Job Discussion Forums

[Kaspar Hauser]

I was using a British ESL textbook and I came across this:

"I felt sick, and my mother suggested I went to the doctor."

This struck me as a ghastly abomination. I asked some British colleagues, and they said it sounded all right to them. Can this be?

[Aramas]

Yes. Perhaps you should stick with what you know

[dyak]

[Kaspar Hauser]

Not sure what "Linguitics" is or what an MA in it would smell like, but doesn't the sentence in my OP call for the subjunctive?

[dyak]

My sincerest apologies for the typo.

Yes it does call for the subjunctive. It's a fossilised 'error' of spoken British English, and i'm sure, any other English. I rather like the sound of the subjunctive, t'is a shame it's fading from usage.

We also find ouselves saying such abominations as, 'It is necessary that he goes'.

[Stephen Jones]

[Aramas]

It seems that people tend to forget that grammar is only an imperfect model used to describe usage. Usage defines a language, not a flawed set of rules. There is grammar in poetry, but there is no poetry in grammar.

[Sheep-Goats]

Not subjunctive at all. But, in my American diction, the sequence of tenses does call for a present tense verb so that the suggestion and the going are concurrent (should be "go" not "went.").

[Stephen Jones]

[Kaspar Hauser]

Huh? Thanx Stephen but I don� really get this at all. My gut reaction to this sentence is that it sounds ridiculous and I�ve never heard anyone, including any British person use this construction. What have time and distance or his mother�s emotions or what she was possibly thinking got to do with it? I think you got your pronouns mixed uptoo. The sentence I read was

�I felt sick, and my mother suggested that I went to the doctor�

The part �I felt sick, and�� is actually irellavant to whether this sentence should be subjunctive or not. If we reduce the sentence to:

� My mother suggested that I went to the doctor.� it stills sounds wrong. Since �that I went to the doctor� is a noun clause, we can omit �that� and we end up with

�My mother suggested I went to the hospital� which stills sounds wrong but if if this is OK, as you say then these sentences would beOK too I suppose:

I demanded he came on time.
The teacher insisted she did the work over.
He requested I turned down the TV.

If the original sentence I heard is OK then are these OK too? But they sound awful. What gives?

[Guy Courchesne]

Good points and examples Kaspar...you've got it right. I don't see a need to overcomplicate this easy subjunctive usage.

I demanded he came on time. I demanded that he come on time.

The teacher insisted she did the work over. The teacher insisted that she do the work over.
He requested I turned down the TV. He requested that I turn down the tv.

You could even throw this into the past perfect and still have the same subjunctive usage.

The teacher had insisted that she do the work over.
etc
etc

[dyak]

[Guy Courchesne]

I think what you say of real English usage can be applied to just about any country. Here in Mexico, I routinely hear incorrect Spanish used by people for whom it is a first language, depsite the fact that they are taught good Spanish in school.

While I think we are preparing our students for the possibility of living abroad, I don't think we should prepare them with gutter English. Besides, think of the pride a foregin student would feel knowing they speak/use a better English than a good number of Brits...perhaps they could even become English teachers over there in the UK.

[Stephen Jones]

[Justin Trullinger]

Language is evolving constantly. And sometimes it evolves in ways that we, the pedantic educators of the world, don't care for.

Others that bother me, but are common in some parts ofNorth America:

Use of adjectives as adverbs.

He speaks English real good.

I think it doesn't matter how much you earn, if you can live good on it.


Use of past participle instead of past simple (common in the midwest, though admittedly in less educated circles)

I seen him yesterday.


"Regularizing" irregular verbs. (Maybe not too common, but I have heard this from prospective native English teachers.)

I have teached English for more than ten years.


Or "irregularizing" regular verbs.


Fresh squoze orange juice.

I know that some of these sound COMPLETELY ridiculous, but I swear, I am not making them up. I have heard them all from natives, and some of whom were teachers.

And Guy, from somebody who's spent a fair bit of time in the UK, yes, the education is often that bad. But I don't think they have a monopoly on it.

Justin