ESL here, I have a linguistic question regarding a discussion I had with another ESL. That person used the expression "have a good dream" to wish me good night and my brain got quite alarmed due to my unawareness about the existence of such an expression. I knew about the regular expressions "sweet dreams", "have a good night", "rest well", "sleep well"... but I have absolutely NEVER heard of such an expression and it sounds quite awkward to my ears, mostly because of the underlying assumption that said person is supposed to make only one dream during said sleeping time. When I told her that said use was completely unknown to me, she went sperging about descrptivist philosophy", "language evolution" and some "language is nothing but a mosaic for us to use" (which is, in itself, quite true, but to me, languages obey orthographical, grammatical and many other rules which are essential to proper communication between beings, which is undoubtedly their most important use)
Could native speakers give me some help about this matter? Is this person right? Am I wrong? Perhaps just too narrow-minded? I tried looking on the internet but the expression she used has shown relatively few uses for a supposedly common expression and most of those came from VERY doubtful Asian websites.
she's right about people getting shit wrong eventually changing language if it happens often enough, but wrong in general because "have a good dream" has not happened often enough for it to sound right to native ears.
>>8209964
Thank you for the quick reply, I guess I'm not as much of an idiot as I think myself to be. Of course, widespread acceptation (and possible dictionary entry) seem to be the turning point where an expression or word goes from "literally wrong" to "accepted and integrated inside a culture".
>>8210000
>acceptation
acceptance is the word. beautiful quads
>>8210006
As much as I try and use several languages on a daily basis, I guess I'm still an ESL (and a tired one at that) and will ever be. Thanks again. Polite sage.
>>8210008
>As much as I try and use several languages on a daily basis, I guess I'm still an ESL
iktf. you're better than your esl friend at syntax tho.
Couple of things:
1. "my unawareness about the existence of such an expression" doesn't entail that such and similar expressions aren't being used and haven't been used in past
2. It is grammatical. What's so ungrammatical about it? Have you never had a good dream?
3. "it sounds quite awkward to my ears": not everyone is a good prose stylist. Expect awkwardly phrased sentences and by extension shitty prose by default.
The takeaway message: when she uttered "have a good dream" you had no trouble *understanding* what she meant and what she meant was absolutely transparent. She could have instead said "Bertrand Russell" and stipulated that by "Bertrand" she now means the English "good" and by 'Russell" the English "night" if she wanted to. And that would be a perfectly legitimate way of communicating too; it would be a dash patrician for some people, but anybody with half a brain could probably decipher it. In real life, your run-of-the-mill 'communication session' is mostly going to consist of pragmatic quirks and idioms of the language in question and body language than literal language.
>>8210068
1. you sound insufferable
2. your language is private because everybody hates you
2.1 kill yourself for the good of humanity
2.12 seriously silence yourself for good
7. ...
>>8210076
Go to bed, Ludwig.
>>8209957
>...regarding a discussion I had with another ESL. That person used the expression "have a good dream" to wish me good night and my brain got quite alarmed due to...
we need some more info on your situation before we can say for sure.
are you currently in an ESL camp or something like that? linguistics major?
these linguistic disputes can be easily solved with you establishing your domination over her by inserting your dick into her pussy
>>8210076
underrated
