have sb. to do

Question

What, I'll have you to know ... (Quoted from A Handbook of Present English, Part II, page 386, written by E. Kruisinga)Is the above structure really acceptable in modern English?

Marius Hancu · Accepted Answer

You may want to download this paper (but you must pay for it, I guess) which seems to show this is regional usage:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-1283(198622)61%3A2%3C184%3AEACHT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-E

Marius Hancu · Answer

There are only two examples at the BBC (both poems, it seems), and the last one is from a poem in 1944, thus I am not quite sure how things are recently in terms of using this construction, but it seems to be rare, but understandable.

The meaning is, IMO, I need you to know/You should know, (I think) (that):

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But Maggie, she's different, I'll have you to know,
I can't think of a word that's that's slower than slow.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/radiofoyle/programmes/gerryanderson/poetry/poems/poem14.shtml
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I'm not complaining but I'll have you to know,
Life is rougher than **** in the E.T.O. (European Theatre of
Operations)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/54/a4148354.shtml
--------

Hoa Thai · Answer

Hi,

I got over 340,000 Google hits for the phrase "I will have you to know." I understand its meaning to be similar to what Marius said.

Hoa Thai

Yankee · Answer

Apparently, the book A hand-book of present-day English (by E. Kruisinga) was written in 1914, so today -- nearly a hundred years later!-- there are bound to be a few things in that book that are no longer widely used. I've never heard anyone use "to" in the phrase "I'll have you know" when the meaning is basically "I'd like to point this out in order to be sure you know it". However, if I were to hear "I'll have you to know" with the same meaning as "I'll have you know", I'd expect it to be either a poetic/archaic usage or part of a regional dialect (as Marius has suggested). You need to analyze what Google is giving you -- just looking at the number of Google hits alone is frequently not a reliable indicator of usage.

In addition, I'd also like to point out that "I'll have him visit" and "I'll have him to visit" (for example) have different meanings:

I'll have him visit = I will cause him to visit me or someone else (i.e. he will visit me)
I'll have him to visit = It is possible for me to visit him (i.e. I will visit him!)

have sb. to do

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