The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

[Grove]

The temptation to label as “errors” cultural expressions that are different from our modern point of view is always hard to resist.

Perhaps I need to clarify: those corrections in brown over the red text are not mine.  They are there on the manuscript itself.  So it is not me calling them errors, it was the Proofreading scribe.

In Post-Post-Post-Medieval manukeyboardscripts, one often see "their" spelled as "there", "it's" spelled as "its", "you're" as "your"...  Should we see those "variants" as the (written) English language changing, or as errors made by people who are not completely fluent in it?

All the best, --stolfi

Actually there are a lot of fluent English speakers who make those errors consistently! However, the reason that they make the mistake is that they don’t care which homophone they use as long as the recipient gets their intended message.