OOTS #1273 - The Discussion Thread

[PontificatusRex]

And the gendered words we do have are silly. Why do we differentiate between actor and actress?

As a person who has worked in theater for decades, I can tell you that there is definitely an effort to eliminate the term actress and refer to everyone as actors. Gonna take awhile before it's universal though - the award shows will probably fight tooth and claw to keep it...

[skim172]

The pound is a Roman invention, the US and Imperial systems just formalized exact amounts for a unit that had existed for thousands of years.

All roads lead to Rome.

[Fyraltari]

What problem? The problem of having a very obscure non-gendered language? That problem has already gone away, there are probably hundreds of them already. The problem of that particular obscure language not being gender neutral? No, but I don't see why it's even a problem, since it hardly affects anyone.

As it's one more reason for people not to bother learning Esperanto, it's a problem for Esperanto.

[Ruck]

As a person who has worked in theater for decades, I can tell you that there is definitely an effort to eliminate the term actress and refer to everyone as actors. Gonna take awhile before it's universal though - the award shows will probably fight tooth and claw to keep it...

Heh, I was just gonna say I bet Peelee had the Oscar nominations on his mind this morning.

[skim172]

My point is that there is a reason why the language does not work the way you want it to work: because it was made in a time when men were seen as better than women. A language created today would likely not have the same problem.

Mmm ... I would say the development of languages is more complicated than that.

Mandarin, for example, uses the same third-person pronoun for "he" and "she". From this, we could infer that Mandarin was formed in a society when male and female divisions did not exist, and gender identity was fluid and equal.

Korean doesn't really have third-person pronouns - and while there is a second-person singular pronoun, its use is generally avoided. From this, we could infer that Korean was formed in a society where other people did not exist - only the "I" mattered, only the Ego could be said to exist, and all other entities were merely illusions of the mind.

However, Korean sentence structure often does not require a subject, which means many sentences will lack any sort of pronoun. Which suggests an even darker truth - Koreans are unsure even of the existence of the Self. Nothing can be said to exist - all is naught but lies and delusions, truth can only be known at the end.

Now, in the Southern US, "y'all" has developed colloquially as a second-person pronoun - purportedly plural, but it is often used in singular applications. From this, we can infer that Southern Americans strongly believe in the interconnectedness of all things, the universality of all thought, and recognize that any one "individual" is not alone, but merely a single intersection of a grand tapestry of energy, matter, time, and space.

[Peelee]

Heh, I was just gonna say I bet Peelee had the Oscar nominations on his mind this morning.

Didn't even know they were out until like half an hour ago - I generally waiver between apathetic and hostile towards award shows.

That being said, and at the risk of being hypocritical, the nominations I heard about did please me.

[Fyraltari]

Mmm ... I would say the development of languages is more complicated than that.

Mandarin, for example, uses the same third-person pronoun for "he" and "she". From this, we could infer that Mandarin was formed in a society when male and female divisions did not exist, and gender identity was fluid and equal.

Mandarin is a natural language though. Esperanto is a constructed one. It did not evolve gradually over the course of centuries. It was invented by this dude . All its features are the results of conscious decisions.

[Ruck]

Didn't even know they were out until like half an hour ago - I generally waiver between apathetic and hostile towards award shows.

That being said, and at the risk of being hypocritical, the nominations I heard about did please me.

Yeah, I generally don't give awards shows much notice because they rarely if ever nominate the stuff I think is genuinely good. I guess the Emmys have gotten a little better about that in recent years. I don't have many thoughts on the Oscars since I don't see many new movies these days (I do get a laugh when they award something in an obviously self-congratulatory fashion-- Green Book, Argo, for example), but I am disappointed that of two of the few movies I did see, neither got nominated for best animated feature. (And, in general, I don't like how the Academy seems to have virtually no respect for comedy at this point.)

[brian 333]

My point is that there is a reason why the language does not work the way you want it to work: because it was made in a time when men were seen as better than women. A language created today would likely not have the same problem.

