A hearty round of applause from here - and you picked on one of my pet
hates. People using "could of" instead of "could have" stems, I
believe, from a general lack of reading. It is easy to see how, when
listening to spoken English, one might assume that the word "could've"
is in fact "could of" (they sound similar) instead of the abbreviation
for "could have". When seeing the abbreviation written down, it is
clear that it can in no way be "could of".
And I'm with you on the opinion of it being just plain wrong. If we
extrapolate Roberts argument to its natural conclusion, then the English
language would descend into an endless stream of "innit", "nah wot I
mean", "like", and other such vagaries that I witness daily.
I know, I'm not perfect. And there are probably errors in my rant
above. But at least I try to get it right. Telling people that it
doesn't matter whether they get it right or not, as eventually their
mistakes will be accepted, is like telling someone that if they commit a
crime often enough it will become legal.
Sorry. Rant ended !
Jon
-----Original Message-----
From: olympus-owner@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:olympus-owner@xxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Andrew Fildes
Sent: 12 December 2005 21:06
To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [OM] Re: OT English as she is spoke
Sounds suspiciously post-modern to me! It is a fact that misuse and
outright error are occasionally contagious, especially among the less
well educated (code for 'dim'). Horrors such as the usage 'could of
been', 'alot' and the like are not examples of fresh and dynamic
language development - they are just plain wrong and I will continue
to put a red circle around them as is my inclination and my
professional responsibility.
So there.
AndrewF
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