A confession to make....

[conuly]

Although I do dislike prescriptivism, the reality is that my normal dialect is actually very close to Standard American English. I even use the subjunctive, and the word whom. It's tragic :(

When I say things like "youse guys" or "djusk' a" or the random Latin, I'm doing that consciously because I want a more interesting idiolect.

I'm sorry for misleading people.

*sniffles*

Well, that's done. Now we can forget it ever happened, okay?

Oh, and something else - just because prescriptivism is evil does NOT mean that I have given up the right to thwomp you all seriously for saying something nonstandard (if I think that's what you're trying to do). If you don't want to be corrected, you should say so, because I hate to see something that's very nearly standard, but not quite. So if you're typing standard english, standard english, standard english, between him and I, standard english - expect me to yell and change the I to a me. And explain why. Ad nauseam.

Thank you.

Again, let's just forget this ever happened.

*runs off*

Comments

[rachelkachel]

Okay, random question that vaguely relates to the subject at hand (ie grammar).

Is it all right to say "I can't tell the difference between all of them" or should it be "I can't tell the difference among all of them" or something else entirely? The second just sounds wrong, but that could be because it's never used. The first one seems illogical because normally between is only for two things...

Argh!

[conuly]

If we're being prescriptivist about it.... *shudders*

I'd recast the sentence. Between is only supposed to be used for pairs, not more than that, so it can't be used with the phrase "all of them", and you're right, among sounds wrong. Instead, I'd say something like "I can't see where they're different from each other" or something like that, which is stilted but correct.