Follow me a bit and reserve your ire for afterwards:
The above quote is exactly opposite of the correct reason, though I'm virtually certain it is what is being taught today.

If a society loses all but one male, in a generation the society picks up where it left off. If a society loses all but one female the society ceases to exist. Females were far more important than males, and every primate species knows that instinctively. It is almost always the young males that get eaten by the lion because it is his role to protect the females, and successfully doing so is rewarded by the attention of the females of the troop.
In English, the only positively gendered pronouns were reserved for females. The masculine ones were sometimes masculine, sometimes neutral, and sometimes indefinite. Feminine pronouns are always exclusively female. If you want an exclusive pronoun for each gender, you certainly have a lot of work to do. Or you can use the existing neutral-gender pronouns.
Actress is always feminine. Actor is anybody. Heiress is exclusively feminine. Heir is anybody entitled to inherit. She is always female, he is anybody that is not known to be female.

Or you can do what English speakers have always done and use the language any way you like. Rappers used to do it with poetic abandon.

Interesting fact: division of labor happened long before English, and male vs. female roles evolved based on physical ability. However, in colonial era America, you were far more likely to encounter women in industries than men, because men had to do the farming. That changed when the Women's Temperance movement tried to sober up the continent. One of their slogans was, "A woman's place is in the home."
When men wanted a societal change it took generations. When women wanted a societal change it took about twenty years. Women gave up a lot of power when they demanded equality, but in the US, post WW2 to Equal Rights as a matter of law took less than 30 years.

Women are, and have always been the dominant force. The rest of the genders take our marching orders from them.

[gbaji]

The old 2nd person sg pronoun 'thou' also used its own specific ending: -(e)st. Which was lost when it was replaced by 'you'. It really is the same situation.

It's not though. First person refers to the person or group speaking. The pronouns "I" and "We" don't replace actual names in a sentence. References, but not names are taken as anticedents (Not so much in "I", but if you use "We", it refers to the most recent previous reference to a group the speaker is a member of: (ie: "My choir group had practice yesterday. Today I was in class, and we did math puzzles." "We in the second sentence refers to the class the speaker is in, and not the choir group. Cause that's how anticedents work).

Second person pronouns (including the "thou to you" transition) refer to the person or group you are speaking *to*. Again, they don't replace names in a sentence, but references to a single person or a group. You can use a person in second singular, but it's a bit awkward in modern English, and unnecessary (since you are speaking directly to that person "you" is sufficient). In writing, an author would use non dialogue lines to indicate who is being refered to by "you". When speaking we just get the person's attention and say "You". Done.

Third person is different. Third person specifically directly replaces a proper noun (a name) with the pronoun. The pronoun therefore has to be specific as to whom it refers to. We use gender to make it easier to be clear. Imagine this liine:

"The band was playing in the bar. It was hot, and the air conditioning wasn't working, so Joe performed a juggling act out front. Jane had to stay home and study for her finals. They did not have a good evening."

They is plural, therefore refers to the band (could refer to all of them, but then we'd maybe say "all of them had a bad evening", or better: "none of them had a good evening", or something else clever to make that clear). If you use they as a singular pronoun, it's unclear if you are referring to Joe or Alice or the air conditioning (or the bar, but it's not the anticedent of "it" I suppose), or the band, (since "they" is also plural). Using "she", "he", "it" or "they" makes it absolutely clear which prevous noun you are talking about. And yes, that assumes that both speaker and listener have an agreement on who is which gender.

"They" as singular genderless third person pronoun, on the other hand, I can't recall if it was ever explicitly taught or I just picked it up, but I definitely remember it showing up in the English Proficiency exams.

Unless those exams were in the last 5-10 years, I can't imagine that being the case. Using "they" as a third person singular pronoun is absolutely incorrect and will result in a failed score in any exam up untill very recently, when social events have pushed the issue (in the wrong direction IMO).

And given that "you" has already paved the way to abandoning the singular in favour of the plural, I think it'd be a good thing if English got rid of its third person singular pronouns in favour of universal use of "they" in all circumstances (and then your compatriots in Texas can start using "th'all" to indicate plural third person, just as y'all introduced, well, "y'all").

