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[Starver]

I read this in a thread where the person was already being corrected, so I feel awful mentioning it, but I keep related misuses of English and internally groaning about it, so I'm aiming this at people who don't know (and not at those who know but don't care) and sticking my head up over the parapet to do so.

...Must of read it wrong or something...

What was really meant was "Must have read it wrong or something."

You see, there's a common abbreviation (especially in written speech) of "have" to "'ve" ("would have => would've"; "could have => could've"; and (in this case) "must have => must've").  In various accents/affectations this comes out closer to "ov" than "əv", which seems to be misunderstood as "of" by children learning their grammar and thenceforth perpetuated in speech and writing as the substitute preposition instead the original verb.  (Yes, language mutates, but changing from a verb to an unrelated preposition is like losing a leg and gaining an ear in its place[1].  Hardly a constructive, logical or sensible change to language.  IMHO, of course.  IANALinguist.)


Anyway, whether you want to take note of this or not is purely up to you.  Please excuse the vent.  Also, you may well spot errors of my own, as incarnations of the Pedant's Curse.  Two were deliberately left in[2], but who knows how many more exist!


[1] OK, so  grasshoppers apparently have ears in their knees, it just occurred to me, but that doesn't invalidate the above simile.

[2] Not including my decision not to pedant the lack of the personal pronoun in the original quote.  That would have been petty!!!

[Haspen]

Native English speakers forget that world isn't filled with Native English speakers.

[Starver]

Native English speakers forget that world isn't filled with Native English speakers.

It's 'native English speakers' who make this mistake the most, in my experience!

[edit: That's supposed to be just a light-hearted repost, albeit a true one.  And I suppose one of the reasons I mentioned it at all was to do my bit to prevent properly educated secondary Anglophones from picking up this particular grammatical inaccuracy after having been taught correctly... Or to let them know about it so that they don't get confused when they have to speak to someone from deepest South London or wherever]

[Emperor_Jonathan]

It's because it's colloquial language, not formal language. Nothing wrong with it.

[Cthulhu]

It's an easy mistake.  "Must've" and "Must of" are indistinguishable in normal speech.

[Starver]

It's an easy mistake.  "Must've" and "Must of" are indistinguishable in normal speech.

Appreciated.  That's how it entered speech.  But when you clearly hear "must ov", you know they're saying (and thinking) the latter, not the former.  In some cases it's an affectation, and sometimes it's because they think that's right.  The same could be said with "axe/aks" for "ask".

(And while there's "nothing wrong" with colloquialisms in context, that's not the same as it being actually correct.  Look, it was just a personal bug-bear that gives me pains when I think that some people might go through life thinking it's actually the true way rather than an affectation that they can switch off.  I know I've got some native speech patterns that I really shouldn't use outside their home territory, and I'm not averse to using the occasional dialect or slang term for effect.  I somewhat regret starting the thread, but something else had just annoyed me and it pushed me over the edge.)

[Il Palazzo]

Starver, fight hard to promote proper use of English among native speakers! You'll end up being called G-Nazi only if you'll lose(because history is written by the winners, of course).

God knows it's disconcerting for, as you've put it, secondary Anglophones(a capital A? if you say so...) to stumble upon such mistakes. But they're hardly in danger of picking them up. It's a good bet that they've got a better grasp of English grammar than most pre-highschool Brits or Yankees, etc(no offense, I know it's the same with other languages). The worst thing can happen, they'll open up wikitionary and check the correct form.

There's one case of, I think, improper spelling I've been seeing quite often here, and I'm not sure if this isn't actually some regional(i.e.US English vs British E.) flair: "than" spelled as "then".
I've been told those are uninterchangeable, but I could hardly ever see the word "than" at all, so maybe I'm wrong here.
Come now, Starver(or whomever), lend me your wisdom.

[Jude]

This is an actual possible example of ungrammatical usage


In other news, I hate when people say "this car needs washed" or "this bike needs restored"

[Cthulhu]

The ones that bother me are when people use the perfectly grammatically correct "Where are you?" or "Where is that cactus?" and add in "at"  "Where are you at?"  "Where is that cactus at?"  Not only are you wrong, but you can't even use the "It's faster" excuse because you're saying more words than you would if you were being correct.

Ridiculous, people.  Ridiculous.

[Vector]

That's supposed to be just a light-hearted riposte, albeit a true one.

I'm a spelling Nazi.

In other news, I hate when people say "this car needs washed" or "this bike needs restored"

People say that?  What the hell... I've certainly never heard it.

[Starver]

That's supposed to be just a light-hearted riposte, albeit a true one.

I'm a spelling Nazi.

I already mentioned the Pedant's Curse.  (Or is it Pedants' Curse?  Well, in this case it's just me, so it needn't be.)

By the way, an example of one of my own failings: I think my Dad (b. 1930, so learnt his grammar before too much 'Americanization'[1] crept through mass media, post-war) complains about "Have you got <foo>?" being replied to with "Yes I have."  (Which would have been a valid answer to "Do you have...?")

Or is "Yes I do." his bugbear?  You see, I'm so polluted by modern speech I can't even remember!


(Me, I get a mental judder at "Write me!" instead of "Write to me!", but fully understand that it's a probably a valid USian use of the verb.)

[1] Note, being British, I normally go for '-ise' versions of '-ize'able words, but of course this is the obvious exception to my rule.

[Starver]

Having posted that, I've decided that he doesn't like "Have you got..?" answered with "Yes I do."

ICBW.  But it seems to (mis)match the way it ought to.  ("Yes I do <what>"? "Yes I do got"?)

[Sean Mirrsen]

Is the typo in the title intentional? Right now, it calls forth a mental image of an elderly woman in an SS uniform knitting a swastika'd red sock.

[Virex]

You know, the first time I saw someone use "must of", I reread the sentence several times and finaly concluded that it made no sense. I didn't realise it was used in place of "must have" untill seeing it in several other places.

[Heron TSG]

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo!

Eat that, Nazis!