Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[hanygeorge38]

Dear Teachers,

I understand the moral of the following joke but why the poor man replied
"it do not look so good" while it was grammatically correct to use does
or I am mistaken

Also in the last line of the joke was it correct to say " but you still wanted
to buy it .


A rich man was trying to find his daughter a gift
for her birthday when he saw a poor man with a
beautiful white horse.

He told the man that he would give him $500 for
the horse.

The poor man replied, "I don't know mister, it don't
look so good," and walked away.

The next day the rich man came back and offered
the poor man $1000 for the horse.

The poor man again said, "I don't know mister, it
don't look so good."

On the third day the rich man offered the poor man
$2000 for the horse, and said he wouldn't take no
for an answer. The poor man agreed, and the rich
man took the horse home.

The rich man's daughter loved her present. She
climbed onto the horse, then it galloped right into
a tree.

The rich man discovered that the horse was almost
blind and so he rushed back to the poor man's house,
and demanded his money back.

The poor man was confused and replied, "But I told you,
the horse don't look so good - but you still bought it."





Many Thanks
_________________
hany

[bud]

Hi Hanygeorge,

Yes, you are correct that the first line you quoted is not grammatical. It's a technique that is often used in fictional dialogue to make the characters seem real. In this case, since the man was poor, the faulty language is used to also show that he was uneducated. In fact, the uninformed mistake of using "look" for "see" is what makes the joke possible.

The second quote is grammatical.