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Message: <blockquote data-quote="nice gaijin" data-source="post: 798596" data-attributes="member: 15752">I like this exchange, it's a great example of how a seemingly simple question can have such a complex and varied answer...  Whether we ever actually answer the original question, however... <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite123" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":p" />You hit the nail on the head. Speakers of a language will stretch it to the limits of being intelligible, and in doing so, that edge of what is commonly accepted (and later formalized) is constantly being eroded away, for lack of a better term. Being away while those changes happen, and then coming back to find people making what sounds to you like mistakes must be a grating experience.Just listening to Elizabethan English, I can't imagine what it would be for someone who was accustomed to that kind of speech being dropped into New York today. To them it must sound like English had devolved into a series of grunts and epithets</blockquote>