Replacing "Thou" with "You" didn't "pave the way" for anything. It had more or less zero impact on the sentence strucure at all. Words were changed that otherwise filled the same grammatical requirements. The only potential for confusion lies if one is unclear whether we're speaking to a group or an indivdual, but that can usually be noodled out in context *and* the phrase "you all" exists in cases where that needs to be further clarified.

Y'all is a contraction of "you all". Period. Full stop. Not sure where the confusion lies. It refers to second person plural explicitly, where "you" refers to singular or plural when there is no need for clarification. Once again, the point is for cases where there may be confusion (in this case between singular and plural references instead of gender). Which we lose entirely if we take the third person and use "they" for both (or are we suggesting the adoption of "they all" or something?).

Which is why it'd be nice if encoding gender was a possibility, rather than a requirement. If it is relevant to the information transmitted if it was a male or female neighbour, it's good to include it (it's almost as if we have a whole set of words used to describe that could be used, but don't always need to be used).

It is a possibility and not a requirement right now. You are free to not use a pronoun if you don't want to. It's only a convenience. With third person, you absolutely can just substitute the person's name back in, instead of the pronoun for absolute clarity ("The band didn't have a good evening", "Joe didn't have a good evening", "Alice didn't have a good evening", "the A/C didn't have a good evening" from my previous example). So gender pronouns give us the possibiilty of encoding gender, but not a requirement.

Eliminating "he/she/it" eliminates the possibility of gender encodement in the pronouns. Which is why I think it's a poor change to make. Replacing it with "they" also eliminates the possiblity of number encodment as well. Which makes it doubly stupid as a proposed change.

If any of this was a serious effort to change language to remove gender assumptions (which again, violates your claimed desire anyway), while retaining usefulness, rather than just what appears to be an effort to create as much social conflict as possible so as to label the "other side" in negative ways for their backwardness or whatever, the proposals would be to replace "he/she" with something that isn't "it" (which refers to objects, not people), but with something else like say "te" (seriously just randomly picked a linguistically sound seeming short sound with no other connotations here).

And yes, there are some people propsing adoption of these sorts of things. Unfortunately they get drowned out by the whole "they for everything!" crowd. Or worse, the horde of "I'm just going to pick my own pronoun!" crowd. Which is, as you might imagine, completely unworkable as a linguistic tool. Doubly so given that third peson singular pronouns are generally not used when the person being referred to is right there anyway, so... what problem are we solving here? Not a lot of utility there.

There are viable workable ways to move forward. Using "they" as a singular pronoun is not one of them. Again though, we have to ask what is the gain to all of this in the first place. Removing clarity in language is a negative. I'm not sure the "positive" is really worth it, but that's a conversation we can't really go in to.

As a person who has worked in theater for decades, I can tell you that there is definitely an effort to eliminate the term actress and refer to everyone as actors. Gonna take awhile before it's universal though - the award shows will probably fight tooth and claw to keep it...

Yeah. I have for decades now referred to actors of any sex as "actor". I'm reasonably certain that you are correct and the word "acrtress" exists almost exclusively to allow awards to be awarded for male performers and female performers equally and without direct competition. Also reasonably certain that this was likely pushed at some point to enforce equality of the sexes (don't feel like looking up the history of entertainment award shows at this time). So, oddly enough, it's mostly the feminist crowd who may have issue with this. Or not oddly at all, given that most of the proposals to eliminate gender identity also directly eliminate "progress" made by that movement as well.

On the flip side, I'm not sure if it's a great idea to distinguish "best actor/actress" when we don't use other identify factors to create new "best" categories (and I'm not at all proposing that, since that way lies madness IMO). Um... It's a tricky situation. Almost have to pick who you are offending here.

