The abbreviation would've is a shortened version of would HAVE!!! (I know it's pronounced 'wouldof' by some people) So could posters please either use the abbreviated version or the full word 'HAVE' and not 'OF' As you can clearly see, the letters after the apostrophe are 'VE' not 'OF', so will posters please take note (must say I noticed it more from Wet Sham fans!!). Rant over!!
I wonder where this irritating mispronunciation came from. It's not like wrongly-maligned forms like double negatives, which come into regional English via Middle High German, it's just a peasant's mistake which adds nothing and doesn't even shorten the phrase syllabically. Only seems to be used with the auxiliary 'have' though (e.g. 'where of you come from?') but not as the standalone verb itself (you wouldn't hear/read 'I of a lawnmower in my garden').
I teach English, so naturally this kind of thing infuriates me. I see it in my students here all the time. I think the reason they would never make the mistake of writing 'i of a lawnmower' is because in this case there would be a full pronunciation of 'have' /hav/ rather than the shortened /uhv/ (sorry, don't have the phonemic alphabet on here so I've had to approximate the sounds).
What about there/their/they're and 'Here!Here!' Wear/where was I? Have went is one too, come to think of it.
Yeah, I think it's a schwa thing. They hear that neutral (mid, central) vowel as 'uv' (I would uv died if you told me Hughton was doing better than that grouchy Jock), and instead of the fronted 'av' which would be the traditional colloquialization of 'have', they go for the back vowel 'ov' which they translitterate as the familiar preposition 'of'. I also think it has something to do with the whole nouveau riche concept of overcompensating/hypercorrecting/overgeneralizing, because someone who didn't give a **** would just say 'I would uv' all the time, but these people make a special effort to say 'of', as if this is more correct than merely slanging it. There are still no excuses other than widespread miseducation. One of the few instances where I don't object to people acting as the 'spelling police' in order to stamp out this hideous trend which goes beyond being a harmless nonstandard form.
Cards on the table,I trained as an English teacher back in the 70's.As such I suppose some of the more glaring errors do grate.Especially the current use of expressions such as "Nothing pacific" "Would of" "Nucular explosion" etc. These things are probably understandable in a teenager but what concerns me more is that the BBC increasingly get in on the act, especially on written reports.I am quite pleasantly impressed by the level of writing on here though.
The number of BBC journalists who don't understand the need to use the word "criterion" as the singular of "criteria" amazes and infuriates me. Even the wonderful Victoria Derbyshire has done it And football pundits..."that was the one criteria which led to them losing that match..."
I have no issue with trying to improve but find usually that grammatical excellence does not correlate with freedom of thought and expression of ideas. I have been very successful in my career which is not bad for a guy who managed to scrape a grade C O level in English at the third attempt!
And I have been generally crap at my career, which just goes to show that an education is overvalued.
WTF people don't set up spell check on their PC's is beyond me. As I type this, if any word is incorrect it automatically highlights it and with a right-click the correct spelling is shown
^ how true this is ^ And you don't need a degree or a giant vocabulary to set up a spell-checker. Just a basic sprinkling of computer knowledge and...hey presto...sorted!
