Mostly I take issue with the disappearance of "have."
Now, I know that "I could've" and "I could of" are pronounced in roughly the same way. This, however, does not prevent "I could of" from being totally meaningless.
I remember having to memorize a list of all the common helping verbs for school. "Of" is not one of them. It does not change the sense or tense of any verb. It is a preposition. It has no place in the predicate.
This error wouldn't bother me quite as much as it does if it were confined to illiterate eighth-graders. But I saw it on National Review Online the other day (and not on one of the blogs, either). This is inexcusable.
Have we forgotten how to teach our children their own language?
3 comments:
You have no idea how much this bothers me...well, actually you probably do.
The English teacher in Budapest told me I don't use "test paper" English (I guess correct grammar...?)and proceeded to lecture about all the different tenses (some of which I never knew existed). She also said I use a lot of slang when I talk. I still got an exemption though so that's good.
Another improper construction that really bothers me is "try and do something" when the speaker/writer really means "try to do something." The former doesn't really make sense at all.
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