Dunno. For those of us old enough to have seen the ebb and flow of various movements, a lot of this is just amusing. Some of it annoying though. I'd be waving my cane at the young people not really understanding what they are doing here, but that's just me. ;)

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Unless those exams were in the last 5-10 years, I can't imagine that being the case. Using "they" as a third person singular pronoun is absolutely incorrect and will result in a failed score in any exam up untill very recently, when social events have pushed the issue (in the wrong direction IMO).

And yet you are completely wrong; it was in fact the exact opposite - failure to use they in a singular they in the appropriate context would have costed me points. You are, in short, wrong. And I'm tired of finding new ways of explaining to you that you are.

GW

[brian 333]

And yet you are completely wrong; it was in fact the exact opposite - failure to use they in a singular they in the appropriate context would have costed me points. You are, in short, wrong. And I'm tired of finding new ways of explaining to you that you are.

GW

Anecdotally, it is impossible to tell. My experience is the opposite of yours. I grew up in New Orleans in the 1960s, so that may have had something to do with how I was taught. Louisiana schools have a reputation for generating football players, not literary legends.
However, had I used 'they' as a singular pronoun, it would have been circled with a red pencil and, by 8th grade or so, been considered a Major Error, potentially being by itself cause for a failing grade.
Dr.Lane used to say, "There are many more correct ways to say what you want to say than there are incorrect ones."

[gbaji]

Anecdotally, it is impossible to tell. My experience is the opposite of yours. I grew up in New Orleans in the 1960s, so that may have had something to do with how I was taught. Louisiana schools have a reputation for generating football players, not literary legends.
However, had I used 'they' as a singular pronoun, it would have been circled with a red pencil and, by 8th grade or so, been considered a Major Error, potentially being by itself cause for a failing grade.
Dr.Lane used to say, "There are many more correct ways to say what you want to say than there are incorrect ones."

That is my experience as well. Although in schools that were more focused on matriculation than most. While I can't speak to GW's education experience, my experience is that the use of "they" as a third person singular was abosolutely 100% wrong. Furthermore, I've only really encountered it within some obscure academic circles (like some nutty professor in a literary arts field), and those were clearly trying to push a pretty obvious social agenda instead of teaching actual rules of grammar (yes, there are some in academnic circles that have pushed this for going on 50+ years now). And yes, I've seen the references to relatively rare and obscure texts as a means to justify this many times over the years. It's always been weak though. Like, I'm starting with something out of the box, and desparately scrambling for any snippet of justification I can for it.

That movement only gained real traction in the last 8 years or so. And while I have no real objection to folks wanting to change or use different pronouns, or whatnot, using "they" as a singular is probably the dumbest way to do this. I've already outlined in great detail why, and even suggested alternative's people can use instead that are both more grammatically correct *and* retain useful communication along the way.

Any teacher trying to push "they" is not doing their profession any favors IMO. I put that in the same category as "whole math" and "whole language" which I've personaly witnessed and which totally screwed up a generation of students along the way (I have public school friends and relatives who have absolutely atrocious spelling and grammar, and questionable math skills as a result). It's just a really really bad idea.

[Roland St. Jude]

The singular "they" has its origins in at least the 13th century and was widely used that way until some grammarians in the mid-18th century decided it wasn't "acceptable." Their prescriptivist brand of grammar instruction became the norm, enforcing one "right" way in a lot of odd instances.

So many of the "rules" that uptight grammar teachers of the 19th and 20th century were made up for flimsy or even spurious reasons and then dogmatically enforced as if they had moral weight behind them. They do not.

Would you have gotten the plural use of "they" circled as "wrong" in the past century? Sure, along with splitting an infinitive or ending a sentence with a preposition, both perfectly reasonable grammar with long histories.

Sheriff: That said, posters would be well advised to avoid the political discussion you're quite purposefully alluding to.

[brian 333]

I would like to point out that Formal English has many rules. This is the Germanic language which was pretzeled into Latin rules then ironed flat by French nobility, then stretched like a giant rubber balloon to cover the globe.

Spoken English has only one simple rule: does the audience understand the speaker?

Written entertainment is a poor source for justifications of alterations of Formal English because these writers invariably use Conversational English rather than Formal English.

