I said I was a REFORMED English major! LOL I changed after a year to theater. Anyway, yes it's true, usage does inform linguistic evolution, but that doesn't mean that whatever sounds correct is correct.
If grammar rules truly kept up with spoken language, there would be a gender-neutral term for third person. People say, "If anyone wants a cookie, they can get it themselves" instead of "he or she can get it for him or herself." I know which one I and everybody else says, but I also know which one is technically "correct."
Let's never forget Winston Churchill's famous quip to an over-zealous copy-editor, "This is the kind of nonsense up with which I will not put!"
What bothers me about the song I mentioned is that it's correct in the first part of the phrase but incorrect in the second. It's just one of those things, everybody has their own little irrational annoyances. I still like the song, though, and the video is fabulous. And no, when I'm singing to myself, I do NOT sing it as "If you were a woman and I were a man!" LOL
> Hmm...if you were an English major, were you not taught
> that common usage dictates linguistic evolution, and
> therefore whatever sounds correct is correct?
>
> Unno
>
>
>
> > However, as a reformed English major, stuff like that
> > always sticks out. Kind of like now that I'm a graphic
> > designer, it bothers me to see anachronistic fonts used in
> > films set in the past!
> >
> > The most frustrating example for me was always "If You
> > Were A Woman And I Was A Man." That one always drove me up
> > the wall because it starts correctly but ends incorrectly!
> > But I must say it does sound better. Somehow, "If You Were
> > A Woman And I Were A Man" just sounds wrong.
>
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