leiito
Member
- Joined
- Aug 1, 2010
- Member Type
- Academic
- Native Language
- Slovenian
- Home Country
- Slovenia
- Current Location
- Slovenia
Just noticed a debate on "ain't", which a lot of non-native speakers seem to be very keen on using, perhaps on account of it often being used by various cool characters (usually African American and/or criminal) on TV a lot.
I agree of course that "ain't" should be avoided by non-native speakers. even if you use it in a common phrase like "it ain't over till it's over". It may be tempting to show off your familiarity with modern urban American slang, but it's just unnatural for a non-native to use "ain't" and makes it look like you have learned English in a ghetto.
A seemingly similar situation occurs with using the 3rd person of singular as if it were the 1st person, namely expressions like "She don't know...". This "new 3rd person English", again, appears to be especially popular with the African Americans, but more often than not, rather than being a novel way of using English, it betrays lack of education and verbal skills in general.
On the other hand, however, a language is a living phenomenon and one could make a case for "does/doesn't" in 3rd person singular being redundant since one is already expressing the "3rd personism" with the use of a name or personal pronoun.
In other words, who knows, perhaps a hundred years from now "does" and "doesn't" will be relegated to the side tracks of linguistic evolutionary process and saying "He don't speak English" will be the norm.
Same goes for the "s" in the 3rd person of present simple, as in, "he speaks English". This "s", as we all know, is a new form of old English "th" (as in "Methinks the lady doth protest too much"),which shows, by the way, that the 1st person also used to have an s (methinks), which later on was abandoned, obviously.
What do you think? is grammar (and spelling btw, why not spell it "enuff" instead of "enough"?) something set in stone, never to be changed, or should we take a pragmatic approach and support such changes that take nothing away from a language but make it more user-friendly for the non-native speakers?
I agree of course that "ain't" should be avoided by non-native speakers. even if you use it in a common phrase like "it ain't over till it's over". It may be tempting to show off your familiarity with modern urban American slang, but it's just unnatural for a non-native to use "ain't" and makes it look like you have learned English in a ghetto.
A seemingly similar situation occurs with using the 3rd person of singular as if it were the 1st person, namely expressions like "She don't know...". This "new 3rd person English", again, appears to be especially popular with the African Americans, but more often than not, rather than being a novel way of using English, it betrays lack of education and verbal skills in general.
On the other hand, however, a language is a living phenomenon and one could make a case for "does/doesn't" in 3rd person singular being redundant since one is already expressing the "3rd personism" with the use of a name or personal pronoun.
In other words, who knows, perhaps a hundred years from now "does" and "doesn't" will be relegated to the side tracks of linguistic evolutionary process and saying "He don't speak English" will be the norm.
Same goes for the "s" in the 3rd person of present simple, as in, "he speaks English". This "s", as we all know, is a new form of old English "th" (as in "Methinks the lady doth protest too much"),which shows, by the way, that the 1st person also used to have an s (methinks), which later on was abandoned, obviously.
What do you think? is grammar (and spelling btw, why not spell it "enuff" instead of "enough"?) something set in stone, never to be changed, or should we take a pragmatic approach and support such changes that take nothing away from a language but make it more user-friendly for the non-native speakers?