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jacquesm 3 hours ago

> Wouldn't you mention it if someone was misusing a Dutch word?

Not a chance. Language is a tool, not some kind of holy house. If the meaning comes across that's already more than you could hope for.

The whole idea that language is something to be condensed and frozen is relatively new, it used to be much more fluid which made it harder to have a decisive set of words (sorry, Scrabblers (tm)) but language could adapt faster to circumstances. What we consider the 'final form' of all of these languages isn't final at all, it is just what we are used to and more of a convention than anything else.

Some countries (including mine, unfortunately) have groups that will go out of their way to harass people to use the 'correct form' ignoring that what those forms are is subject to change and that not everybody grew up with the currently agreed upon preferential way to spell things, and meaning is so much more complicated than spelling.

I think the easiest way to deal with these kind of frustrations is to see them as compliments: at least someone was aware enough of your language to name something in it, that's more than you could say for many other languages, if only because the scripts are different.