Do New Yorkers make gramatical sense?

I wholeheartedly agree! Correct usage of prepositions, among other things, seems to be completely ignored by many Americans.

I wonder what you think about direction prepositions. They are a different language.

When I lived in London I had a British, Oxford graduate friend who had worked in NYC for 2 years. He had a long list of misused words that he had heard while he was living there in New York. The one that seemed to have annoyed him the most was the frequent use of "take" instead of "have". As in: take a shave, take a walk, take a bath. He could rant on about this for hours.

heh

I think this was discussed in another thread here in EF ?

I'd like to know once and for all if it happens the same with British English/American English and Spanish of Spain and Spanish of America.
There are two things: the correct use of the language and the local differences, these ones don't have to be neccesarily wrong language.

Spanish of America is as correct as S

Hi Trellis, I don't think the 'have' in your friend's context is a mistake (or as your friend called it, misused word), I think it is just one of those US/UK things.

It was "have" that my English friend insisted was correct,
and "take" that he considered the incorrect word use.

It was he, the Oxford Literature graduate,
not me, who was annoyed about this.

He used to say, "Take a shave? Where is he TAKING it?"

I never correct people in cases like this.

I do not complain to anyone about
the global variet

Someone recently showed me an article in a magazine 'English Journal', for Japanese students of English, which claimed that illiteracy in the States ran at twenty five percent of the population.
I honestly don't know whether that figure is correct, or whether it is higher than in other English speaking countries, but I do feel that poor English should be noted and corrected wherever possible

I totally agree with you, Mike. I would also like to point out that the situation of Spanish is even worse as it is not taught at school in the States. If I remember correctly American students do not learn foreign languages in Primary school, nor in Middle School, which is something I have never understood and will never understand. The Spanish you hear in the States is quite poor and there is

Reactions to various anti-USA posts I have seen at this forum
to no one in particular and in no particular sequence:



Aggression, abuse and misinformation will never cure anything.

Intense post, nothing to oppose to the reasoning, sure it is not ok to attack Americans, Japanese or others.
I think the intention of the most of the posts was not to attack, but yes, it is easy to generalize.
Don't leave the Forum, that is like censoring something, it is very severe. Your posts are fruitful, both meaning and teaching of English. you can discuss and argue. You may avoid