Bought Up

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Sat May 05, 2007 8:36 am

Many of you will have seen this in World Wide Words:

http://www.worldwidewords.org:80/nl/xqig.htm

Look at paragraph three.

And "I was bought up" googles with quite a healthy 14000 hits.

Linguistic change happening before our eyes or just plain ignorance?

I get one and a quarter million hits for "should of" (only some them pointing out how wrong it is) which I reckon means either:

a) a lot of sub-literate people can get at a keyboard.

or:

b) a new informal structure is developing.

Which it is depends on my mood at the time.

Do "educated" people really say "bought up" in this way and what are we to make of it and its like?

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Sat May 05, 2007 1:02 pm

Some things don't change however: such as the incapacity of people such as Quinlan or Faulks to distinguish between anecdotes and data.

"I was brought up" gets 666,000 hits, compared to 13,500 for "I was bought up". Hardly what one would expect if there had been a sea-change in usage two or three years ago.

"Should of" is a common misspelling. The way it's pronounced has not changed. It is used 0.75% of the time, so I doubt we need to change the spell checkers or dictionaries yet.

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Sat May 05, 2007 2:30 pm

It's quite clearly untrue that everybody except Sebastian Faulk's wife has suddenly started saying "bought up". It might be worth keeping an eye on though. I'd never noticed it but then I'm out of touch.

Could it be a hearing thing like "should of"? I'm thinking of that very discrete Southern British "r" that's sometimes nearly a "w" not being heard and as a result not being written. Otherwise why would anybody confuse "bought up" with "brrrrrought up"?

Lorikeet · Post by **Lorikeet** » Sat May 05, 2007 5:23 pm

It might be interesting to see what kinds of typos are made too. You can google almost any spelling of anything and find some matches. I wonder if some of the "bought up" people really wanted to say "brought up" anyway. I know my keyboard sticks sometimes and I frequently miss keys. Maybe there are that many people out there with sticky "r's" who never proofread their work.

By the way, I have never heard or seen such a variant, so you might be right in presuming it has something to do with how it sounds in British English.

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Sat May 05, 2007 7:33 pm

It's a typo. Why are we even discussing this. If people actually said it, it'd be a different matter.

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Sun May 06, 2007 2:18 am

I wondered if it was the weak 'r' after the 'b' as well.

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Sun May 06, 2007 7:47 am

I'd agree with you Andew if the original Faulks article didn't say that "everybody" now says "bought up".

Which, even if only partly true, means that not all the hits are typos.

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Sun May 06, 2007 11:33 am

Juan wrote:

"I'd agree with you Andew..."

Typos get everywhere.

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Sun May 06, 2007 12:37 pm

"Andew' is not a typo; it's the disappearing 'r' after voiced consonants that Faulks referred to.

It's caused by a mutant version of necrotizing streptoccocus fasciitis that resides in the region between the alveolar ridge and the front teeth.

lucy lace · Post by **lucy lace** » Sun May 06, 2007 6:35 pm

Sounds like a corporate take-over, as in, "All my stocks were bought up by Microsoft. I was bought up in Washington."

I have a hard time believing anybody, other than someone with a severe speech impediment, would say this in any other context.

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Sun May 06, 2007 7:11 pm

I was trying for an estuarial Andew, to show that people might not pronounce the r.