Board Thread:The Last Sovereign Discussion/@comment-29984007-20180410151643/@comment-31763506-20180527154420

@Fulminato: There's a difference between linguistic fluency and linguistic pedantry that isn't necessarily perceptible to a non-native speaker. I can't really give examples of the phenomenon in any other language because I'm only fluent in English, but the best example is the pedantic teacher who chooses not to understand a student asking "Can I go to the bathroom?" because the more "proper" phrasing is "May I go to the bathroom?", and pretends that the student is implying doubt about their ability to urinate. The problem with this is that "Can I go" is completely acceptable in everyday conversation and everyone with fluency knows this already, so the only purpose of the correction is asserting superiority over the person who made the "error". (This is partially a side effect of rapid linguistic evolution, the "may I" holdouts tended to be older people.) That's the sort of "prescriptivism" Randall Munroe and I are arguing against in this case.

Insisting that the phrase "begs the question" not be used colloquially to mean "that leads one to ask the question" and only in the context of discussions of formal logical reasoning discussing the fallacy that's called Petitio Principii in Latin strikes me as the same sort of nitpicking.

@Decanter: I'd actually be curious to hear your opinions on how to change the free roaming timer.