also since im still mad about my friend here being made fun of im gonna teach yall about a lil thing called Grammaticality

in linguistics, the scientific study of the structure of human language as a cognitive tool, we talk about grammar as the rules THAT THE BRAIN follows

grammaticality basically means in as simplified laymans terms as possible: if you and another speaker of a language can understand the utterance, it's perfectly valid. this is what your brain produces and understands as language, not arbitrary rules
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammaticality

most of the shit u learn in engclass is arbitrary writing conventions enforced by crusty white ppl. these are not actual Grammar rules. your brain literally does not give a fuck if someone says "me and my friend" or "my friend and i"

this is called prescriptivism, which is Bad

(ALSO TANGENT FUN FACT in english, which is a germanic language, the default case is the accusative so "me and my friend// my friend and me" is literally MORE grammatical than the prissy prescribed "my friend and i" this is called hypercorrection) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection

but more on prescriptivism. it enforces toxic language norms that Actual Language Scientists have refuted as not based in reality or evidence based. prescriptivism tells people how to use language and is almost ALWAYS rooted in the -isms: classism, ableism, racism, etc.

language science (linguistics) is more concerned with understanding how humans actually use language so we can characterize the brain functions that allow us to produce and understand language.

so what we do is the opposite of prescriptivism: descriptivism

heres a short fun video on prescriptivism vs descriptivism

to linguists, valid grammar is that that is deemed acceptable by native speakers. and by deemed acceptable we mean "is understood."

the sentence "cookie monster be eating cookies" is an entiirely valid english sentence, even if it makes grammar pedants cringe. it's AAE

if u don't think it's valid english, it's because of antiBlack and racist biases u have. it doesn't have to be smth *you* would say. but u understand it, u know what the speaker is saying (i can tell u the ppl who always insist they cant r racist assholes). its a valid utterance

we know there's speakers out there who use the habitual be, and speakers who understand it. therefore as linguists we can conclude from usage based evidence that it is a grammatical, valid utterance

whereas rule-enforcers would say its wrong and enforce white supremacist language norms to insist it isn't wrong because it's not what a hypercorrecting prissy white man would say

here's a good blog post written for lay people on the systemic harms of languistic prescriptivism and why we shouldnt be doing it: https://everydayfeminism.com/2014/05/grammar-snobbery/

so in short, for prescriptivists worldwide: fuck off with ur pedantry, science doesn't even support ur bullshit and ur obsessed with being right so.......stop clowning and join the evidence based movment of descriptivism.

and be kind to people. that's most important

half of my interdisciplinary phd is language science, so i am speaking as an authority here. this is literally what the people who scientifically characterize language as a system believe. the BIGGEST language nerds. they believe language is valid as long as its understood

also, this has been said a lot, but the loudest fucks about prescriptive lang use are generally (not always) the ppl who cant speak shit besides english. u arent better for being born an english monolingual. multilingual ppls brains are managing a lot more than urs linguistically

so like, try not being shitty to people literally putting in way more effort than you are to communicate with others. :))))

if any oomfs ever wanna talk about language/linguistics, or need someone to scalp a prescriptivist, hmu xoxo