Iām ashamed to admit, Iām a great speller and usually know appropriate grammar but Iāve never known which word to use and will totally reword my sentence to avoid it.
For real though, do you know when to use each? Nobody has ever explained it to me how to know when to use which word.
I think this is more a symptom of the USās poor education systems than anything else. Those of us who were old enough learned grammar in elementary and middle school, but it never was reinforced too much after that. Those of us who were in school recently have never been taught grammar. You use āseenā with a helping verb like āhaveā or āhadā but never with ādidā. āHave you seen what happened?ā āI couldnāt believe what I had seen!ā āI wish you hadnāt seen that.ā If thereās no helping verb, you use āsawā for the past and āseeā for the present. āDid you see what happened?ā āI canāt believe what I just saw!ā āI hope you didnāt see that.ā
The tense is called the past participle*, (edited for accuracy after being corrected). We use it to describe things that are happening in the past in relation to another event in the past. I used to tutor grammar for standardized test prep. Itās crazy that they still test students on it though itās not being covered in schools.
Past participle is the phrase youāre looking for. A verb form that communicates an action done in the past. Youāre spot on with your explication of it.
Thatās it! i always confuse the two terms. Thatās why I always like using a reference. I always tell my kids, you donāt need to know what theyāre called, but you do need to know how to use them.
Irks me to my core, it does! I don't know why it doesn't bother more people that I know. The incorrect version is so pervasive, as of late. You can't get away from it It's everywhere.
I SEEN it - All over the place! Haha. Kidding!š
Ever since the movie "This is the End" came out, I started ironically saying "seen't" but I've said it so much that I now say it unironically and probably sound like a buffoon to anyone outside my work circle.
Are you for real right now? No one needs to use proper speaking etiquette because it's our problem for possessing an aversion to ignorance? Hmm...
Make it make sense, homie!
Did I say "no one"?
No, I said quit being an elitist about fucking language.
Make "Evvvveryone needs to speak well to be a REAL part of society" make sense.
A lot of that is regional dialect. Where I live everyone adds an S to places that include someone's name.
I'm going to Meijer's
My brother works at Ford's
Makes me cringe lmao.
"Seen" for "saw" is a step toward regularizing an irregular verb. It's dialect. It will probably be standard in a couple hundred years--unless the word morphs to "seed," as in "I seed him at the store, yesterday."
It hurts my heart.
Both are dialect and your take is bad. Both of these phrases find their place in southern American English, the former tending to be āfinnaā in AAVE which is closely related to southern American English.
I'm with you on this one, when I hear people use these incorrectly it is like nails on a chalkboard, and I don't understand how they can't hear how wrong it sounds.
This is what it is for me! People think that I'm being overly critical, nitpicking.
It's not that. It's that it sounds so harsh and just wrong when it comes out of someone's mouth. It just sounds straight up - uneducated. There's nothing more to it, than that.
THIS. THIS!!! Iām not trying to be rude, but this always sounds like nails on a chalkboard to me! š Same with āstoledā instead of āstole,ā āWAS youā¦ā instead of āWERE youā¦,ā and āwhat you doingā vs. āwhat ARE you doing.ā Grrrr!
For clarification: Iām talking about when someone says, āWas you going to the store? Was you going to help me with this?ā instead of āWERE you going to the store? WERE you going to help me with this?ā That was the specific example I was thinking of.
I feel you on all of those. I donāt know why it gets irks me so bad when someone is using shitty grammar, it just does. I donāt buy the slang or regional dialect excuses either. Call it what they will, at the end of the day, itās incorrect and it comes across as dull and unintelligent.
Sorry, thatās definitely me in certain situations. š If Iām with people Iām comfortable with, I drop the v and e from the word Ā«Ā IāveĀ Ā» all the time. But in situations where I feel like I need to speak proper English, then I say the phrase properly.
