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Help With Grammar

Minoosh said:
No, I was just commenting on different languages.
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OK, sorry, I misunderstood the ETA as a follow-up of the previous paragraph.

Also, I'm sure that Spanish looks from an English perspective as a language with double negatives. I'm not so sure it is that way. It happens that anybody, anyone and anything don't exist in Spanish, so mostly nobody, no-one and nothing -in Spanish- replace them. Besides, English indicative has broader uses than Spanish indicative -Spanish subjunctive take a great deal of English indicative-. That demands for the actions to be effectively perform in reality or in the sandbox of our imagination, then "I saw nobody there" is impossible to parse when literally translated into Spanish, as it fails when the speaker tries to imagine a retinal image of a nobody been seen. On the contrary, it's easy for a Spanish speaker to imagine a nobody not being seen.
 
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aleCcowaN said:
About those praising anything in use as good grammar, I would say that I may deal with "ain't" and "me neither" as part of some grammar, but that I have some problems with "I seen them two boys run out", and I would like to see what them free style grammar lovers sketch to make "I ate a whole nother apple" grammatically sound. Maybe dictionaries will show an entry with "nother: adj. additional".
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According to George Orwell (and I can't find the reference easily) "ain't" was the normal Victorian version of "am not", and not slang at all. Indeed he comments that Queen Victoria would probably have used it. I'm trying to resurrect it!

As far as "I seen them two boys run out" is concerned, you obviously ain't bin ter Wilsher (the UK wun, that be). Incidentally, does yer min "I et an ole nuver happle"?

One of my favourites is the (probably apocryphal) story of the lecturer who said, "In some languages, a second negative cancels out the first; in others a second negative reinforces the first. I know of no language in which a double positive makes a negative." and got the response "Yea, right".
 
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Fellow Traveler said:
<<<The meaning of words changes - through usage. Slang is the most obvious example of this. The same applies, albeit less obviously, to grammar.>>>
I heard a fellow from UK refer to another as a "Dick" as in a mean person. I know this has been an Americanism for many years. How about in the UK?
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I have a friend named Richard Head. (No, this is not made up.)
 
shadron said:
...and even better is a dynamite writer who can do it within the rules. His work stands a chance of being readable after the next 50 years.
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Quiet right, that's why Shakespeare was forgotten after 45 years.
 
Anerystos said:
According to George Orwell (and I can't find the reference easily) "ain't" was the normal Victorian version of "am not", and not slang at all. Indeed he comments that Queen Victoria would probably have used it. I'm trying to resurrect it!
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That's very interesting. Anyway, I'm sure Victoria didn't use "ain't" as "are not" or "have not".

I have the permanent feeling that English is sort of a pidgin language. That the clash of Anglo-Saxon with Nordic, and lately the clash of that mix with Norman French made almost all grammar to fall apart in shards, and English speakers got used to travel light in grammar issues for ever after, moving the accent on specialization of vocabulary instead of using simple vocabulary and grammatical means to express an endless variety of complex notions, like most of the other Western languages do.

That's why even the succinct English verbal system poses me a lot of questions. Just yesterday I heard in movies two verbal structures that I found very strange: "would that were true" with the clash of conditional and subjunctive, which sounds more like Mediterranean immigrant talk; and "do be reasonable" said in a highly educated setting, which I wanted to say numerous times but avoided on the supposed knowledge of "to be" and helping verb "do" being like water and oil.
 
aleCcowaN said:
That's very interesting. Anyway, I'm sure Victoria didn't use "ain't" as "are not" or "have not".

I have the permanent feeling that English is sort of a pidgin language. That the clash of Anglo-Saxon with Nordic, and lately the clash of that mix with Norman French made almost all grammar to fall apart in shards, and English speakers got used to travel light in grammar issues for ever after, moving the accent on specialization of vocabulary instead of using simple vocabulary and grammatical means to express an endless variety of complex notions, like most of the other Western languages do.

