Re: Word usage in English dialects // was Slang, curses and vulgarities

On Sat, 05 Feb 2005 14:13:31 +0100, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
wrote:

> Quoting Tristan McLeay <conlang@...>:
>
>> I don't see why you should be, it seems like a very limited word. Only
>> used in questions with first-person subjects. Easy to fall out of use.
>> Anyway, I don't use it. I'm surprised that Andreas reckons he was told
>> that 'shall''s only used in questions and the bible; I thought it was
>> only used in the KJV.
>
> Well, as regards biblical quotes, those very commonly have their KJV
> form.
>
> The use in questions we were taught was in polite questions of the type
> "Shall I
> bring the biscuits?". The English we was taught was a fairly
> conservative RP, so
> there's where one'd look for native usage - any Brits reading this?
Maybe I'm an oddball (it has been suggested in the past), but I'm British,
and I use "shall" all the time (in any register above Low), along with a
bunch of other prescriptivist claptrap. I'm entirely unsure as to which
facet of my past caused this, as I certainly didn't go to schools that
valued prescriptivism, though I seem to have been doing it from quite an
early age. Maybe I'm just a natural-born stickler. I do know that I have
had more compliments than complaints, at least in regard to my formal and
semi-formal writing.




Paul

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