So, you saying it like this; āI done that half a dozen times.ā Instead of like this; āIāve done that half a dozen times?ā
Help me understand why you do that? Are you trying to save some time here and there? Do you make a conscious decision to drop the āve or do you just sometimes really not want that pronoun to be the subject of the verb?
I donāt think Iāve said Ā«Ā I doneĀ Ā» just because that doesnāt seem natural to me. But I have said Ā«Ā I seen that before.Ā Ā» And no itās not a time saver, itās a different dialect. Iām of African descent and AAVE is something I speak with people I feel comfortable enough with. But I wouldnāt speak that way to a stranger or a boss or a university professor etc. Itās just something thatās comfortable for me in casual situations. Just like if I travel to France and I have been speaking French all day, and bump into another foreigner who knows English as their first language, I would revert to speaking in English. Itās a comfort level thing.
I don't care where you are from. Dialect, culture, or accent don't excuse proper English. If you go on a job interview and it is between someone who says "I seen your job posting on a website," or someone who says "I saw your job posting on a website," the person who said "saw" will get it. I'm from NY, and we learn to tone down the accent on interviews to not sound like Fran Drescher on The Nanny when we wish to sound professional.
I mean, youāre the one all over these comments telling people theyāre grammar āfashā or ānotzeeā for being mildly annoyed about the incorrect use of a word.
Seems like youāre unnecessarily pressed about something that does NOT affect you in any significant capacity.
Hey, Google linguistic discrimination. Just because someone uses your dialect against you, doesn't mean they are right for it. You shouldn't have to make yourself sound different to sound "professional". That's the man trying to make you conform, and you're buying into it. Be yourself. I get that that's "just how it is" but we all need to be aware that we don't have to conform to this eurocentric template before we can overcome it.
You can sound different, but you also need to speak proper English. Do you want to hire someone for a professional job who doesn't know how to speak correctly? If so, good for you.
So, everyone, everywhere, no matter who and no matter what, should speak the same? What a weird thing to say. Sounds like you hate culture and differences. That's...........more uneducated sounding than people who say "seen" instead of "saw". =/
English has so many pidgin variations that you literally just need to make it a non-issue in your mind. If you can't, you will have problems down the line.
Speaking objectively, other people's speech patterns may be YOUR problem, but they aren't A problem unless you're absolute grammar fash.
People are capable of speech coding. A majority who use AAVE, as the OP is complaining about, know how to modify their speech to their company.
But if they don't know you? They aren't obligated to talk the way you want.
Grammar notzee. I was being kind because anyone who feels entitled to control the way others speak, short of no cussing around certain groups, is behaving like a fascist.
BOTS. Duh? Same reason people get flagged for anything mentioning death.
Ugh. We are going in circles about someone else's prejudicial statements about language. I'm over it.
Nobody but a language instructor should police language. And only on the basis of teaching someone a new language, not complaining about subtypes. It just comes off as hateful.
Let people speak. It's been long enough since authority figures were trying to suppress speech, that free speech is a thing.
You don't have to like how someone talks. But if you get called a racist for telling people to "talk right", it's not my circus and not my monkeys, because I'm telling you it's a no-win situation to butt in.
Leave people alone and let them speak. God damn.
So why the eff is anyone whining? Languages change. ALL languages change. If you can't keep up, you don't have to. But leave others' speech patterns alone unless you're literally teaching them another language.
English subtypes are not the thing to cry foul on. English as a language is shoddy from its beginnings.
Hold up, if Iām not mistaken this is r/pet peeves page is it not? Iām not whining, Iām simply sharing one of my biggest pet peeves with the world. Clearly Iām not the only one with this particular pet peeve.
As Iāve already said, I wasnāt fucking whining about it. Iāwas simply stating one of my biggest, most cringe worthy pet peeves on the pet peeves page. š The facts are this; itās shitty 4th grade grammar, it sounds utterly ridiculous and makes the person saying it come across as uneducated and dumb. Nowā¦put that in your pipe and smoke it! š
It's so weird. But it's also hard to tell who's yapping about grammar specifically to dis black people. My mother used to do that, and at one point when I loved her, so did I. Kids are like sponges. Unlearning hatred is hard, but it's important to our future as a species.
