40
Nice one. Who’d’ve guessed.
I wouldn't've, that's for sure!
As a non-native speaker, that hurts !!!
Y'all're taking it too far.
😱 You are triggering my fear of more than 1 apostrophes in a word
I'm not a grammar nazi, but "should of" is driving me up the wall.
I know right, I know people make careless grammatical mistakes all the time, including me, which is completely fine but people outright thought that "should of" is correct and use it all the time starts to get annoying
But more importantly, where do you stand on the Oxford comma?
Oh, Dude! I'm 99% for it. On the night before my uncle's funeral, while labeling photos for the slideshow, two of my cousins got into an Oxford comma fight. John, Joe, and Jeff. Take out the second comma. But it's right! But it looks stupid! Fight! Fight! Fight!
It's mandatory in a series, only. Something is only a series of there are three. Plenty of time the cadence and diction sounds like a series but isn't.
If the first two or last two are antecedent to one another, you don't need the comma. Said another way, if the first or last noun is not severed from the second, you need a serial command to indicate that.
It depends on what you're trying to say.
That and "all of the sudden."
Not just any other sudden. It's THE sudden.
I’m certainly no grammar freak and English also isn’t my native language but this deives me insane… Same with your vs you’re… it’s soooo easy…
Yeah once you understand the concept it's not too crazy. But it is still crazy.
You should halve your outrage at poor grammar usage.
I reflected on the the whole thing after hearing opinions from both sides of users. I now realise I don’t care as much anymore which may be a good thing.
Damn I should of known this
DownvotersCanLigmaBalls
Downvoted 🥵
Typing "should of" is a sign of failing to understand the basics of English grammar.
ITT: Awful linguistics takes
"Should of" is bone apple tea material.
Golly, I should of known that
Even as a non native speaker "should of" feels really weird to me, it just doesn't make sense. Is this a mistake English speakers do as well?
I had a professor who would use “should of” in speech, probably because he read it so much and internalized it as being correct.
load more comments
(1 replies)
While it is true that "should of" etc. can easily originate from a confusion between "'ve'" and unstressed "of", which sound identical, the statement
"Should of" is incorrect
itself is at least a bit misleading and prescriptivist in its generality.
Interestingly, there seem to be at least some native English speakers who genuinely do say "should of" (with a stressed "of") sometimes. This paper for example argues that people who say "should of" really do use a grammatical construction of the form modal verb + of + past participle. One argument the author mentions is that this would also explain the words "woulda", "coulda" and "shoulda", since "of"->"a" is quite common in general (e.g. "kind of" -> "kinda"), but "'ve"->"a" basically doesn't occur elsewhere (e.g. no one says "I'a" or "you'a" instead of "I've" or "you've"). Another is that the reverse mistake, i.e. using "'ve'" in place of "of" (e.g. "kind've"), is much rarer, which is a clear difference to e.g. the situation with "they're"/"their"/"there", where people use these words in place of the others in all combinations frequently. I recommend this blog article for a much longer discussion.
Also, whether genuine mistake (which it almost certainly is in many cases, although probably not all) or different grammatical construction, YSK that "should of" etc. didn't just become popular recently, but have been used for centuries. E.g. John Keats wrote in a letter in 1814: "Had I known of your illness I should not of written in such fiery phrase in my first Letter.". Many more examples (some older as well) can be found e.g. here or here.
TL;DR: While in many cases "should of" etc. can well be a mistake, originating from the fact that it sounds identical to "should've" when unstressed, there is some interesting linguistic evidence that at least in some dialects of English native speakers really do say "should of" etc. (i.e. in those cases it is not a mistake, merely non-standard/dialectal).
Isn't "have" either an auxiliary verb or verb and "of" a preposition?
Is the following acceptable? If yes, why? If not, why?
-
I of heard that story before.
-
Diane of already gone.
-
John ofn't phoned.
-
I ofn't visited London before.
-
Of you seen Roz?
-
Of she been invited?
-
They still ofn't of any news when I spoke to them yesterday.
I don't know man, Oxford Dictionary (click Grammar Point to expand) https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/have_2 says that
A common mistake is to write ‘could of’ instead of could have or could've
~~I could of told you that.~~
I could've told you that.
