Thursday, September 20, 2007

 

LINGUISTICS case one

A bit of comparative linguistics in practical life

The teacher wrote on the blackboard ...

The teacher wrote on the blackboard: "I ain't had no fun in months," then asked the class, "How should I correct this sentence?" Little Johnny raised his had and replied, "Get yourself a new boyfriend."

This joke was delivered to me by Arcamax, they sent a kind of newsletter with jokes everyday. But what struck me was the perfect demonstration of wrong English grammar, that is commonly spoken among less educated people. In every nation, in every language we can see something that I call “native-speaker mistakes”.

I can see it in German where I could hear this sentence: “ich war mit die Kinder” which is totally wrong as there is a preposition for the use of dative but instead nominative is used. But it is considered normal in spoken language. Czechs do this usually with endings; that means they use improper endings of words.

Back to our example of “…I ain´t had no fun….” There are several mistakes as the correct sentence should sound like this :…” I have had no fun…” first the present perfect tense must be used, second the word “ain´t ” is colloquial negative form, second ain´t and no would mean double negation that cannot be used in English.

This should show to all people who study English that English as every language in the world is based on feelings of people and that the correct grammar must be learned, as many people used improper grammar that – for some reason- appears more normal to them.

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