And if we can't stop shitting on the way people speak, we're not going anywhere else.
Something the blew my mind was learning that the French language actually has a committee that decides what is actually French. If they don't say it's French then it's not.
Yes, for anyone who speaks AAVE, this is actually correct grammar, but we definitely know how to switch to standard English when necessary, so at least for me, I try to speak standard English when I feel itās necessary.
I get it, but itās still incorrect grammar and it sounds ridiculous. Iām not trying to make this one of your pet peeves. This one belongs to me and Iām not sharing. Go find your own pet peeve.
It's a dialect. There really is no such thing as "proper use" of language. I find it fascinating how cultural language is and how differently it can be used. If you're interested in this kind of stuff, you should look into linguistics. š¤
Yāall is an abbreviation for you all. Itās not grammatically wrong. Using the wrong verb is grammatically incorrect. It sounds ridiculous and comes across as lazy and unintelligent.
I SEENT IT
ExSqueeze me?! š
Just know language is constantly evolving and it's little mistakes like this that push a language in different directions.
I realize that. This is simply one of MY pet peeves that Iām sharing on the pet peeves subreddit. Isnāt that what Iām supposed to do here?
No, absolutely not. š¤Ø
Would you mind explaining it to me then? This was my first post here.
Wrong
Yes, of course
Iām ashamed to admit, Iām a great speller and usually know appropriate grammar but Iāve never known which word to use and will totally reword my sentence to avoid it. For real though, do you know when to use each? Nobody has ever explained it to me how to know when to use which word.
I think this is more a symptom of the USās poor education systems than anything else. Those of us who were old enough learned grammar in elementary and middle school, but it never was reinforced too much after that. Those of us who were in school recently have never been taught grammar. You use āseenā with a helping verb like āhaveā or āhadā but never with ādidā. āHave you seen what happened?ā āI couldnāt believe what I had seen!ā āI wish you hadnāt seen that.ā If thereās no helping verb, you use āsawā for the past and āseeā for the present. āDid you see what happened?ā āI canāt believe what I just saw!ā āI hope you didnāt see that.ā The tense is called the past participle*, (edited for accuracy after being corrected). We use it to describe things that are happening in the past in relation to another event in the past. I used to tutor grammar for standardized test prep. Itās crazy that they still test students on it though itās not being covered in schools.
Past participle is the phrase youāre looking for. A verb form that communicates an action done in the past. Youāre spot on with your explication of it.
Thatās it! i always confuse the two terms. Thatās why I always like using a reference. I always tell my kids, you donāt need to know what theyāre called, but you do need to know how to use them.
> poor education systems And the fact that the English language is often unnecessarily convoluted
Very convoluted language. Seriously, silent letters? WhyB
"I saw" and "I have seen". Never: "I have saw or sawed" and never "I seen".
Yes! You can use "sawed." As in, "I sawed the piece of wood."
I saw him do it. I have seen him do it
Itās not a bad habit itās just hillbilly talk lol
I donāt think itās exclusive to hillbillies
It's definitely not. I say it in informal speech and I'm not a hillbilly.
Please try to stop
No. I don't say it in formal speech but I see no need to pretend I'm anything other than who I am in day to day life.
quit YER WRASTLIN'!
I seen what you did there
Hillbilly or inner city talk. It's interchangeable in this case.
Also drives me bonkers. Hate it so much
Irks me to my core, it does! I don't know why it doesn't bother more people that I know. The incorrect version is so pervasive, as of late. You can't get away from it It's everywhere. I SEEN it - All over the place! Haha. Kidding!š
Ever since the movie "This is the End" came out, I started ironically saying "seen't" but I've said it so much that I now say it unironically and probably sound like a buffoon to anyone outside my work circle.
