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Urban Legends
In my experience, the wealth of language knowledge is concentrated among the linguistic elite, and the masses are always fighting over scraps. For every 1 person who knows what they're talking about, 10,000 are fumbling in the dark, the blind leading the blind. My favorite phrase for describing this effect is "an echo chamber of stupidity". Below is a collection of commonly held language myths, urban legends, apocrypha, fairy tales, and flat-out lies. If you can think of another popular pile of linguistic bullshit, please send it to info@postcardlanguage.com .
1. "Never end a sentence with a preposition".
Long story short, this rule only applies to Latin. 1200 years after Latin died off, some asshole just assumed that English should start working the same way. Wrong. For more details, read this article.
2. "I before E, except after C."
This rule only applies to the half of English that comes from French and Latin. The Germanic half of English provides way too many counterexamples: neighbor, weigh, freight, sleight, weird, deity, feign, heist, sleigh, veil, etc.
3. "English is the hardest language to learn in the world."
Not if you speak Dutch.
