assuming the word gonna does not die out first, about how long untill gonna becomes excepted as a gramatically correct word?
i would guess that till your associates begin to come familiar and comfortable with your gramatically relaxed nature, your gonna have to be as formal as possible.
BTW, this is the most grammar choppin’ I’ve bin had done on the SDMB.
yep thats me taking grammer chopin’ to new levels. since i’m a pizza delivery man my associates should be fine with it. anyway it’s meant more of a question of how long it takes new words to become formaly accepted words.
If you ain’t usin’ it yet yer slackin’.
Dear Sir:
Are you gonna buy some of my delicious edible panties or not?
Signed,
Me
Blown & Injected: “Till” is perfectly grammatical at least since the 17th century. See for example Paradise Lost:
Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us
(book I, ll1-5)
Quite right about the rest though.
I sooooo want to use this as a sig…
Refusal said
That’s not quite true. Just because it was used in a poem isn’t what makes a word part of formal English. Just like any other dialect, what is correct is what people think is correct. AFAIK, most business people would consider till to be a formal word. Especially since most people would spell it 'til, making it look even more just like a contraction of until.
There is no absolute answer to this question. But my guess is that “gonna” will only be considered “formal” when it means something at least slightly different than “going to”. Look at the word “ain’t”. It can be used in a formal context, but only in the sense that it is meant to have a more emphatic meaning than “is not”. So, it fills a void in the vocabulary. “Gonna” doesn’t fill a void, as it means precisely the same as “going to”-- except, perhaps, in changing the tone to a more “famiiar” one. For example, I can imagine a manager ending an intra-company business memo about how the next quarter will be a knock-out, by saying “We’re gonna kick some ass!” It would be hard to imagine using “gonna” in an inter-company business memo.
There’s no set amount of time between when a word starts being used informally and when it becomes acceptable in formal circumstances. Some words move from informal to formal use in a few years. Other words have stayed in informal use for hundreds of years. So don’t hold your breath for “gonna” to become acceptable in formal use.
What are you talking about? Can you cite an example?
There is really no answer to the question of how long it takes an informal usage to be accepted in formal English. As noted above, “ain’t” has been around for centuries and has never been accepted. “Byte” probably was accepted with ten years, although that’s unusual and anyway it has a new meaning. From usages common enough to be denounced to full acceptance took “contact” as a verb about a century, I think. “Gonna” is interesting because it is a function word, not a semantic word (you wouldn’t say, “I’m gonna the store”, but “I’m going to the store” or “I’m gonna go to the store”) so we are talking here only about its use a future auxiliary and it is a useful distinction between “gonna” and “gowing to”. So, the same people who rail against loss of useful distinctions, such as uninterested/disinterested, ought to welcome this gain of a useful distinction. They don’t, of course.
Everything I have said goes for “wanna”, “hafta” , and doubtless others.
Thanks for the responses. If gonna, wanna, hafta, ect become formal words at all my great great grand kids are gonna be the first to benefit from it, it seems anyway.
Eell heres to paving the way for future generations. I wanna be a man ahead of my time.
Eell should be Well