> > > >> What about the use of "would have" for "had"? As in, "If I would > >> have written it properly, nobody could have been offended". > >> Correct US use? It sounds diabolical to me. > > > > It's a colloquialism or vernacular in US English. > > According to my English (language, as hey came from both sides of the > pond) teachers, this is grammatically incorrect. The "If" part of a > conditional does not take a form of will; the latter part does. > > Here is a Scottish one that stuns me: "I would have went". > > Kostas >
don't take your language teachers' pronouncements too seriously. Many of the things that people decry as 'bad English' are in fact dialect, and perfectly normal within the dialect. The English language (like any natural language with a large number of native speakers) is made up of many, many dialects which blend into each other (dialect continuum). Standard American, Standard English, Scots English and so on are just different dialects. Most native speakers use different varieties of the language in different situations - we speak differently at home, with friends, and at work. Many people go so far as to speak a different dialect in different situations, and some dialects have achieved a certain prominence and are used as a lingua franca, but they are no more 'correct English' than any other dialect. -- Bob -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
