[Grammar] Hi Mom! What a nice surprise! I thought you were mad

[Nikitus]

Hello.

Are the following sentences grammatically correct?

"Hi Mom! What a nice surprise! I thought you were mad, because you haven't answered my calls."

Thanks.

 

[Matthew Wai]

I would use 'hadn't' instead of 'haven't'.

 

[GoesStation]

You should write ... you didn't answer​ my calls.

 

[Skrej]

Or "haven't been answering".

 

[Tarheel]

She calls him, and he says: "Hi mom! What a nice surprise! I thought you were mad. You haven't been answering my calls (until now)."

It certainly seems natural enough to me.

 

[Raymott]

You should write ... you didn't answer​ my calls.

Maybe you should if you're American. "...you haven't answered my calls" is what you say in AusE. I also consider it more appropriate and more polite.

A: Why didn't you answer my email?
B: What email?
A: The email I sent yesterday.
B: I was going to answer it this morning. You need to say, "Why haven't you answered my email [yet]?" You can't say I didn't do it, because the time period for answering it hasn't expired. "Why didn't you do it?" is meaningless without a time period. You could ask "Why didn't you answer it last night?" That would make sense.
A: Oh, OK. Is it such a big deal?"
B: Yes, because you are accusing me of not answering my emails simply because I haven't done it by the time you expected it.

Nikitus is quite correct. Of course, it depends on whether the time has passed beyond which one could reasonably have expected the action to have been done.

 

[GoesStation]

Answering a call has to happen when the calling party places the call, though, so the situation is a little different.

 

[Raymott]

Answering a call has to happen when the calling party places the call, though, so the situation is a little different.

Good, you understand my point. Yes, that's true unless you have an answering machine (which I was assuming), and the calling party is asking why she didn't return the messages that were left on the machine.

 

[emsr2d2]

Good, you understand my point. Yes, that's true unless you have an answering machine (which I was assuming), and the mother is asking why she didn't return the messages that were left on the machine.

I don't think the mother is asking anything. I think the son/daughter is asking why the mother didn't answer the phone whenever the son/daughter rang. If answerphone messages were involved, I would expect the offspring to say "... because you didn't call me back after I left messages" or something similar.

 

[Raymott]

I don't think the mother is asking anything.

Yes, you're right - just a small mistake. I'll fix it.

 

[Tdol]

I thought you had gone mad works better for me.

 

[emsr2d2]

"I thought you had gone mad" has a different meaning from "I thought you were mad" though. The first means "I thought you had become crazy" and the second means "I thought you were angry".

 

[Tarheel]

I thought you had gone mad works better for me.

She had gone off her meds before. Perhaps she did it again.
;-)