That's why even the succinct English verbal system poses me a lot of questions. Just yesterday I heard in movies two verbal structures that I found very strange: "would that were true" with the clash of conditional and subjunctive, which sounds more like Mediterranean immigrant talk; and "do be reasonable" said in a highly educated setting, which I wanted to say numerous times but avoided on the supposed knowledge of "to be" and helping verb "do" being like water and oil.
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I think it should be "would that it were true". It's perfectly fine formal English to my native ear, though a little Shakespearian. "Do be reasonable" is just an emphatic form of command. "Do have a seat, my dear." Again grammatical formal speech.

I always felt that Madrid Spanish was somehow more elegant or expressive than most other dialects in the Americas. The use of the future subjunctive, though rare, is almost poetic:

No creo que vinieren mis abuelos. (I don´t believe my grandparents will come.)
Espero que me diere un regalo bueno. (I hope that she will give me a good gift.)
El que recibiere la mayoría de los votos será presidente. (The one who receives the most votes will be president.)
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Also the use of "vosotros" forms seems much more friendly than "ustedes", in the context of the European culture.

A very nice example of educated "castellano" can be found on the Vanguardia de la Ciencia podcast. Ángel Rodríguez Lozano is a Spanish radio journalist and popularizer of science, best known as the creator and presenter of the program Vanguardia de la Ciencia, which was broadcast without interruption every week from April 1995 until June 2007. His voice is magical, and his perfection in Spanish pronunciation legendary.

Of course, all of this is pure personal preference.
 
Olowkow said:
I think it should be "would that it were true". It's perfectly fine formal English to my native ear, though a little Shakespearian. "Do be reasonable" is just an emphatic form of command. "Do have a seat, my dear." Again grammatical formal speech.
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It was certainly "would that be true". I found an instance in COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English) and several instances in GoogleBooks, though none of them suggest me a high language level. About that "do be ...", I do use do as a means to emphasize an action; I just need to learn that "to be" is not out of bounds like I was taught. Thank you for your comments.

Olowkow said:
The use of the future subjunctive, though rare, is almost poetic:
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I have hundreds -maybe beyond a thousand- of posts explaining Spanish subjunctive to native English speakers -I've just posted a new one at about.com-. I love that and I'm pretty adept at that, if you forget my problems regarding the use of English. I also love future subjunctive and I use it the most I can to the limit of good taste. Of your examples, only the third is right. The second one is overkilling, and the first one is agramatical (your present state of "belief" requires the notion to be rooted in the present: "no creo que mis abuelos vayan a venir").

I miss subjunctive when I use English, though I have to admire its succinctness: "Do it now or forever wish you had"
 
aleCcowaN said:
It was certainly "would that be true". I found an instance in COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English) and several instances in GoogleBooks, though none of them suggest me a high language level. About that "do be ...", I do use do as a means to emphasize an action; I just need to learn that "to be" is not out of bounds like I was taught. Thank you for your comments.

I have hundreds -maybe beyond a thousand- of posts explaining Spanish subjunctive to native English speakers -I've just posted a new one at about.com-. I love that and I'm pretty adept at that, if you forget my problems regarding the use of English. I also love future subjunctive and I use it the most I can to the limit of good taste. Of your examples, only the third is right. The second one is overkilling, and the first one is agramatical (your present state of "belief" requires the notion to be rooted in the present: "no creo que mis abuelos vayan a venir").

I miss subjunctive when I use English, though I have to admire its succinctness: "Do it now or forever wish you had"
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I'd be interested in reading your posts about the subjunctive in Spanish. I studied much more French than Spanish, so I don't really have a native intuition for these, but a lot of subtleties depend on the dialect. From what I remember of a friend's usage, all three would be fine for a speaker from Madrid.

Some call it conditional subjunctive. In English is pretty much only visible in cases involving the verb "to be" when used in the hypothetical sense, since the subjunctive forms for other verbs are not distinctive. The form is always the plural past 3rd person (they were), even if used in the singular. "If I were you, I'd ....." "If he were king, ..." "I wish I were rich..."

But it is often used improperly in hyper corrections such as:

*(wrong, hyper correction) "If I were the thief, I would not leave my fingerprints."

The correct usage is "If I was the thief...."

However, "If I were a thief, I would not leave....." is correct. Explaining these subtleties gets pretty arcane.

