NOT SORRY FOR HELPING MAKE ENGLISH AFRICA’S LINGUA FRANCA
Readers respond to a piece that claimed the English language was taking over the world, and to a letter about American English that it prompted.
American English differs from (standard) British English in allowing such constructions as “he grabbed the bag off of me”, “I left it outside of the house” (i.e. with two prepositions). However, these usages are nothing at all to do with “linguistic precision”. They are simply regional variants, both equally acceptable/grammatical. I recall using the “off of” expression myself as a boy in Yorkshire. Non-standard yes, but nothing to do with grammaticality as such. And in what sense is “different to” ungrammatical/ inaccurate? It is simply a reflection of the writer’s personal taste/style. In confusing the informal with the ungrammatical in such an authoritarian manner, it is the writer who is guilty of “imprecision”, not American English.
Philip J Jaggar. Emeritus professor of West African linguistics, Soas University of London. Available in: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/aug/01/im-not-sorry-forhelping-make-english-africas-lingua-franca. Access in: 19 sept. 2019 (Adapted).
De acordo com o texto,