My friends would never notice anything wrong if I said, "What are you doing that for?"
My English teachers would have. Not because ending a sentence with a preposition is wrong in English, but because it is wrong in Formal English.

Fortunately, Formal English is almost always written, so I will never ask you to rephrase when you say, "For what are you doing that?"

The rules do not exist to make everyone conform to one idealized language. They exist so that the speakers of the many thousand dialects of Spoken English can understand what any other English speaker wrote or spoke in a formal setting, no matter his original dialect or even his century.

Formal English is not a censor to control our thoughts, but a translator to help us communicate over vast times and distances.

[Peelee]

My friends would never notice anything wrong if I said, "What are you doing that for?"
My English teachers would have. Not because ending a sentence with a preposition is wrong in English, but because it is wrong in Formal English.

No its not. Also outside of grade school and high school there is no "Formal English" or "Conversational English".

Also "can the other person understand me" is how literally all languages go. Some places like France to try keep a tighter lid on it but living languages are gonna live.

[brian 333]

No its not. Also outside of grade school and high school there is no "Formal English" or "Conversational English".

Also "can the other person understand me" is how literally all languages go. Some places like France to try keep a tighter lid on it but living languages are gonna live.

Formal English certainly does exist in business and in academia. Imagine a North American, a Congolese, and a Mandarin communicating in English. Without a shared formal, structured, language, communication would be difficult, at best. Fortunately, no matter how one speaks in his native dialect, Formal English allows clear communication and serves as a platform to share and discuss ideas which have never before been expressed in the native dialect.

There is precedent for this that goes back to the first attempts at written English. England had dozens or more dialects of English which were virtually impossible to reconcile. There was no 'right' way to speak the language, and every valley and plain on the island had its own version. The farther from home one went, the less comprehensible English became.

The early debates on the proper pronunciation of the word "egg" are illuminating. Is it pronounced, 'ygg', 'aig,' 'ayg', 'eggy', or one of the dozen other choices available at the time? Egg was chosen as formally correct, and English speakers went on speaking their dialects. (My grandfather said ayg.)

Formal English is much slower to change because if it were to go with the flow it would render writers of a previous century impossible to read. Spoken English morphs virtually daily, and in different directions in different dialects. An example of this is that, when I was a young man, calling someone a dog was an invitation to a punch in the nose. Now it is an invitation to share a beer and watch a football game together. I still tense up when someone calls me "dog," even knowing that it no longer means what it used to mean.

For fun, I will attempt to write in 'Young brian333' dialect. Your translations may be amusing to me, but don't worry that you can offend me if you translate incorrectly.

"A, bra. Me n'chawls goin tada levey t'ave-a bier n wachda fites. Y'comin?"
"Nah, ayegotta meet-up wit da girls at Gatsby's an we gonna goda Biloxi fada weekin. Sha, y'aughtta go widus."

My friends and I still speak this way when we're together, which infuriates my girlfriend. She is not from our neighborhood, and feels left out when we get together.

She doesn't even know what 'mynez' is!

[Psyren]

Well there's this 'vessel' that Sabine was supposed to get...

Hmmm...

And the IFCC definitely know about her.

This being Sabine or someone else physically there explains Bloodfeast’s reaction.

...very good point. How the heck can Bloodfeast see her? I thought it was just following Roy around, but it clearly looks at her when she first appears in the previous strip.

And the gendered words we do have are silly. Why do we differentiate between actor and actress?

More important question: Why don't you differentiate between genders with most other words?

Spoiler: Gender language tangent thing

Show

It gets even worse with professions, as someone thought another form of the word wouldn't make sense, but keeping it gendered would. "Une femme docteur" anyone?

[WanderingMist]

Yeah, I generally don't give awards shows much notice because they rarely if ever nominate the stuff I think is genuinely good. I guess the Emmys have gotten a little better about that in recent years. I don't have many thoughts on the Oscars since I don't see many new movies these days (I do get a laugh when they award something in an obviously self-congratulatory fashion-- Green Book, Argo, for example), but I am disappointed that of two of the few movies I did see, neither got nominated for best animated feature. (And, in general, I don't like how the Academy seems to have virtually no respect for comedy at this point.)

