Verdurian speaking people check this out!

[Guest]

faCinated, hate incorrect spelling...

PS, I'm not even English speaking.

ES, on a second thoght, I am. But not as a native language anyway...

gAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAhghghgghAAAAA! not faCinated, faSCinated! dont correct if ur incorrect!

(sorry, but i hate people telling someone that theyve done it wrong and then doing it even wronger after!)

In that case: "you're," not "ur" (though I suspect that was just shorthand). And there is no such word as "wronger." And you missed apostrophes in "they've" and "don't." And you didn't capitalize "I."

I wasnt trying to be accurate, just making typing easier for myself. I only have an objection to people making mistakes if they insist someone else is making a mistake about the SAME THING; if they get it wrong while correcting someBODY else then i am annoyed. so dont bother.

[GreenBowTie]

No one likes a grammar nazi. For the love of God, quit ripping each other to shreds because someone typed a word wrong. It breeds nothing but hostility.

[Aurora Rossa]

Yes. Prescritivism is despised here.

[Glenn]

Yes. Prescritivism is despised here.

Now, I would be careful about making a blanket statement like that one. I, for one, do my best not to despise anything if I can help it , and I certainly don't despise prescriptivism, although I try not to get too hung up about it either.
I think it's perfectly all right, in its place.

Example #1: I have worked as an editor and/or proofreader for a publishing company, a weekly newspaper, and a wire service (among others), and currently work part-time as an NGO translator and English-language editor; in these jobs, I had the responsibility of helping ensure that the materials published adhered to conventionally "proper" English spelling and grammar, and fit a more-or-less specific and consistent house format.
In general, I have no problem with this task.

Example #2: While I certainly do not require people to follow the "rules" of "proper" English all of the time, I do think it's best to be aware of them. If somebody (such as myself ) were to send in an application for a job opening, for instance, I would hope that it was written in "proper" English and devoid of typos or other errors; if this were not the case, I would be unsurprised to see that application discarded.
(Don't let yourself be bound by the rules, but know how to play the game. )

On the other hand, I harbor no illusions that the current "rules" of English or any other language are fixed in stone, or bear any absolute cosmic or linguistic significance, and I would hope that other people are aware of this as well. (They may be interesting as a subject of study, of course, and it's certainly possible to follow the trends in order to keep your own "prescriptivist" English up to date.) In general, I correct other people's writing only at their own request (someone learning English as a foreign language, for example), or if there are comprehension issues involved.

***
End of ramble; I certainly don't want to spark off a long discussion. I agree with Eric,
in fact: such issues are not worth wasting time and nerves over.

Back to the original topic, since it was left in the dust some time back : I would just like to plug the Practical Course and others like it (such as Rik's Teach Yourself Gevey) as a useful tool in conlang creation and learning; it's one of the more interesting ways (although far from the only one) of treating a conlang as a "living" language.

p@,
Glenn

[blank stare]

The better the language, the more difficult to learn.

'Tisn't always so. Complexity, IMO, isn't always what makes a language great.