Why Grammar Matters: A Place To Discuss Matters Of Grammar

[annzeepark914]

I love tossing in an ain't when the spirit moves me. "Getting old ain't for sissies" wouldn't get the message across if it were grammatically correct. 

[fairffaxx]

I believe the accurate quotation from Bette Davis is "Getting old ain't for pussies".  Both so true!

[EtheltoTillie]

To show you how long schoolkids have been making this mistake, here's an ancient reference to the good/well distinction from my favorite grammar book:  Warriner's English Grammar and Composition copyright 1957.

Edited Tuesday at 06:07 PM by EtheltoTillie

[shapeshifter]

2 minutes ago, EtheltoTillie said:

Warriner's English Grammar and Composition copyright 1957.

Note too at the bottom of the page that Slow can be used as both an adjective and an adverb. 

[EtheltoTillie]

3 minutes ago, shapeshifter said:

Note too at the bottom of the page that Slow can be used as both an adjective and an adverb. 

I thought of you when I saw this.   Want me to post the next page?  This book is so much fun.  I found a used copy on Amazon a while back--we hadn't been able to keep our school copies.  Those always were handed back at the end of the year. 

Edited Tuesday at 06:15 PM by EtheltoTillie

[shapeshifter]

1 hour ago, annzeepark914 said:

I love tossing in an ain't when the spirit moves me. "Getting old ain't for sissies" wouldn't get the message across if it were grammatically correct. 

1 hour ago, fairffaxx said:

I believe the accurate quotation from Bette Davis is "Getting old ain't for pussies".  Both so true!

My snob gene is kicking in here. I would say:
Getting old is not for the faint of heart.

 

3 minutes ago, EtheltoTillie said:

I thought of you when I saw this.   Want me to post the next page?  This book is so much fun.  I found a used copy on Amazon a while back--we hadn't been able to keep our school copies.  Those always were handed back at the end of the year. 

Sure!

[EtheltoTillie]

2 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

The use of "good" for "well" can make me twitch as much as "me" for "I" and vice versa, but in the instance of "It's going good," at least there's the excuse that it makes an alliteration. 
Plus, it is likely a response from a friend whose troubles have been concerning.

The worst offense would be "I did good on the grammar test." 

[fairffaxx]

10 minutes ago, shapeshifter said:

Note too at the bottom of the page that Slow can be used as both an adjective and an adverb. 

As in "His downfall was attributable to fast women and slow horses" (paraphrasing "Busted" by Harlan Howard).

[EtheltoTillie]

Here's that second page--lots of fun examples. 

Edited Tuesday at 06:37 PM by EtheltoTillie

[EtheltoTillie]

Snob gene:  I have a childhood friend who always says "I feel badly about this . . . " etc  And she (was) graduated from an Ivy League college that has four letters in its name.

But I can't bring myself to say something.  Too awkward. 

[Mondrianyone]

13 minutes ago, EtheltoTillie said:

Snob gene:  I have a childhood friend who always says "I feel badly about this . . . " etc  And she (was) graduated from an Ivy League college that has four letters in its name.

But I can't bring myself to say something.  Too awkward.

I have a friend who says that, too. I would never say anything, because it's the height (or depth) of rudeness to correct someone's grammar if you're not being paid to do so. But I get the sense she's very proud of that "-ly," and I'd like to figure out a way to do a little lecture about the difference between predicate adverbs and predicate adjectives someday so she'll figure it out on her own. Yale/Schmale anyway.

I love your grade-school English book! Imagine if somebody nowadays said, "She looks well in that dress," how s/he'd be set right in a Noo Yawk minute.

[EtheltoTillie]

"She looks well in that dress."  That's such an old time NYC yenta expression. 

12 minutes ago, Mondrianyone said:

. But I get the sense she's very proud of that "-ly,"

 

This!  She'd more likely argue that I'm wrong rather than be embarrassed at having made a mistake. 

[EtheltoTillie]

This friend and I had the same 7th grade English teacher (but in different sections).  And this was a teacher who had us diagramming sentences! 

[Mondrianyone]

Were you the only girl in your freshman English class at our college who knew how to diagram a sentence? I was in mine--amid all those girls who went to Miss Porter's and wherever. That was kind of an eye-opener. 

[EtheltoTillie]

8 minutes ago, Mondrianyone said:

Were you the only girl in your freshman English class at our college who knew how to diagram a sentence? I was in mine--amid all those girls who went to Miss Porter's and wherever. That was kind of an eye-opener. 

It's quite possible!  I don't know why we learned that in JHS.  I think schools were already moving away from that curriculum.  In college I hung out with all the NYC public school grads, as we were commuting at first.

