I am a Deep Southerner by birth. I am from rural Northwest Louisiana. We are not known for our correct speach patterns. However, I have lived in the Boston area for the last 8 years and I hear this over and over even from people educated at Harvard.
Q: Can you make a meeting on August 8th.
A: No, I am not here on August 8th.
Somehow, you managed to travel in the future and not be there before the day even arrived. That is the present tense you fuck! The correct usage is "No, I am not GOING TO BE HERE on August 8th.
Variations on this are: “I am not here on Thursday.” Buzz! Incorrect.
This is not isolated. I was in District Court today and both the judge and lawyers used this speach pattern at least ten times. It drove me batty. Can you explain why educated people here think that this is correct?
I’m in Minnesota and I hear (and use) the present tense like that fairly often, though the future tense and “going to” tense sound correct as well. I believe in some languages the present tense is always used like that.
Sorry for the problem. That was just something I was stewing about for some time. I don’t preview, BTW, but I know how to spell real goodly prefrect so but I don’t always do it here because most people can decipher intent rather than formalities. After all this isn’t the Nwe Yrok Tmies we are talking about. I hope you catch my tfird!
Midwesterner here. The described speech pattern doesn’t sound wrong to me. I know in French and [I think] German you can use the present tense for stuff that’s not too far in the future. Correct me if I’m wrong, as always.
I think that pretty much shoots this rant down. But to chime in, I don’t know whether this method of speech is technically correct, or if it’s just a commonly accepted method of abbreviating a proper grammatical construct. But many people I know here in the Chicago area, especially businessmen, use this construct in the same manner you did in the OP. Why say “going to be” if the meaning is clear and the sentence is shorter?
It’s a very common technique called “ellipsis”, in which words or a series of words that don’t contribute meaning are simply dropped. The date has been specified, so the choice of tense is superfluous.
“I am not going to be here on Augus 8.” = “I am not (going to be) here on August 8.” = "I am not here on August 8.
Pennsylvanians, stop dropping half of the verb form. It is not “the car needs washed”, it is either “the car needs TO BE washed” or “the car needs WASHING.”
This wouldn’t be so bad if I hadn’t caught myself doing it at times. Every time I hear it, I’ve got to stop, start again, and give myself a mental dope slap. So quit it, damn it!
And I’m from the Southwest, so Pennsylvania is pretty damn north to me.
Frankly, I think you should introduce the phrase “fixin’ to” into their vocabulary. The phrasing would then be:
“No, I’m not here August 8. I’m fixin’ to go on vacation.” (depending on where you’re from the pronunciation could be “fittinta”).
This in no way reflects my opinion of New Englanders. In fact, I would love to move back there, but for the moment I’m stuck in Tennessee. Hopefully, I’ll be gone from here soon.
I use it all! Every one of these constructions I’ve used at some point in time! A lot of times it’s when I am searching for the exact word I am looking for and fill in “fixin’ to” or “going to” or the like when I am searching. The “car needs washed” is purely a slip of the tongue on my part, but I don’t correct it in hopes that no one will notice
I sympathize with Shagnasty’s jolt. As a fellow Southerner, I am constantly “fixing to go and get ready to do something,” which is fine in my own addled brain, but when I’m writing fiction, my grammatical proclivities add unnecessary pacing. My characters are constantly waiting around for people to go and do things, instead of just doing them and getting them done. :smack:
Shagnasty, remember that them Northerners do live a more face-paced life than we do, so it’s highly possible that they are transporting themselves into the future to prudently look at their datebooks while we’re still rolling out the extra syllables in our questions.
As long as we’re peeving off on regionalisms, I’d like to tell the good folks of Buffalo, New York, that there is no Mr. Walmart, Mr. Target, Mr. Homedepot, or Mr. Bestbuy. Therefore, you don’t have to refer to Wal-Mart’s, Target’s, Home Depot’s or Best Buy’s, or otherwise add the posessive form to any business name where it normally wouldn’t be present.
Although you might like a Buffalo Wal-Mart to look like this, unfortunately, that’s not the case.
