In English, the plural “there are” is collapsing into the singular “there’s” such as “there’s five cars over there”. A lot of language changes happen this way. It annoys people who think about language.
“There’s” is at least easier to say and is only a grammar issue, English has always been really flexible about grammar. The “literally” thing is lexical, they just straight-up turned a useful word into a decorative but meaningless one. Now I always have to ask people if they mean “literally” literally, only I can’t know if they’ll answer me correctly because if they’re misusing “literally” then they probably don’t know the literal definition of “literally”. It’s insidious!
In English, the plural “there are” is collapsing into the singular “there’s” such as “there’s five cars over there”. A lot of language changes happen this way. It annoys people who think about language.
“There’s” is at least easier to say and is only a grammar issue, English has always been really flexible about grammar. The “literally” thing is lexical, they just straight-up turned a useful word into a decorative but meaningless one. Now I always have to ask people if they mean “literally” literally, only I can’t know if they’ll answer me correctly because if they’re misusing “literally” then they probably don’t know the literal definition of “literally”. It’s insidious!