Speaking of Miss Porter's, people who attend call it Porter's.  How do I know this?  I have a lawyer friend whose mother-in-law was an alum and she paid for the granddaughters to go.  Lawyer friend calls it Porter's.  The Porter's family has a last name that would be very recognizable in snob circles, even though they are from a lesser branch. 

 

Edited Tuesday at 08:00 PM by EtheltoTillie

[EtheltoTillie]

The Porter's family "summers" in your state.

 

 

 

 

 

[EtheltoTillie]

Well it happened.  I heard "welcome in" this weekend.  In a clothing boutique in Southampton, New York.  So there's proof of regional spread.

Gee, I can't stop thinking about that friend who says "badly."  I don't know why her husband has never corrected her.  I am certain he knows the difference.  He went to college with me and my husband (and we introduced them).  He probably feels funny about it too.

Edited Tuesday at 08:34 PM by EtheltoTillie

[EtheltoTillie]

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Quof]

I spent the day in deposition.  More than once, when I read a document into the record, I prefaced it with "Allow me to say for the benefit of anyone who reads the transcript, I am quoting what someone else has written.  This is not how I use the English language".  It made me sad.

[Mondrianyone]

1 hour ago, EtheltoTillie said:

The Porter's family "summers" in your state.

 

 

 

 

 

Well, I summer and winter here, so there!

[SoMuchTV]

2 hours ago, Mondrianyone said:

Imagine if somebody nowadays said, "She looks well in that dress," how s/he'd be set right in a Noo Yawk minute.

Ha!  The only situation where I’d say "She looks well in that dress" would be if the dress was masking some horrible illness.  

And since we are in the grammar thread, I realize it should probably be “if the dress were…” 

[ABay]

The clip didn't quite work, but I encourage you to look for it.  From Kiss Kiss Bang Bang:

 

Gay Perry: Go. Sleep badly. Any questions, hesitate to call.

Harry: Bad.

Gay Perry: Excuse me?

Harry: Sleep bad. Otherwise, it makes it seem like the mechanism that allows you to sleep...

Gay Perry: What, fuckhead? Badly's an adverb. Who taught you grammar? Get out. Vanish.

[shapeshifter]

10 hours ago, Mondrianyone said:

I love your grade-school English book! Imagine if somebody nowadays said, "She looks well in that dress," how s/he'd be set right in a Noo Yawk minute.

My 36-year-old daughter would just give a lecture on not talking about people's looks or clothing.
But she learned grammar and spelling from MS Word because she had to go to a Chapter 1 (remedial) school the first year we moved to Sacramento because of overcrowding, followed the next year by GATE curricula, so she had 2 years of 2nd grade material followed by 5th grade material. 
I did teach her multiplication and division, but I was working full time and in grad school.
Plus, I had a similar experience when my family moved for my 5th grade year, so I had 4th grade material twice, followed by advanced 6th grade material, with no sentence diagramming that I can recall. 
I guess my immigrant parents and grandparent learned English from radio broadcasts.

 

 

8 hours ago, Quof said:

I spent the day in deposition.  More than once, when I read a document into the record, I prefaced it with "Allow me to say for the benefit of anyone who reads the transcript, I am quoting what someone else has written.  This is not how I use the English language".  It made me sad.

Would you feel better if you changed
"This is not how I use the English language"
to
"This is not how I abuse the English language"?
😉
Or would you still be sad because the quotations are a reflection on the deterioration of spoken grammar?

Edited Yest. at 05:30 AM by shapeshifter

[Milburn Stone]

8 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:

Eh, I don't mind "only in theaters."  It's stating fact.

I don't hate it for grammatical reasons. I hate it because it reeks of desperation.

[EtheltoTillie]

1 hour ago, Milburn Stone said:

I don't hate it for grammatical reasons. I hate it because it reeks of desperation.

That's so funny--I hadn't thought of it that way at all. I think they are trying to communicate that if you really want to see this, it's going to be only in theaters for a while (probably a short while) . . . and there are those people who will go, and the rest of us are informed, oh well, we'll just wait for streaming.  

[Zella]

7 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:

The Porter's family "summers" in your state.

 

 

 

 

 

When I was in grad school, I had my first encounter with people who summer. I couldn't even concentrate on the conversation because I was so hung up on them using summer as a verb. Then they asked me if I summered anywhere.  I have never felt so poor. LOL

[Yeah No]

11 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

The use of "good" for "well" can make me twitch as much as "me" for "I" and vice versa, but in the instance of "It's going good," at least there's the excuse that it makes an alliteration. 
Plus, it is likely a response from a friend whose troubles have been concerning.

The one I hate the most is when people use the phrase "doin' good" to describe how they feel. The only way that phrase is correct is if one is engaging in good deeds. All I hear these days is the incorrect usage and it feels like chalk across a blackboard every time, lol. It brings out the snob gene in me because it sounds low class to my ear. No one uses the word "well" anymore. I think they think the use of "good" in that sense sounds more casual and less snobby, but to me it just sounds stupid.

