I know. If I "don't know nothing" then nothing is what I don't know...

Why do I have to point this out? they are complete fucking opposites.

Not really. Shitloads of expressions in English are idiomatic. When someone says "I don't know nothing" everyone knows exactly what they mean. It is in no way less adequate for conveying meaning than "I don't know anything". In fact in most languages it is correct to say "I don't know nothing". If you tried to say "I don't know anything" in Greek, using the direct tranlation for "anything," that would be wrong. This is an arbitrary convention. Both express the same meaning. This doesn't make English a more logical language than Greek. In fact, I can't think of a less logical language than English.

That's great... except that in the English that I and many others grew up speaking it doesn't mean that at all. All that it conveys to me is that the speaker doesn't understand that they just used a negative adverb with a negative noun.

speaker 1: "Do you know nothing?"
speaker 2: "No! I don't know nothing, I just didn't understand the question!"

See? that's a proper and logical usage of the double negative in English... which becomes impossible if the word 'not' just suddenly stops having any meaning sometimes, or if the word 'nothing' actually means 'anything.'

There's no shame in making the occasional mistake. Certainly in spoken language we often switch out what we were starting to say for a slightly different phrasing, and that may result in a shift in tenses or some other grammatical "error." But, people ought to actually understand their own language.

I think people should speak their own language and not have it speak them. If all you're doing is parroting entire sequences of words that you've heard previously whenever you speak you aren't actually communicating, you're just mouthing empty cliches. Precise language is indicative of precise thinking.

That doesn't mean we can't all just relax occasionally, but as I said everyone ought to be expected to at least understand. To me when someone says "I don't know nothing" when they mean that they don't know anything (and presumably that's about a specific subject...) it indicates to me that they aren't even thinking about what they are saying to me... so why on earth should I bother to listen to them?

 

[manic_depressive13]

That's great... except that in the English that I and many others grew up speaking it doesn't mean that at all. All that it conveys to me is that the speaker doesn't understand that they just used a negative adverb with a negative noun.

speaker 1: "Do you know nothing?"
speaker 2: "No! I don't know nothing, I just didn't understand the question!"

See? that's a proper and logical usage of the double negative in English... which becomes impossible if the word 'not' just suddenly stops having any meaning sometimes, or if the word 'nothing' actually means 'anything.'

Uhuh. Leaving aside the fact that no one actually talks like that, is the concept of context really so difficult to grasp? In this case inflection and the fact that it is a direct response to the question "Do you know nothing?" would lend it a different meaning. I could come up with a thousand examples in which perfectly correct usage of English might lead to ambiguities. This is the nature of language.

I imagine you must have a crisis whenever the word "seal" is used.

Edit: Besides, by your reasoning the question "Do you know nothing" is completely illogical and incorrect because "nothing" doesn't exist. It refers to the absence of something, and therefore by definition no one could possibly "know" such an abstract concept. When someone hears "Do you know nothing?" they infer the meaning "Don't you understand anything?"

 

[Scarim Coral]

Kinda, I mean I would be pissed too of if I keep getting quotes from people on topic on here that keep correcting my grammer and punctuation.
Seeing how it's your mother I can take it she has been doing this for years? I'm pretty sure at that point you could give it up already or are you really hoping you can correct her over time?

 

[Froggy Slayer]

I see now that I am the worst person who has ever lived, and wish to apologise for any offense caused. I shall now make a quest to the high mountains, where I shall live out my remaining years as a hermit.