At my afore mentioned college in NYC, they stopped allowing the Canadians from taking intro-French (maybe some others too!) those of Puerto Rican heritage (of which there were many) couldn't do the intro-Spanish. What's wrong with that!
In the midwest of the US, I can't distinguish upstate western NY, north OH, all of Indiana and Michigan speech...but I can certainly pick out western PA and (especially) Pittsburgh. When you get to Minnesota and Wisconsin the tongues are quite distinctively identified.
If you carefully listen to our former Prez Barak...there are some distinctive "Chicago-isms" in his patois yet he grew up in Hawaii.
It makes complete sense because it's not wrong, and because he's a good enough writer to express himself lucidly, as were all the others I've mentioned or quoted.
Examples from previous centuries are instructive in that you told us "off of" is American in origin. Clearly, the fact that it was used in the early 18th and in the 17th century demonstrates that it is not. So implying that Defoe can be disregarded as an example because he's using English that's now archaic is hardly relevant to the idea you were originally proposing.
Nor was this particular usage confined in England to speech, let alone to the speech of the ignorant. That's why I quoted a few examples. We can see from the text surrounding the "offending" phrase that these writers were perfectly in command of their language.
Dafoe was writing at around the same time as America was populated (there was no wall to keep foreign invaders out) and founded, and Shakespeare was writing considerably before American continent was even known.
The rare use of "off of" in historical English literature is in contrast to the common usage of the term in the USA. You have to plumb the depths of search engines to find those odd historical occasions.
You are welcome to use the term in the USA as frequently as you wish. But in modern English English "off of" has no part.
We do have some oddities though - check out the grocer's apostrophe, where apostrophes are placed in words that ought not have them. Like banana's and lettuce's.
The rare use of "off of" in historical English literature is in contrast to the common usage of the term in the USA. You have to plumb the depths of search engines to find those odd historical occasions.
You are welcome to use the term in the USA as frequently as you wish. But in modern English English "off of" has no part.
We do have some oddities though - check out the grocer's apostrophe, where apostrophes are placed in words that ought not have them. Like banana's and lettuce's.
It's not as if I'm asking your permission.
This thread has meandered through people's peeves and prescriptivist tics. It's not unusual for those who take a less broad view of the language in all its richness and variety to be misinformed on what is acceptable usage, and no less on what has been used, again and again, in literature. Until they're shown. But I'm certainly long familiar with the tendency even then to explain and hand-wave it away, along with the desire to continue to "correct" others. Your approach is no novelty to me.
Nonetheless, it's conspicuous that the erroneous claim that off of was "indeed of American origin" has been adjusted, simply because it can be shown through British written examples to be dubious, to a dismissal of it as an archaic usage. That's trying to have it both ways.
The Conan Doyle quote is sufficient evidence that it continued in formal writing at least to the beginning of the 20th century. It's not of importance to me to establish whether there was a window - a mere several decades? - where it was out of "approved" use and then reappeared when our young folk tried to copy what they were hearing from America (Get Off of My Cloud etc.). I get more out of English by taking an interest in its variety than trying to set boundaries. Certainly there are some habits I dislike myself, but I try and keep that to a minimum, and in particular, not to impose that distaste on others. The main thing I learned over the years, the hard way, is to avoid over-correcting. There are many things that a younger me would have said were inappropriate usage, which later turned out to be rather more nuanced, or simply outside what I happened to know at the time. Which on reflection, wasn't very much.
Way back in the thread, another commenter lamented the apparent decline of reading in English households. But this current discussion ("off of" today, but it could apply to just about any dispute over usage) shows another habit that I would suggest shows prescriptivist tendencies: the idea that literature is vital, that a knowledgeable reader should be comfortable with writers spanning a period of half a millennium at least; but that when we find it convenient to do so, we may reject usages for which many good written examples exist, century after century.
There's a song in Finland, in Finnish, that says "wives give birth to children whose speech we don't understand". The song came out two decades ago, so I guess that's how it has been and will be in the future, for everybody.
One of my favourite grammar-related comments came from my Mom. She said: "When someone inquires as to your well-being, the only people who should reply with "fine, and yourself?" are psychotherapists.
One of the funniest poor translations of French to English came from an ex-girlfriend. "Do you think my skin looks bad? I hope so not." (This tranlsated from "j'espere que non"). However, I must admit that it was much more amusing when she once asked me why I don't buy her a "bucket of flowers" more often. She assumed the French word would have a different English pronunciation.
Yes, I know I've butchered some grammar here.
One of the funniest poor translations of French to English came from an ex-girlfriend. "Do you think my skin looks bad? I hope so not." (This tranlsated from "j'espere que non"). However, I must admit that it was much more amusing when she once asked me why I don't buy her a "bucket of flowers" more often. She assumed the French word would have a different English pronunciation.
Yes, I know I've butchered some grammar here.
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My hope lies in the language models of the A"I"s... I think they are very polite and express themselves in a very eloquent way - they speak proper. If they just keep learning from the older publicists it will be all fine and hopefully we can take influence from it to maintain an understandable and stringent communication. If we can't understand each other, it will be very bad - maybe we are already there?
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There's lots of comments here on the correct use and grammar of English, but nothing on what people actually say; nothing on the beauty of well used language, or anything about the ideas conveyed. A work colleague has recently been reading Ellis Peters (Cadfael), and he says that he had to halt before he finished the books, because he was enjoying them do much and he didn't want them to end; he's tried to find modern authors who can express the characters thoughts and motivations as well, and apart from Guy Kay, there's no one really close (at least in the fantasy/historic fiction genre). He says he's tried other authors, but often they just list events that happen in the story.
I guess the English language would have developed and improved with the postal service; if you're trying to give a good impression, you're going to try to write a decent letter, and if it's the prominent way of cummimication (and you get a few chances to get it right, and it's likely to be kept, and treasured) you'll get a lot of practice.
I guess the English language would have developed and improved with the postal service; if you're trying to give a good impression, you're going to try to write a decent letter, and if it's the prominent way of cummimication (and you get a few chances to get it right, and it's likely to be kept, and treasured) you'll get a lot of practice.