[Yeah No]

8 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:

It's quite possible!  I don't know why we learned that in JHS.  I think schools were already moving away from that curriculum.  In college I hung out with all the NYC public school grads, as we were commuting at first.

I learned sentence diagramming in 6th grade and JHS in NYC and I think I'm a few years younger than you.

8 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:

Speaking of Miss Porter's, people who attend call it Porter's.  How do I know this?  I have a lawyer friend whose mother-in-law was an alum and she paid for the granddaughters to go.  Lawyer friend calls it Porter's.  The Porter's family has a last name that would be very recognizable in snob circles, even though they are from a lesser branch. 

How do I know this? My lawyer friend grew up within walking distance of Porter's and that's what he calls it. I don't live that far from it. I drive by it all the time.

[Ancaster]

10 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:

The worst offense would be "I did good on the grammar test." 

Wouldn't that be the grammer test?

 

[Ancaster]

12 hours ago, annzeepark914 said:

I love tossing in an ain't when the spirit moves me. "Getting old ain't for sissies" wouldn't get the message across if it were grammatically correct. 

I'm sorry, but can you explain why "ain't" ain't grammatically correct?  Doesn't it just mean isn't?

[shapeshifter]

29 minutes ago, Ancaster said:

Wouldn't that be the grammer test?

 

Administered by Kelsey Grammer?
🤣

[Ancaster]

With this win, Gauff became the first woman apart from Iga Swiatek to capture the title since 2021

Since they're writing about the women's tennis final I'm guessing one or two women have won it in the 100+ year history.

Edited Yest. at 06:25 AM by Ancaster
To add "year"

[fastiller]

7 hours ago, Ancaster said:

I'm sorry, but can you explain why "ain't" ain't grammatically correct?  Doesn't it just mean isn't?

"Ain't" is informal.  Some consider it to be too informal to be correct.

As to 'summering', when I was a child, we spent every summer in Ireland/England.  Mum worked for various airlines during this time, just so the family could afford the flights.  She'd bring the four of us kids over from NYC on the first weekend after school let out here, deposit us with various Aunts/Uncles and come back to NYC & at the end of summer come back to collect us.  Some years she'd stay the full summer, like when the youngest (me) was very very young.  So, I guess I summered in Ireland/England.

[Yeah No]

7 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

Administered by Kelsey Grammer?
🤣

Damn, beat me to it!!!

[Absolom]

I'm old enough to remember the English teachers repeatedly saying ain't is not a word.  It used to be below informal and people were considered uneducated who used it.  I had one English class where using ain't in writing was an automatic F on the assignment.

[shapeshifter]

26 minutes ago, Absolom said:

I'm old enough to remember the English teachers repeatedly saying ain't is not a word.  It used to be below informal and people were considered uneducated who used it.  I had one English class where using ain't in writing was an automatic F on the assignment.

Teachers are not infallible.

[Absolom]

I definitely didn't say they were.  That was representative of the times regarding the word in question though.  It was not considered a real word.  Our attitude toward language has changed considerably since then.

[fastiller]

56 minutes ago, Absolom said:

I'm old enough to remember the English teachers repeatedly saying ain't is not a word.  It used to be below informal and people were considered uneducated who used it.  I had one English class where using ain't in writing was an automatic F on the assignment.

Regarding that automatic F: what if it was a creative writing assignment?  And one or more of the characters would've been inclined to use the word?

Also, there's a guy on Facebook (& elsewhere, I guess) who goes by Cedrusk.  He's Lebanese, lives in Ireland.  He has a reel that discusses the whole Aren't / Amn't / Ain't derivation.  Amn't is used quite a lot by Irish people.

Found that Reel:

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/19rWoxMAEj/

 

[Absolom]

30 minutes ago, fastiller said:

Regarding that automatic F: what if it was a creative writing assignment?  And one or more of the characters would've been inclined to use the word?

LOL  I'm just saying what happened.  I'm afraid if you want to debate the issue, you'd need to find a medium to contact the teachers' ghosts. 

[Ancaster]

5 hours ago, fastiller said:

  Amn't is used quite a lot by Irish people.

 

 

And Scots.

[Milburn Stone]

On 6/10/2025 at 7:38 PM, EtheltoTillie said:

That's so funny--I hadn't thought of it that way at all. I think they are trying to communicate that if you really want to see this, it's going to be only in theaters for a while (probably a short while) . . . and there are those people who will go, and the rest of us are informed, oh well, we'll just wait for streaming.  

Eye of the beholder and all that. I think I have the reaction that I do because of those horrible Nicoie Kidman things AMC used to show before the movie. So transparent.