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

From:Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...>
Date:Saturday, February 5, 2005, 17:04
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

Reply

Roger Mills <rfmilly@...>1. Shall, and 2. more better (was: Word usage in English dialects etc)