That’s like a triple Axel right there.
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The use of “of” for “have” seems to have permeated our language. Not sure why, except maybe they don’t read and that’s how they hear phrases like “would have/would’ve?”
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To be fair, English spelling is notoriously unintuitive, as is its pronunciation. While German grammar may be killer, at least every letter (or letter sequence) is usually pronounced exactly the same way.
Ghoti, anyone? 
Is our children learning?
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Ugh, I took a few semesters of German after 4 years of Spanish . . . I just couldn’t get German. Oddly I had no such problem with Old English, which sounds like German to my untrained ear. Maybe Beowulf was just more interesting than the made-up exercises in the German text?
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The Northern ‘Plattdütsch’ or Low German has some similarities to Old English, AFAIK. My dad spoke it fairly well, having grown up in Bremerhaven.
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Mom studied German and can still understand it and even speak some. Funny, her parents had no knowledge of German. Later in life, when mom & dad got into genealogy, she discovered the family secret: her father was born in the US, but his parents and siblings were born in what was then the Austro-Hungarian empire and spoke German exclusively. So either my grandfather was never spoken to by his family or he chose to hide his background. Probably very scarred by the anti-German sentiment of WWI (by which time his name had already been anglicized) and why when asked his nationality he would only say “American?”
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Yeah, my PIC’s German side of the family didn’t pass along the language for that very reason. Kinda sad IYAM.
Neither did the Armenian side, which had nothing to be afraid of having been refugees from their very own genocide, but apparently they’re notorious for assimilating.
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I just got shivers up my spine reading @pilgrim’s comment.
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That’s very interesting. Of all the languages I learned, German was the most rule-based and logical in structure and therefore the easiest to pick up. Very few “exceptions” as compared to everything else.
I have great sympathy for people who learn English as a foreign language — complete lack of consistency, structure, logic, etc. It would have driven me crazy.
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Well the prof was a bit of a bear, so maybe my heart wasn’t in it. I reverted to Spanish for grad school.
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I think there’s also something about learning multiple languages at the same time.
We had 4 languages at school at peak, so it wasn’t possible for one to “interfere” with another. (The 4th for me was French, German was a summer addition.)
But where there’s a sole language, with 1 foreign language added, I’m sure it’s a different learning process.
When I started Spanish many years later in isolation, French and German kept popping in 
— had not been a problem when there were 4/5 languages being juggled simultaneously.
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As I’m sure we are all aware, some of what we hear is intentional “code switching” , even here on HO.
My daughter , who had an almost perfect score on the English portion of the SAT, and is a grammar (and pc ) “police-person” , loves to drive me up the wall with “these ones”. I try my best not to react.
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This is very much on my mind. Written by a dear friend.
It would have been interesting to know what the prosecutors argued was the motive for the crime; I can venture a guess as to why they focused on Vedam.
You’ll have to do a follow up when a decision is reached.
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Well, yes.
I hear kids deliberately using wrong grammar around others who use it — so as not to show them “down”, or appear too “smart”? I guess there’s a fine line between correcting by correcting and correcting by correct usage.
But one of the most frustrating things to me when I’m looking something up is when wrong usage is encompassed into definitions based on frequency of use. Ugh.
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But that is LITERALLY (as in actually) how language works. Grammar rules are taught as prescriptive. According to linguists, they are descriptive, and therefore subject to change.
The purpose of language is to take an idea in your head and put it in someone else’s head. If your words accomplish that task, you have used language correctly, and don’t let Mrs. Gutterschmidt’s red pen tell you any different.
See also: complaints about vocal fry, AVE, internet slang, and pretty much every other pearl clutching complaint about ‘the youths today’.
I’m as guilty as anyone of both lamenting these ‘crimes’ and participating in them with gusto.
But ultimately , things mean what people understand them to mean, regardless of what might or might not be written down.
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This one has been popping up on my “curated feed” a lot lately. Not sure how much it jives with my experience of children’s language development but it’s been “a minute”.
Babbling starts around 35 seconds
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Irregardless…
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Never mind that the dreaded literally was used the way it is (over)used now for a very, very, very long time
Having said that, vocal fry is tough for me to listen to, which is unfortunately an affectation many podcasters suffer from.
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