Los idiomas no son prescriptivos. Los idiomas no nos dicen cómo debemos comunicarnos. Nosotros somos los que les decimos a los idiomas cómo queremos comunicarnos.

Habiendo pasado la mayor parte de mi vida académica y profesional aprendiendo las reglas gramaticales de varios idiomas a diferentes niveles de complejidad y profundidad, me di cuenta de que la manera en que percibía las reglas gramaticales era totalmente diferente dependiendo de la lengua. Deja que te explique.

In the Spanish school system, we start studying Spanish grammar, syntax, and morphology at an early age. If you choose, as I did, to continue studying applied languages in college, you go deep into semantics and pragmatics. But, the way I remember learning Spanish grammar rules all throughout my academic life was descriptive. Those rules were not telling me how to use the language but describing how people were using it. Of course, as a native speaker hanging out with other native speakers, the Spanish grammar rules were not forcing me to change my speech; those rules were describing my speech (the speech of my group) and were put together as “proper” speech by an institution (Real Academia Española) made of people like me.

It was only when I started learning foreign languages that the grammar rules became prescriptive. And over time, once I was more or less fluent in those languages (i.e. being able to have almost all types of conversations at any level of depth), those rules felt constricting for my speech and in a way, they made me feel excluded.

For example, Spanish grammar rules never felt constrictive to me (as a native speaker), even when I am “leista” and “laista” (using the pronouns “le” and “la” instead of “lo” and “le” respectively.)

– Le he visto (a él), instead of lo he visto

– La dije que viniera (a ella), instead of le dije que viniera

This is an acceptable “mistake” simply because I am a native Spanish speaker from the north/centre of Spain.

Why have I spent years correcting my learners when they used “la” instead of “le”, or “le” instead of “lo”? In the exact same situations I would be using “la” and “le” back home when talking to my friends and family.

It never felt right, to be honest.

A few years back, I decided to be honest with myself and my beliefs around language and stop correcting my learners, because I believe grammar is not prescriptive; it is descriptive. It currently describes the use of the language by the majority, or to be precise, not the majority but the dominant group. I believe that the colonial mindset (and all its ramifications) should be dispensed with. If we want to have a sustainable, inclusive and growing future, I don’t want to uphold nor perpetuate the use of prescriptive grammar for my speech or that of my students.

What do you think about this?