Descriptive Rather Than Prescriptive Language Suggestions From Google |
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18 October 2020
Lately I've noticed that Google's language suggestions have changed
ever so slightly. For example, the sentence
seems to me to be correct. However, Gmail tells me that the preferred usage is
which doesn't seem incorrect to many users of English. This is because pronunciation of then and than is the same in most dialects of American English, both vowels being the everpresent schwa. At first this might seem like a small change to Google's recommendation engine, but it is, in fact, a paradigm shift. Saying that than is correct in the above sentence is prescriptive, that is, that the language should follow some rules set down at a specific point in the past which we've all more or less agreed on. Saying that then is now okay, however, is descriptive of the language as it is being used today. This means that Google has abandoned the rules and is now letting us decide how the language drifts democratically in real time.
So why do you care? You're not a grammar nazi and you advocate the use of the vernacular. One of the great things about English is the lack of drift over time: we can all still read Shakespeare. Yes, this can be stifling to expression at times so we bend the rules and let in new words faster than any other language in human history. If Google decides to let the language drift regionalisms can quite quickly erupt based on their decisions of where to draw the lines. Here in Norway what is called English is already different from what is spoken back in the States, but at least they mostly understand that it is off the standard. If Google starts telling them that their errors are correct just because they're common, how far will the drift go?