An 11-year-old British student corrected Justin Bieber's grammar:
In the song, you can be heard - on a number of occasions - stating 'If I was your boyfriend': here you have clearly used the subjunctive mood incorrectly.
The correct lyrics should, in fact, be 'If I were your boyfriend'.
This is a very common mistake made by the general public today; however, if role models (and popular singer/song-writers) such as you cannot use it, why should we make the effort to study and use such grammatical forms correctly?' link
36 comments:
Brit public (which means private) school student I assume.
As a white kid, I suspect Bieber, intentionally or not, had to write that way in order to succeed in that industry.
I'm not defending bad grammar.
I spend so much time hearing people who use English as a second language that my ear for correct grammar is shot, as you may have noticed.
Of course growing up in rural Pennsylvania probably never gave me a grammar ear to start with if yuns know what I mean.
I'm sure people have noticed, but English is my second language. Unfortunately, I don't have a first language either.
Good for the kid.
My parents would roll their eyes when I'd correct their friends.
But they never stopped me, either.
James Thurber describes what happens in a marriage when one player slips unnoticed from the subjunctive to the indicative.
See "A Ladies' and Gentlemen's Guide to Modern English Usage"
"You may reply to this" should be "you might reply to this"
Magisterial presumptuous little bint. Who is she to be doling reply permission?
Some Upper Key Stage Two pupil or something?
The signaling never ceases. Here is something I noticed yesterday. The page is titled "Transliteration" Compiled for the Egyptologists' Electronic Forum and the Ancient Egyptian Language list. After the list in the explanatory notes, this: "
Like in paper sources, the root of a word and any grammatical endings are seperated by a dot {.}, and nouns and verbs are seperated from suffixes by two stripes {=}. (Unfortunately, in the US, modern writers tend to be sparce with dots and often use a dot instead of =. Another area in which no consensus exists.)
Poor things. The words are crunched together.
Grammarians are wearisome. I realized what happened the other day through emails and was thunderstruck. WIth DUH! Of course that's what happened! But through all the trashy signaling and high level pet peeves that they have, they also show a few stunning insights here and there so worth hanging around.
The Iliad video brought up the poetry, rhythm, and pounding of the stick for meter, rhyme as structure and structure as mnemonic device for long oral recitations.
Then this matched.
In one of the emails yesterday, the writer said as he was doing his study exercises and a sequence in Middle Egyptian kept rolling in his mind and rhythm developed and a meter. And that made him wonder how much of the things painted on the walls might actually be song or maybe poetry. He felt he brushing upon an unappreciated layer and was suddenly filled with wonder about what is painted all over their walls. By allowing his mind to fill in the soft vowels on their own and get at the sounds of the transliteration marks for sounds we don't use and do that while engaged in study it formed into a song. For him. I thought that was a fine insight.
Their work is discussing this exact same thing. Entire discussions about the meaning of the placement of an owl. Their life and breath and I just cannot get into that.
Our approaches are essentially different. I'm coming to understand that they approach the language somewhat as lawyers learning all it's rules best as possible and establishing areas of hard agreement, and knowing the gray areas. The letter writer is such. They're approaching mastery from above.
The girl writer, and the Egyptian language students.
Others such as myself approach it as art. We go for the pictures or the sound of things we approach from beneath, as a children do, and grow into it and whatever mastery happens is mostly accidental and by way of discovery and playing.
I looked at their papers and how their teacher corrected them. That would irritate me. All of her corrections are with the nattering coding and not with their translations She's insisting they communicate with her exactly the same code that she uses and no corrections at all with their translations. All her effort is on that. The students are there to learn the language but what they have drilled with corrections is how to talk to her and others in her field. (If they'd type in JSESH they'd know if it's right or wrong. I find it incredible they have this side issue hangup.)
In one of the carpool videos the host questions Beiber's choice of lyrics using the phrase "fondu" The host said the word is inappropriate because the image that cheesy fondu evokes doesn't fit. Beiber defended his choice (he's Canadian, the host is British) "Well you see, in America we have this thing called chocolate fondu" and went on to describe it lamely. "Come on, you just used fondu because it rhymes." Shrinking back into his seat and folding himself into his clothes he breezily concedes chuckling, "Yeah."
You could have added several more levels of humor to your post by giving it the title: "Whose That Nazi?"
Newsweek cover story: "We are all Nazis Now."
Nazi lives matter.
This child should have directed his scathing grammatical indictment against rap. That would have been more effective. #AllGrammarMatters
Well you can't critique rappers for their inability to speak English. Tha would be racist.
The Beebs was just doing that to reach his peeps. That is why he is so successful.
He is the Donald Trump of popular music.
Trooper,
I actually want to thank you for taking it to the other blog. I followed for far too long into the decline, and occasionally stop back for kicks. Didn't know this place existed, but filled with great old commenters. Happy to have found it.
Meade said...
Little Lying Troomper Jim, “one of the dumber bloggers”“in love with Donald Trump”
“DEMONSTRATED A PENCHANT FOR SEXISM”“so inappropriate”“terrible, failed badly”“was called a racist”“hypocrite”
“couldn't get his bar to fulfill his bartender dream”“forgot to mention my phenomenal biz success rate”“dummy”
“isn't smart enough to know what's going on at the border”
“know nothing”“a dope!”
March 10, 2016 at 6:11 PM
_________________
WTF Meade? Explain yourself!
Starting 1:55PM
I mean, That's that kind of love letters Titus used to leave for me.
You're welcome.
Man, I had no idea any of this was going on. How long has M. been this ugly?
It's like the housewives of Madison in here, or queens or the queens of Madison. I don't know, but one of those. I hate reality TV because of all the reality in it. The angry backstabbing reality.
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