I mean, this is the same Academy that made "Best Animated Feature" a thing after "Beauty and the Beast" got nominated for "Best Picture" because they were terrified of animation being given the respect it deserves.

[danielxcutter]

Anton Ego was right.

[Peelee]

Formal English certainly does exist in business and in academia.

Ok, so who is in charge of the English Academy that preserves the purity of "Formal English"? Imean, I can tell you who is in charge of the Académie Française, since French actually does have that (even though my understanding is few people actually care for it). I can tell you where it is, too. Where's the English one? Is it in New York? London? Brisbane? Dublin? Johannesburg? My oh my, so much English with such variations, ain't that a pickle! I'm glad that "Formal English" has solved the issues that may be present therein.

Even if we focus on just the US, and just academia, there isn't even one single formal dictate for formatting. There's MLA, APA, and Chicago style, and those are just the most popular! But you want to insist that there is one single standardized "Formal English"? Nah, man. That only exists in the minds of teachers who need to teach prescriptive so that everyone gets the basics before ultimately and inevitably moving on to descriptivist use. Beyond basic schooling "Formal English", as you like to call it, is only ever enforced arbitrarily, which is good because the rules are also mutable between such enforcers.

But please, feel free to tell me the single definitive prescdiptivist rulebook on "Formal English", since you are so adamant that it must exist.

[danielxcutter]

“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”

I think this is relevant.

[brian 333]

Ok, so who is in charge of the English Academy that preserves the purity of "Formal English"? Imean, I can tell you who is in charge of the Académie Française, since French actually does have that (even though my understanding is few people actually care for it). I can tell you where it is, too. Where's the English one? Is it in New York? London? Brisbane? Dublin? Johannesburg? My oh my, so much English with such variations, ain't that a pickle! I'm glad that "Formal English" has solved the issues that may be present therein.

Even if we focus on just the US, and just academia, there isn't even one single formal dictate for formatting. There's MLA, APA, and Chicago style, and those are just the most popular! But you want to insist that there is one single standardized "Formal English"? Nah, man. That only exists in the minds of teachers who need to teach prescriptive so that everyone gets the basics before ultimately and inevitably moving on to descriptivist use. Beyond basic schooling "Formal English", as you like to call it, is only ever enforced arbitrarily, which is good because the rules are also mutable between such enforcers.

But please, feel free to tell me the single definitive prescdiptivist rulebook on "Formal English", since you are so adamant that it must exist.

Never said there was a single, universally accepted Formal English, just as there is no single, perfect example of a rabbit. We all agree on what a rabbit is, but is a cottontail or a jack rabbit the standard?

Formal English serves to standardize the language without hogtying it. It does not stop the mutation of the language, but it does slow it down in formal use.

As an example, I can read and comprehend the writings of Thomas Jefferson, but I have difficulty understanding the speech of my great nephew. Perhaps, in his adulthood, the speech of his children and grandchildren will similarly confuse him, but he too will be able to read and understand Thomas Jefferson.

That is the purpose of the prescriptivist teaching of the English language. Not to enforce conformity of thought, but to facilitate communication between very diverse people. Without that (admittedly imperfect) common understanding, English would mutate so quickly that it would cease to be useful as a common tongue.

[Peelee]

Never said there was a single, universally accepted Formal English, just as there is no single, perfect example of a rabbit. We all agree on what a rabbit is, but is a cottontail or a jack rabbit the standard?

Formal English serves to standardize the language without hogtying it. It does not stop the mutation of the language, but it does slow it down in formal use.

As an example, I can read and comprehend the writings of Thomas Jefferson, but I have difficulty understanding the speech of my great nephew. Perhaps, in his adulthood, the speech of his children and grandchildren will similarly confuse him, but he too will be able to read and understand Thomas Jefferson.

That is the purpose of the prescriptivist teaching of the English language. Not to enforce conformity of thought, but to facilitate communication between very diverse people. Without that (admittedly imperfect) common understanding, English would mutate so quickly that it would cease to be useful as a common tongue.

