dear native speakers and bi-linguas, is the text correct?

[iopq]

Yes, but what you're saying is that you use the English language well, but I don't because I follow different standards. So you're better than me because you use correct English, but I am uneducated because I use the inferior English dialect.

[djwebb1969]

I think if you read things like Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, you can see that some Americans have sought to uphold standards and have written beautiful English! But the idea that language is just for communication, and standards are a nonsense, is part of the anti-culture, often promoted I believe by the same professors in US universities who are busy promoting multi-culturalism and multi-racialism and opposing "great books". In the UK, these people introduced an English Literature university course that focused on the study of the language of bus tickets, rather than Shakespeare - it sounds like a joke, but it was in the newspapers. This was to make language "accessible". But "accessible" means "easily comprehensible to the uneducated". So if your education consists of reading accessible texts, then you haven't had an education at all! Throw away the Maya Angelou rubbish about slavery and start reading Charles Dickens! 

[iopq]

Yes, but if my native dialect doesn't know the difference between "much" and "many" does that mean that my writing is less beautiful? Isn't that a bit arbitrary? I'd much rather read an interesting book written in colloquial English, than a boring one written in standard English. What does standard English give us? What are the benefits of using standard English? I write in a high style in my own dialect. Some people say "If I was you..." I insist on using the subjunctive in saying "If I were you..."

Just because I am apt to write "support of" instead of "support for" doesn't make my writing worse.

[djwebb1969]

You are right to say "if I were you". You would be a pleb if  you said "if I was you". The difference between much and many? Well if you said "many bread" or "much people", you would  indeed be speaking basilectal English. Just look at Ebonics (US black English) and you can see the value of adhering to the classical standard. Standards are not arbitrary; they reflect cultural heritage. If I were to say that the plural of "child" should be "chilldies", that would be arbitrary, as it would be made up and snatched from the air, as it were. The plural is "children", and the reason why involves tracing the history from Anglo-Saxon. If US "native speakers" started to say "childs", that would be wrong - as it would show unfamiliarity with the classical standard. it is a cultural issue. At each point in history, a standard emerges, and eventually breaks down, but what the standard is at each point is determined,  not by an arithmetical average of what native speakers say, including people who watch the Simpsons. It is determined by the educated elite. As educated people still see a distinction to be made in "if I were", that is the standard, whatever the great unwashed say.

[iopq]

Actually I'd probably say "a lot of bread" and "a lot of people."

[Grinder]

lol... guys u were made the same mistake (I were) I am right? r`nt I?....xD

[sknente]

You are right to say "if I were you". You would be a pleb if  you said "if I was you". The difference between much and many? Well if you said "many bread" or "much people", you would  indeed be speaking basilectal English. Just look at Ebonics (US black English) and you can see the value of adhering to the classical standard. Standards are not arbitrary; they reflect cultural heritage. If I were to say that the plural of "child" should be "chilldies", that would be arbitrary, as it would be made up and snatched from the air, as it were. The plural is "children", and the reason why involves tracing the history from Anglo-Saxon. If US "native speakers" started to say "childs", that would be wrong - as it would show unfamiliarity with the classical standard. it is a cultural issue. At each point in history, a standard emerges, and eventually breaks down, but what the standard is at each point is determined,  not by an arithmetical average of what native speakers say, including people who watch the Simpsons. It is determined by the educated elite. As educated people still see a distinction to be made in "if I were", that is the standard, whatever the great unwashed say.

djwebb1969 was holding a cup of tea in his hand as he was writing this post, personally brewed by his family butler from carefully dried tealeaves handpicked by small brown children.