The paper included a story about Julia Gillard's friend Tim Mathieson, who accompanied her on her travels through Asia:
I may have lost my grasp of tenses, but my understanding is that 'might' suggests that in fact he didn't - plans were changed or something. Am I wrong, or should 'may' be the word - or perhaps the sentence could be recast to read: 'he probably had an interesting time'?
Meanwhile this article about overseas student numbers seems to have descended into some kind of English as a second language style of communication - 'just how big a hole the problem could blow in Australia education sector'
And even the Australian Literary Review let me down - and they really shouldn't; they do, after all, have a whole month to get things right:
Australian English is clearly undergoing a process of pidginisation wherein the grammar of the muvver tongue (English) has been simplified (in the case by the occasional dropping of articles, prepositions and the letter 't') in order to facilitate communication with speakers of other languages (err, "The Kids", possibly).
ReplyDeleteWhat's your view on the might/may question, Dr G?
ReplyDeleteMy Comprehensive English Grammar book is at my workplace, zedders, if I may call you that, and I'm at home with a cold! But I agree, it seems to me that “might” in the example is a bad choice, suggesting that it was possible that he had a good a god time but that it is known that something else actually happened. Google turned up this, which seems convincing: “might” is the past tense of the auxiliary verb “may,” and is required in sentences like “Chuck might have avoided arrest for the robbery if he hadn’t given the teller his business card before asking for the money.” When speculating that events might have been other than they were, don’t substitute “may” for “might”.... But: When you are uncertain what has happened and are making a guess, then you may want to use “may”: “I think he may have thought I would really like an oil change for my birthday.”
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear you're not well; surely there's some foul-tasting local remedy to get you back on your feet again (some variant on palinka?). The doctors (the real injecting kinds that is, none of your PhD rubbish) were always very keen on poultices for sore throats in Hungary - I dutifully accepted them while in their consulting rooms and then threw them away when I got home, they were v unpleasant. The aunt who rang me in Belgrade (see other blog, 17 September) likes to call me zedders, so feel free to join her. Get well soon.
ReplyDeletePoultices? On your throat?? Sounds ghastly. Are you sure that they were the "real injecting kind"? :-) Yes, I used ţuică instead. Ok, 'zedders' it is. (What actually is your name, though?)
ReplyDeleteAre you implying there is something wrong with the name Zed?
ReplyDeleteIt's just a little bit 'Pulp Fiction' :-)
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen it, although there is a restaurant a two-minute walk away from here called Pulp Kitchen, which I finally realised last Friday was a play on the film title. The leader of the opposition in our local government is called Zed:
ReplyDeletehttp://canberraliberals.org.au/html/s02_article/article_view.asp?art_id=109&nav_cat_id=146&nav_top_id=59
His parents were Croats. Mine weren't. Someone who goes about calling themselves Gadjo probably shouldn't be chucking stones on the subject of names though?