So, in short, there is no "Formal English" outside of primary education? The exact thing that I said earlier? Glad we made that clear.

[woweedd]

Ok, so who is in charge of the English Academy that preserves the purity of "Formal English"? Imean, I can tell you who is in charge of the Académie Française, since French actually does have that (even though my understanding is few people actually care for it). I can tell you where it is, too. Where's the English one? Is it in New York? London? Brisbane? Dublin? Johannesburg? My oh my, so much English with such variations, ain't that a pickle! I'm glad that "Formal English" has solved the issues that may be present therein.

Even if we focus on just the US, and just academia, there isn't even one single formal dictate for formatting. There's MLA, APA, and Chicago style, and those are just the most popular! But you want to insist that there is one single standardized "Formal English"? Nah, man. That only exists in the minds of teachers who need to teach prescriptive so that everyone gets the basics before ultimately and inevitably moving on to descriptivist use. Beyond basic schooling "Formal English", as you like to call it, is only ever enforced arbitrarily, which is good because the rules are also mutable between such enforcers.

But please, feel free to tell me the single definitive prescdiptivist rulebook on "Formal English", since you are so adamant that it must exist.

I will note that several languages, like French, do have an official academy that declares the correct way to speak. But English sure doesn't. In fact, the closest thing we have to the French Academy is probably the Oxford English Dictionary...Which, indeed, is DESCRPTIVE, not perspective. They're adamant is to catalog how language is used, not to determine how it SHOULD be used.

[Peelee]

I will note that several languages, like French, do have an official academy that declares the correct way to speak.

Imean, I can tell you who is in charge of the Académie Française, since French actually does have that (even though my understanding is few people actually care for it). I can tell you where it is, too.

But English sure doesn't. In fact, the closest thing we have to the French Academy is probably the Oxford English Dictionary...Which, indeed, is DESCRPTIVE, not perspective. They're adamant is to catalog how language is used, not to determine how it SHOULD be used.

Indeed. As do all reputable dictionaries, to boot.

[Fyraltari]

French does not have an academy. France does.

The vast majority of French speakers are Africans and I don't know that they care in any way about the Académie.

Not that the Académie has much power in France either. The Ministry of National Education decides what spelling and grammar rules are taught to children and that shapes use a thousand times more than anaything the Académie ever does.

[Peelee]

French does not have an academy. France does.

France doesn't have an academy, the French Republic does, and I shorten the name.

Also I always wondered why we (at least, Americans, I don't know about other countries) have different names for countries than the counties themselves. Like, Estados Unidos makes sense because our country is is words, so translating is fine. But why do we call it Germany when the people who live there call it Deutschland, as a quick example?

[Tzardok]

I on the other hand wonder why Germans call the USA the USA instead of translating it. *shrug*

Especially as we don't do that with most other nations.

[Fyraltari]

Also I always wondered why we (at least, Americans, I don't know about other countries) have different names for countries than the counties themselves. Like, Estados Unidos makes sense because our country is is words, so translating is fine. But why do we call it Germany when the people who live there call it Deutschland, as a quick example?

Exonyms are a more or less universal phenomenon.

The English name "Germany" comes from the Latin *Germania*, meaning "the place of the people we call Germans" there's no consensus on why the Romans called them that (we do know the Germans didn't call themselves that or see themselves as a people, rather each tribe being its own nation).

"Deutschland" is etymologically derived from Gothic for "People-land", or in other words "the place where we live/home".

Germany has quite a lot of exonyms, really. In French it's "Allemagne" from the Alaman tribe who was among thr closest to the French border. In Eastern Europe it's often a variation of "Niemcy" from the Slavic for "mute" as in "the place of the people whose language we don't understand".

Ultimately people need to know what to call the next place over faster than the time it takes to learn the native language, so you you've got to think of something before you can ask the question properly. Which names sticks afterward, or spreads to other languages that'll depend on the historical context (who's invading who for example).