Common Grammar Mistakes In Spoken And Written English

Turn on BBC Radio 4, once the keeper of The Queen’s English, and there is every likelihood listeners will hear highly-educated, intelligent reporters and correspondents say ” I am stood here,” or ” I am/was sat there.” It would appear that nearly everyone now says “there’s lots of things to do today.” It is common in the UK to hear “we was, they was, you was.” And the use of the subjective is on the wane, as demonstrated in “If I was a billionaire.”
Who notices ambiguous sentences such as “after eating my lunch, the waiter took my plate?” What about “dig deeper?” And an error that is heard increasingly in spoken and reported speech, which is not knowing when to use “of” after the word outside. Even former British Prime Minister John Major would say “50 pound,” while and the UK’s most recent ex PM Gordon Brown said on a recent TV debate “less people.”
People remonstrate that language is evolving, and that it is only fuddy duddy pedants who lament that standards of spoken English in 2010 are far worse than they were in the 1950s. But grammar is the structure of the language, and words hang off it. There is no problem with dialects, there is no problem with accents. But the English Speaking Board – a UK organization which as part of its remit aims to promote better standards of speech among young people – says grammar is not fluid in the way that language is. As such it needs to be adhered to, or people stop making sense.
Adults Need to Set an Example
Children cannot be blamed, because they speak as they are spoken to. The father of a child in a nursery class in a north London school was horrified to hear the teacher say “we was going to…” When he took up the matter with the headmistress, she tried to defend her member of staff by saying that teachers speak in the same way as the rest of the community. He said no one should be a teacher if they said “we was.” The headmistress then shrugged her shoulders and said she could not tell a grown woman how to speak. If teachers do not speak correctly, how will children learn to speak properly?
Common Grammatical Mistakes
Take for example “there’s lots,” which has come to mean both there is and there are. Is this merely language evolving, or is it lazy speech that should be nipped in the bud? If teachers, parents and children’s TV presenters make a point of saying “there are going to lots of things to do in the summer..” this grammatical error could soon be corrected.
The gerund or the present participle must not be mixed with the past participle. So the creeping use of ‘I’m stood/ I’m sat” should, of course, be “I am standing” or “I am sitting.” “I am” is in the present tense, so put an “ing” on the end of the verb in question, and the problem in solved. Grammar experts say that what concerns them most is the mixing of tenses in clauses.
“If I was a billionaire…” The subjunctive is needed here, so it should be “if I were a billionaire…” The subjunctive shows that the speaker is acknowledging he/she never will be a billionaire. Or a Martian. Or King of England. Use it for hypothetical situations too, as in “if the prime minister were to abolish the NHS.”
Many people stumble over when to say less and when to say fewer. Less is for the generic, fewer is for specifics. Fewer people. Fewer apples. Fewer cars. Less money, less wealth, less happiness.
As for “it costs 20 pound,” why drop the “s” that denotes the plural? It’s 20 pounds. The same with weight. One lb of potatoes or 2 lbs of potatoes. There is no excuse for sticking with the singular. It’s not a dialect thing, it’s not Cockney rhyming slang. It’s just wrong.
When to put “of” after the word “outside’” never used to cause problems. But listen to the radio or turn on the TV, and ofs are put in where they are not needed and left out when they are. Outside can be a noun, a preposition or an adverb. Put “of” after “outside” only if the latter is being used as a noun. Which means “on the outside of the building.” But drop it when it’s a preposition, for example “outside Spain/France,” or when it’s an adverb, for example “go and play outside.” If in doubt, ask whether whatever it is one is referring to has a literal outside. An object does…as in the outside of the tin. A country does not. There is no outside on France.
A lot of children, and a fair number of adults, get caught up in very long sentences in which the reader loses track of who’s doing what, and hence fall into the hanging/dangling participle trap. As in “after eating my lunch the waiter took my plate.” Did the waiter eat your lunch? If there is confusion over who did what to whom and when, have shorter sentences and be explicit about who is the subject of the sentence. And consult Fowler’s Modern English Usage. Every home should have one.
Know the Difference Between Adjectives and Adverbs
People do not seem to be vexed by their countrymen using adjectives when adverbs are required. So it seems to have become accepted English to say “he dug deeper into the ground” rather than “he dug more deeply into the ground.” To dig is a verb. Adverbs describe verbs and they usually end in “ly.”
There is no doubt that many more grammatical errors are working their way into the English language, but the ones outlined above have become commonplace, and they make the language sound common and sloppy. A speaker’s authority is also impaired by poor grammar. And when it comes to children, one of the easiest ways to reduce the gulf between the social classes – as the late British educationalist Professor Ted Wragg noted – would be to ensure that all children not only know how to speak correctly, but actually do speak good English. And that comes down to drilling grammar into them when young.

buy essays