Something has just happened which has never happened to me on this forum before. I find myself actually offended by a post.
Yes, I have to admit that this thread is
truly unique (another example of poor English :-D). Earlier, Bennevis played the ad hominem card against me, and even though a moderator deleted his message, I did manage to read it and I have to say that I was slightly taken aback by it. I
don't want to open up a whole new can of worms, but I must say that I find it
unacceptable when someone judges a person whom he doesn't even know.
I agree with you that it's
unacceptable and
absurd to tell people who speak English as their first language that their dialect is unacceptable. There is the dimension that whatever a native speaker says, is acceptable, simply because he or she said it. If a native speaker says something like,
'So you're telling me that some nouns are absolutely uncountable? Well,
it don't matter to me'
or
'
Ain't nobody gonna tell me what a countable noun is!'
then it is acceptable by definition. This is amplified by the frequency with which a particular "ungrammaticality" occurs, and isn't just a mistake they made unconsciously. Yes, these examples do not adhere to prescriptive grammar, but so what?
My view is that a teacher should tell his or her students that not everyone adheres to prescriptive grammar. In fact, one only needs to rent a movie to discover this fact. Imagine if all movies were written with prescriptive grammar in mind? A gangster movie in which the characters speak English like you read about it the "Guide to Proper English"? No way,
Goodfellas would been a terrible movie!