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Spoken language does not translate to writing
The tragedy of "should of "
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Hannah Green Thursday 3 May 2012 |
I read the article by my colleague Jim Crew. I do agree that the missing letter apostrophe is ugly and, by its overuse, has damaged people's understanding of the possessive case.
However, use of words like didn't is a simple progression of language and is consistent with changes in English over many centuries. I would expect, within the next 20 years, to see word didnt appearing in our dictionaries, perhaps with a reference to its 'historical' origin.
What does, however, seriously irritate and worry me is sloppy English that conflicts with the basic syntax and semantics of our language. A classic example is 'should of' as in "he should of done it".
I appreciate that many people pronounce, "should have" as if it were "should of", but to then feed that back into written language is nonsense.
IT JUST DOES NOT MAKE ANY SENSE.
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Jennifer green 13 June 2012, 01:48PM | |
I agree completely. If people had any concept of grammar they would immediately realise that 'should of' cannot mean anything. Forget all about shall and its subjunctive form, this is simply people speaking badly. I can put up with that part but when you write, you have to obey the rules of the language. | |
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Kerstin 15 June 2012, 02:00PM | |
I am always fascinated by the Newcastle dialect use of yous to fill a gap in regular English where we do not have a plural. Think about I and we, where the plural is clear; then think about the corresponding you and you where we do not distinguish between the number of people. So we would say "you spoke to me" or "yous spoke to me" if there was more than one of you(s). I think the dialect is right and the standard Englsh is wrong. | |
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