There are other uses such as "It is important that the solution be one that we can all accept." The present subjunctive form is always the infinitive, minus "to". No exceptions.


  • We require that this student speak (subjunctive)English in his classes.
However:

  • We realize that this student speaks (indicative)English in his classes.
Your English is excellent. No need to apologize for grammar.
 
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Olowkow said:
I'd be interested in reading your posts about the subjunctive in Spanish.
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You can find them by googling aleccowan subjunctive and adding site:wordreference.com or site:tomisimo.org or site:notesfromspain.com. I have post in the Spanish forum at forums.about.com but it is not googleable. You may find posts of mine in a rougher English, and a lot of grammatical brawls in Spanish with Spaniards , most of them madrileños, prior to the much expected publication of the New Spanish Grammar in 2009 which finally silenced them.

I've already bought my own copy of vBulletin -the software used in forums.randi.org- and some time in the near future I gonna start my own forum on these language topics.

Olowkow said:
.From what I remember of a friend's usage, all three would be fine for a speaker from Madrid.
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I assure you not. They sound more like Butt & Benjamin -bedside book of Spanish subjunctive for English speakers-. In fact the very corpora of Real Academia Española, with a content split half and half between Spain and the American Continent, contains just 20% of instances of future subjunctive coming from Spain. Future subjunctive is more alive in America than in Spain.

Maybe it's the memory of the much similar and ubiquitous imperfect subjunctive -which is my custom title here- what makes you think that.

Olowkow said:
*(wrong, hyper correction) "If I were the thief, I would not leave my fingerprints."

The correct usage is "If I was the thief...."

However, "If I were a thief, I would not leave....." is correct. Explaining these subtleties gets pretty arcane.
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This is a twist I hadn't got yet. Thank you for the thoroughly explanations and comments.
 
aleCcowaN said:
You can find them by googling aleccowan subjunctive and adding site:wordreference.com or site:tomisimo.org or site:notesfromspain.com. ...<snip>
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So far, lots of interesting stuff. Realize that this was about 50 years ago that I was running around with some Spanish folks and teaching French and Spanish. I suppose it could be that the future subjunctive was in phrases like "si fueres ... " type of thing, when I heard it, and historical remnants as fixed expressions such as:

....in especially flowery language, and in a few phrases such as "Venga lo que viniere" (come what may) or "Adónde fueres haz lo que vieres" (roughly, when in Rome do what the Romans do).
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The above was taken from an article that probably captures the current usage:

http://spanish.about.com/od/verbmoods/a/futuresubjunct.htm

Possibly my faulty memory, but it makes me wonder though if perhaps usage has changed over the last 50 years. I will peruse much more of wordreference.com later. I distinctly remember my Cuban office mate laughing at my attempts to impress her with the future subjunctive, so I assumed it was a uniquely Spanish thing.

Incidentally, I knew some Argentinians, and Venezuelans IIRC, and they used "vos" with the plural familiar verb form "vos vais" as a singular familiar. Am I recalling this correctly? I have seen at least two Argentinian movies where this was the dialect spoken. And another ancient memory, <¡Aparécete che!> I think that was from Argentina.

ETA: No, I am familiar with forms like [hubiera, hablara, etc.] It was definitely the [hablare] forms that I am referencing.
 
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Speaking of "Who" , "whom", I think I would recognize when they were used wrongly, ie who stands in for the personal pronouns "He or She" and "Whom" for "Him" or "her" but it seems like a nitpicky rule. It gives academics and proofers something to show their prowess. Also. let me pick on my favorite non sense call and that is "an" before vowels & "h" . If I said I need to find a hospital would that clang on your brain? Here is the kicker: "a" is used before consonant sounds and therefore in the example of hospital; it sounds like a vowel so use "an"
 
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But, do you pronounce the h- in hospital or not? As I learnt two minutes ago, saying "an hotel" and "an hospital" is for people not pronouncing the h, and the writing reflects what the speakers -or their context- use.

[COCA - Corpus of Contemporary American English - 3 instances of "an hospital", 4854 instances of "a hospital"]

[BNC - British National Corpus - 3 instances of "an hospital", 821 instances of "a hospital"]
 
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