Oughtn't we (to) be going soon?

oceanbreeze · Post by **oceanbreeze** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 4:49 pm

OK, maybe a bad example but people use this in written form too! There are many dialects where, for example, the forms of the copula aren't used. Particularly in Black Vernacular English, the use of He nice, we coming, She a teacher is common. Or take the use of I never went to school today which is widely used by the people of Cheshire (UK). Would you accept these as standard English just because a group of people use them?

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 6:09 pm

Probably not, ocean, because as you quite rightly point out, forms like I never went to school today don't seem to be that widespread. It would take a serious corpus search to establish whether or not it should be considered "standard".

I suspect, though I can't prove, that didn't ought to (have) is reasonably more widespread than the examples you cite, at least in the UK, though I did say in my first post that I wouldn't teach it as Standard English. That's not the same as saying "It's wrong".

Stephen, Juan and I are all educated native speakers and we don't have a problem with it while others here do. That doesn't mean some of us are right and others are wrong, it just means we don't all speak the same "English".

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 6:55 am

Oh Stephen, what would we do without your negative attitude?

Precisely what you are doing at the moment, which is making assertions without bothering to check up on them.

One's native speaker intuition is fairly useful when it comes to saying something is correct; it is abysmally inadequate when it comes to saying the opposite.

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 11:01 am

Now then Elodde, let's get some rigour into this.

First of all you said " I dont ever use ought, it is very informal and seems to be dying-- at least in American English"

Remember this is just "ought" in its standard forms. Let's agree that "didn't ought to" is non-standard or marginal though widespread.

Back to "ought":

Then you say that "Once again all over the world there are all sorts of Englishes. Where I am from --California-- we would not say it. Someone from the South might. As for the newspaper thing, I think we all know that newspapers are not grammatically perfect, I find errors in them all the time, so I wouldnt use being able to do searches in a newspaper as the ends all. Metal asked if we use it, I do not, perhaps you do where you are from. I would teach my students what it meant, in case they heard it, but would not have them use it- the same with shall."

So are you saying that these are not grammatically perfect, because they are certainly Californian, written either by or for Californians, or both:

http://www.dailynews.com/search?runSear ... uery=ought

I can give you the link to the LA Times and The Hollywood Reporter if you like. In both the use of "ought" is widespread and both formal and informal. They're in California too, aren't they?

Nothing too wrong with the grammar in any of the cases. In fact "Why u ought to " tells me that it's very much alive, whatever you may feel about "u".

So I think, charitably, that you're talking anecdotally and about your idiolect. Others, uncharitably, might well think that you are plain wrong.

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 11:26 am

I would teach my students what it meant, in case they heard it, but would not have them use it- the same with shall.

Searching for shall on the LA Daily News website turns up an awful lot of examples too.

Lorikeet · Post by **Lorikeet** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 3:33 pm

I use "ought to" frequently, but not with a negative and not as a question. I know I ought to make a longer post, but I don't have time now. (I've lived in California for 37 years.)