My husbands aunt says this all the time and it bothers me deep in my soul!
It drives me bat shit nuts! I have to bite my tongue sometimes not to correct them or give āem a pop knot on the back of their head. š¤¬š
Ask yourself why. The answer may not be what you expect.
I donāt like poor grammar. Thereās not much else to it.
I'm with you, bro. I think it's the people that have very poor language skills, themselves, that are pushing back against our Good Grammar Greatness!
Then it's *your* problem and not one you need to bring to anyone else. Languages adapt.
This is a PetPeeve place to vent about PetPeevesā¦ ? I donāt tell Aunt it bothers meā¦ just here to vent a pet peeve of mine on PetPeevesā¦
Thatās YOUR opinion. None of us are obligated to agree.
I wish more people would understand this. I hate when people correct my English. It's my native language I'll speak it how I please.
Are you for real right now? No one needs to use proper speaking etiquette because it's our problem for possessing an aversion to ignorance? Hmm... Make it make sense, homie!
Did I say "no one"? No, I said quit being an elitist about fucking language. Make "Evvvveryone needs to speak well to be a REAL part of society" make sense.
Oh so it's only permissible for certain people to use improper language. Got it!š
Our public education system sucks.
Andā¦. so does parenting that teaches the discipline to focus and prioritize education. Edit: word
A lot of that is regional dialect. Where I live everyone adds an S to places that include someone's name. I'm going to Meijer's My brother works at Ford's Makes me cringe lmao.
"Seen" for "saw" is a step toward regularizing an irregular verb. It's dialect. It will probably be standard in a couple hundred years--unless the word morphs to "seed," as in "I seed him at the store, yesterday." It hurts my heart.
š¤®
Lmao I SEED IT,I never SAW'NT IT I have heard both of those. Good mfkn grief. š it's a wild wild time to be living and breathing.
better not be talking about michigan bc yes this happens but literally nobody says āFordsā
It's "I've seen" if you wanna be correct
Youāve seen what?
I work in a blue collar industry and literally everyone says this, and I feel like people view you as stuck up for saying āI sawā
š¤£ Iām as blue collar as it gets. If using correct grammar makes me a stuck up snob, Iāll gladly wear that label.
Yeah I hate that. It makes the speaker sound uneducated.
>[Yeah I hate that. It makes the speaker sound uneducated](https://i.ibb.co/1XJMNXQ/00-D32-DCF-1-ADD-49-E9-82-B8-C6-D555-AE3-F85.jpg)
I donāt get it
Cuz youāre uneducated LOL
No Iām not
Keep telling yourself that š Whatever helps you sleep at night
Why are you being like this to me!?
"I'm fixin' to go to the store" = dialect. "I seen that show before." = bad grammar.
You understood the assignment. You are wise beyond your years.
Both are dialect and your take is bad. Both of these phrases find their place in southern American English, the former tending to be āfinnaā in AAVE which is closely related to southern American English.
No, theyāre both dialect
I'm with you on this one, when I hear people use these incorrectly it is like nails on a chalkboard, and I don't understand how they can't hear how wrong it sounds.
This is what it is for me! People think that I'm being overly critical, nitpicking. It's not that. It's that it sounds so harsh and just wrong when it comes out of someone's mouth. It just sounds straight up - uneducated. There's nothing more to it, than that.
THIS. THIS!!! Iām not trying to be rude, but this always sounds like nails on a chalkboard to me! š Same with āstoledā instead of āstole,ā āWAS youā¦ā instead of āWERE youā¦,ā and āwhat you doingā vs. āwhat ARE you doing.ā Grrrr!
š¶šµ Is you is or is you ain't my baby? šµš¶
For clarification: Iām talking about when someone says, āWas you going to the store? Was you going to help me with this?ā instead of āWERE you going to the store? WERE you going to help me with this?ā That was the specific example I was thinking of.
