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Disputed English grammar denotes disagreement about whether given constructions constitute correct English. Such disagreements are often quite impassioned. Even when there is no disagreement over a given construction English speakers sometimes will express anger on encountering it.[1][2]
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The following are articles about various disputed usages in Standard English:
The following are articles about various non-Standard English usages:
The following circumstances commonly feature in disputes:
Speakers and writers frequently do not consider it necessary to justify their positions on a particular use, taking it for granted that a given use is correct or incorrect. The position often is complicated by the user's reliance on false ideas about linguistic matters, such as the impression that a particular expression is newer than it really is.[4]
The prescriptivist and descriptivist approaches often clash: the former prescribes how English should be spoken—a teacher showing students how to write; the latter describes how English is spoken—a sociolinguist studying word use in a population. An extreme prescriptivist might maintain that even if every sentence in current English uses a certain construction, that construction may still be incorrect. Conversely, an extreme descriptivist might maintain that there is no such thing as incorrect use. In practice, however, speakers lie between these two extremes, holding that because English changes with time and is governed in large measure by convention, a construction may be considered correct once it is used by a majority of speakers, but also that a given sentence is incorrect if it violates the conventions of English that apply to its context.
One complicating factor is that there are many different forms of English, often with different conventions; what is plainly grammatical in one form may be plainly ungrammatical in another.
English is spoken worldwide, and the Standard Written English grammar generally taught in schools around the world will vary only slightly. However the English usage in one country is not always the same as the English usage of another. For example, in addition to the differences in accent, spelling, and vocabulary, there are many points of spoken grammar that differ between and among the various British, American, Australian, and other dialects of the English language in everyday use. Ordinarily, speakers will accept many national dialects as correct, but may deem only one to be correct in a given setting, in the same way that an educated English-speaker might regard correct French as correct without considering it as correct English. Nonetheless, disputes can sometimes arise: for example, in India it is a matter of some debate whether British, American, or Indian English is the best form for use.[5][6]
In contrast to their generally high level of tolerance for the dialects of other English-speaking countries, speakers often express disdain for features of certain regional or ethnic dialects, such as Southern American English's use of y'all, Geordies' use of "yous" as the second person plural personal pronoun, and non-standard forms of "to be" such as "The old dock bes under water most of the year" (Newfoundland English), or "That dock be under water every other week" (African-American Vernacular English).
Such disdain may not be restricted to points of grammar; speakers often criticize regional accents and vocabulary as well.
Arguments related to regional dialects must center on questions of what constitutes Standard English. For example, since fairly divergent dialects from many different countries are accepted widely as Standard English, it is not always clear why certain regional dialects, which may be very similar to their standard counterparts, are not.
Different constructions are acceptable in different registers of English. For example, a given construction often will be seen as too formal or too informal for a given situation.
Speakers do not always distinguish between standard English and the English of formal registers. For example, they might say that a given construction is incorrect for formal writing, but acceptable in ordinary writing or in everyday speech. Whereas linguists often will describe a construction as being correct in a certain register, but not in another, English speakers as a whole tend to view "correct English" as a singular entity — either viewing informal registers as allowing deviations from correctness, or viewing formal registers as imposing additional syntactic constraints beyond mere correctness, or both.