The reason for the mistake is that the pronunciation of ’ve is the same as that of of when it is not stressed. This is a common error but it is definitely considered wrong in standard English.
I don’t know man, Oxford Dictionary ...
Tells us what's popular; sometimes also what happens to be correct.
Isn't "have" either an auxiliary verb or verb and "of" a preposition?
Yes.
Are these acceptable? If yes, why? If not, why not?
No, because you constructed them by merely replacing the verb "have" by the preposition "of" in situations which have nothing to do with "of" after "should"/"would"/"could". I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, since neither I nor the people I cited ever claimed that this should work in the first place. The claim of in particular the author of the first paper I cited is that for some speakers there seems to be a novel construction modal verb + "of" + past participle, not that the preposition "of" has the same function as "have" in this case or in any other (in this case, the novel construction as a whole would have more or less, but not entirely the same function as modal verb + "have" + past participle, but "of" would still be just a preposition).
I don't know man, Oxford Dictionary (click Grammar Point to expand) says that [...] it is definitely considered wrong in standard English.
Yes, it certainly is considered wrong in standard English, but the interesting thing is that in some non-standard dialects there might be genuinely a novel grammatical construction which actually uses the preposition "of". I mean, you don't need to find that interesting, but I do. And if that is indeed the case, it would mean that the speakers of those dialects are not making a purely orthographic mistake like when people confuse "they're" and "their", for example, but are rather speaking or typing in their dialect.
"Should of" is grammatically incorrect, regardless of whether the user/speaker is aware of its incorrectness. It's a fact, and a fact per se cannot be misleading. It's as simple as that. Linguistic conventions, as you've illustrated, can be formed over time, but that again doesn't take away from the fact that such usage is grammatically incorrect to begin with.
Just read the second (or the first, but that is more technical) link I shared. Some native speakers do in fact seem to say "should of" even when the "of" is stressed, so in their dialect it would be grammatical.
...the reason "in some dialects of English native speakers really do say 'should of' etc" is phonetics. Kids hear "should've" and repeat it phonetically, before learning the actual words or their meaning. Combine that with the awful state of education and literacy in the USA (and other countries etc) and voila, you've got some armchair internet expert justifying it with some big words trying a weeeee bit too hard to make it work.
Then you've got teachers who still gaf and know their shit who will correct this before middle/high school, and no, last I checked it was never added to the dictionary or considered correct. Language of course is living and ever changing, but the line must be drawn somewhere lest we devolve into shouting and grunts like neanderthals
Kids hear “should’ve” and repeat it phonetically,
This is the failure of "no child left behind"; it seems that's all it did !
People who say "should of" makes me want to loose my mind
Right on queue.
right on que!
Also, pleeeaaase, someone find me that ancient image macro of a boy, maybe he had a moustache, or maybe it was drawn on, he was raising an eyebrow, and the only caption on it was "que?". I've been searching for that forever.
Was it the character Manuel from the TV show Fawlty Towers, played by the late Andrew Sachs? There are plenty of images of him saying "Que?"
Haha, that's a really good replacement until I find the one I am looking for. The image I'm thinking of really showed a boy, not a grown man.
Anyone else also say "shouldn't've" instead of "shouldn't have"? No? Just me?
“shouldn’t’ve”
In Canada - we will've stolen it from Ireland or Scotland - we'll jam three contractions onto the end of a word. I forget which case it is, but I run across or write it almost weekly. It's like a "will have been" kind of super compound phrase.
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
40 points (90.0% liked)
You Should Know
32162 readers
426 users here now
YSK - for all the things that can make your life easier!
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must begin with YSK.
All posts must begin with YSK. If you're a Mastodon user, then include YSK after @youshouldknow. This is a community to share tips and tricks that will help you improve your life.
Rule 2- Your post body text must include the reason "Why" YSK:
**In your post's text body, you must include the reason "Why" YSK: It’s helpful for readability, and informs readers about the importance of the content. **
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding non-YSK posts.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-YSK posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.
If you harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
If you are a member, sympathizer or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- The majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.
Partnered Communities:
You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.
Community Moderation
For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.
Credits
Our icon(masterpiece) was made by @clen15!
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS