Friday 8 December 2017

"Me Fail English? That's Unpossible!"

"...because me is the English teacher!"
...Ms Berker, who appeared at the hearing via a video link, said the students could have colluded before they made their statements.
She added: It is interesting to note that not one of them said what I said. They all could of got together and colluded.
‘I will maintain what I said until my dying day. It was ill-judged. It was a throwaway remark that was made in jest. I was not trying to invoke or promote violence.’
*winces* It's 'could have', you ignoramus! What qualifies you to teach?
Ms Berker once appeared on Stars in Their Eyes alongside Matthew Kelly.
*speechless*

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

To be fair, as it was a video statement, the reporter could have misquoted her!

Frank said...

'Swot I was gonna say, innit.

But a "journalist" abusing the tools of his trade, how likely is that? ;-)

selsey.steve said...

It is highly likely that this so-called teacher did indeed say "Could of ..." as this usage now seems to have permeated the speech of 'younger' (under 30s) persons. It is the same as the grating usage of "would of" or "should of". In any common contraction of words such as "should have" (should've) or "would have" (would've) etc. the elision of the first two letters of the elided word have been mistaken for the word "of".
This crass error has now spread into the written word, where people write "He should of said ..." or "She would of ...". I was asked to sign a witness statement taken by a Police Officer where this and other errors were present. I refused to sign and asked to correct the errors in the statement. The officer taking the statement could not understand the corrections I made, he was completely unaware that what he had written was incorrect.

JuliaM said...

"To be fair, as it was a video statement, the reporter could have misquoted her!"

But that would mean the reporter didn't know the difference betw...

Ah.

"...this usage now seems to have permeated the speech of 'younger' (under 30s) persons."

Yup, it grates. Not as much as 'ax' for 'ask' or 'pacific' for 'specific', mind you...