December 2003 Archives

Many newspapers have been carrying transcripts from a trial here in the UK recently and there are a number of examples of a dialectal usage of the verb 'be' quoted that would be marked wrong if a student used them in an exam, yet they are common enough in many areas of England, particularly in the Midlands and the North, as well as among Cockneys.

It would seem that something that conjugates quite simply on paper does not conform so simply in practice.