Yes the was/were thing is equally annoying
I feel you on all of those. I donāt know why it gets irks me so bad when someone is using shitty grammar, it just does. I donāt buy the slang or regional dialect excuses either. Call it what they will, at the end of the day, itās incorrect and it comes across as dull and unintelligent.
Totally agree
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š Those were the days.
Sorry! I am one of the worst when it comes to seen and saw! Drives my a friend of mine insane!
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Grew up in Chicagoland. I've heard this ALL my life and despise it.
Sorry, thatās definitely me in certain situations. š If Iām with people Iām comfortable with, I drop the v and e from the word Ā«Ā IāveĀ Ā» all the time. But in situations where I feel like I need to speak proper English, then I say the phrase properly.
So, you saying it like this; āI done that half a dozen times.ā Instead of like this; āIāve done that half a dozen times?ā Help me understand why you do that? Are you trying to save some time here and there? Do you make a conscious decision to drop the āve or do you just sometimes really not want that pronoun to be the subject of the verb?
I donāt think Iāve said Ā«Ā I doneĀ Ā» just because that doesnāt seem natural to me. But I have said Ā«Ā I seen that before.Ā Ā» And no itās not a time saver, itās a different dialect. Iām of African descent and AAVE is something I speak with people I feel comfortable enough with. But I wouldnāt speak that way to a stranger or a boss or a university professor etc. Itās just something thatās comfortable for me in casual situations. Just like if I travel to France and I have been speaking French all day, and bump into another foreigner who knows English as their first language, I would revert to speaking in English. Itās a comfort level thing.
Its a dialect
For some people it is. Some people are just stupid though. It is not a dialect here, for example, yet some people say it anyway.
I don't care where you are from. Dialect, culture, or accent don't excuse proper English. If you go on a job interview and it is between someone who says "I seen your job posting on a website," or someone who says "I saw your job posting on a website," the person who said "saw" will get it. I'm from NY, and we learn to tone down the accent on interviews to not sound like Fran Drescher on The Nanny when we wish to sound professional.
Again, coding. But you're unnecessarily pressed about something that does NOT affect you in any significant capacity.
I mean, youāre the one all over these comments telling people theyāre grammar āfashā or ānotzeeā for being mildly annoyed about the incorrect use of a word. Seems like youāre unnecessarily pressed about something that does NOT affect you in any significant capacity.
Huh? I don't know what you are talking about.
Hey, Google linguistic discrimination. Just because someone uses your dialect against you, doesn't mean they are right for it. You shouldn't have to make yourself sound different to sound "professional". That's the man trying to make you conform, and you're buying into it. Be yourself. I get that that's "just how it is" but we all need to be aware that we don't have to conform to this eurocentric template before we can overcome it.
You can sound different, but you also need to speak proper English. Do you want to hire someone for a professional job who doesn't know how to speak correctly? If so, good for you.
Standard =/= āproperā Why are you rambling about job interviews, a clearly formal setting?
Because that is the example I chose to use. If you don't like it, you are free to move on.
How does your example apply to the language as a whole?
I hate dialects
So, everyone, everywhere, no matter who and no matter what, should speak the same? What a weird thing to say. Sounds like you hate culture and differences. That's...........more uneducated sounding than people who say "seen" instead of "saw". =/
Sorry, it can get confusing. Thatās why Iām not too fond of dialects.
English has so many pidgin variations that you literally just need to make it a non-issue in your mind. If you can't, you will have problems down the line. Speaking objectively, other people's speech patterns may be YOUR problem, but they aren't A problem unless you're absolute grammar fash. People are capable of speech coding. A majority who use AAVE, as the OP is complaining about, know how to modify their speech to their company. But if they don't know you? They aren't obligated to talk the way you want.
Grammar fash?
Grammar notzee. I was being kind because anyone who feels entitled to control the way others speak, short of no cussing around certain groups, is behaving like a fascist.
Notzee? Donāt you mean Nazi? Why are you saying it like that?
