*could of

Mike Poxon eskrë »

> Something I've noticed very much recently, certainly in British English;
not
> just sound change, but syntactic change too. The ending /schwa+v/ found in
> "could've", "should've" etc., is being interpreted as "of" instead of a
> contraction of "have", and the emphatic response articulated as "You
should
> of!" instead of "You should have" and so on. My kids (13 and 16) consider
> this perfect grammatical.
Well, I can confirm that this was around 25 years ago... I *vividly* recall
writing "would of" instead of "would have" in a little story at school when
I was six, maybe seven. The red pen marks of correction are still burnt on
my retina. I never ever ever did it again.

But it's true, many young people use "of" in the emphatic. Maybe they aren't
corrected by their teachers any more.

James

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