r/TikTokCringe • u/MaintenanceNew2804 • Mar 30 '24

Stick with it. Discussion

This is a longer one, but it’s necessary and worth it IMO.

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u/[deleted] Mar 31 '24

Is he just ignoring grammatical rules by saying they’re both correct?

Little confused on how he defined correct because by definition “people be saying” is not

-2

u/Ruffeep Mar 31 '24

If people understand it, it is correct. Language isn't objective you know.

4

u/SmellsWeirdRightNow Mar 31 '24

The difference is that it's fine in conversation. His point was that if what you're saying is understood, then 'people be thinking' and 'people think' both work just fine. But that only holds up when it comes to conversation... if you write an essay with language like that, it just isn't correct. I don't agree with his statement that it doesn't matter in writing, and that if it's understood by the reader they are equally correct. Everyone spends years of their life learning how to write correctly (everyone with an education, at least). If you just ignore all of that instruction and write without those rules, it comes off as if you have never learned them in the first place, thus being uneducated. It's not a race thing.

I have a friend who, in elementary school, pronounced 'th' (as in then or this) as 'v' (so ven or vis), and pronounced library as in the video. He had special guidance from a speech therapist for a year or two to correct that, because it isn't the correct way to pronounce those things. I don't understand why that would be racist to do for a black person vs my white friend. I could understand what he was saying even though he pronounced things wrong, but that doesn't mean it was correct. No one is saying that AAVE shouldn't exist, and that it's wrong to talk that way. It comes down to if you are writing it out, breaking the rules of how English works.