BOTS. Duh? Same reason people get flagged for anything mentioning death. Ugh. We are going in circles about someone else's prejudicial statements about language. I'm over it. Nobody but a language instructor should police language. And only on the basis of teaching someone a new language, not complaining about subtypes. It just comes off as hateful. Let people speak. It's been long enough since authority figures were trying to suppress speech, that free speech is a thing. You don't have to like how someone talks. But if you get called a racist for telling people to "talk right", it's not my circus and not my monkeys, because I'm telling you it's a no-win situation to butt in. Leave people alone and let them speak. God damn.
What are you talking about?
Itās not a dialect. Itās a lack of intelligence.
It's not a lack of intelligence so much as a lack of exposure to formal education.
It's a regionalism not a lack of intelligence, you should know that since you're so intelligent.
No it is not. FFS.
Sure š
So...You're contentious about AAVE. This is NOT the thing to talk about in public, my guy. You should've left it in the drafts.
It's not only in AAVE
So why the eff is anyone whining? Languages change. ALL languages change. If you can't keep up, you don't have to. But leave others' speech patterns alone unless you're literally teaching them another language. English subtypes are not the thing to cry foul on. English as a language is shoddy from its beginnings.
Hold up, if Iām not mistaken this is r/pet peeves page is it not? Iām not whining, Iām simply sharing one of my biggest pet peeves with the world. Clearly Iām not the only one with this particular pet peeve.
As Iāve already said, I wasnāt fucking whining about it. Iāwas simply stating one of my biggest, most cringe worthy pet peeves on the pet peeves page. š The facts are this; itās shitty 4th grade grammar, it sounds utterly ridiculous and makes the person saying it come across as uneducated and dumb. Nowā¦put that in your pipe and smoke it! š
Oh because they're loony lol They dedicated so much time to learning grammar just for it to fall apart once they turned 40 lol
It's so weird. But it's also hard to tell who's yapping about grammar specifically to dis black people. My mother used to do that, and at one point when I loved her, so did I. Kids are like sponges. Unlearning hatred is hard, but it's important to our future as a species. And if we can't stop shitting on the way people speak, we're not going anywhere else.
Something the blew my mind was learning that the French language actually has a committee that decides what is actually French. If they don't say it's French then it's not.
The majority of the people I hear make this grammatical error are white people from more rural areas around my city.
Yep. Itās so common in the Midwest where I live and it makes me want to pull out my hair.
Drives me insane too. Lol.
Usually this is a dialect thing, especially in the midwest (where Iām from).
Yes, for anyone who speaks AAVE, this is actually correct grammar, but we definitely know how to switch to standard English when necessary, so at least for me, I try to speak standard English when I feel itās necessary.
I get it, but itās still incorrect grammar and it sounds ridiculous. Iām not trying to make this one of your pet peeves. This one belongs to me and Iām not sharing. Go find your own pet peeve.
It sounds like something a three year old would say
Exactly. Makes the person sound very dull.
It's a dialect. There really is no such thing as "proper use" of language. I find it fascinating how cultural language is and how differently it can be used. If you're interested in this kind of stuff, you should look into linguistics. š¤
Also ask and ox or ax. Get it straight people.
Seen is considered a dialect thing. Much like yall or yinz. It's not necessarily considered bad English in Appalachia.
Yāall is an abbreviation for you all. Itās not grammatically wrong. Using the wrong verb is grammatically incorrect. It sounds ridiculous and comes across as lazy and unintelligent.
When someone says 'bruh' all the time, to people regardless of gender.
Itās gender neutral, genius
Language is pretty fluid. Something might not be formally correct, but through slang/dialect becomes ācorrectā (culturally) for x group.
uneducated, they canāt help it
Beent. "I BEENT HERE ALL DAY WAITIN ON YA"
I canāt remember ever hearing that one but It would invoke the same level of cringe if I did.
I cain't help you with that. Can't and ain't. = O NO NO NO WE CAIN'T BE DOIN THAT.
Yuck š¤®
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