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Hi everyone,
Just a brief introduction about myself. I grew up learning British English, and although I consider myself american nowadays, I tend to sometimes lapse back, and pronounce some words like a british.
My question relates to the use of "there", when it should in fact be "their" (possession). "He gave them there keys".
I see this very frequently, but almost exclusively in american texts. I am well aware of the general problem some people have of mixing these up as they are pronounced the same, but question is whether this is a typical american thing. Is this a trait of American English?
As I am somewhat of a hybrid in these matters myself, I don't trust my own judgement.
Thanks,
Andy
There are two meanings, spelt differently.
If he gave the keys to >them<, then "He gave them their keys" is the only correct spelling.
If he gave the keys to someone, and the speaker is southern, he might say "He gave them-there keys" [to someone]. "There" is proper there, only because it helps specify which keys are being given.
Other uses of "give them there keys", even from the Colonies, are incorrect (though not unpublished).
Is this a trait of American English? I would say no: such things are still considered incorrect, so it's not the language itself. Whether this type of error is exclusive to American English, I don't know.
My theory is that back when we hand-wrote notes and letters, we had time to think about what the proper word was, and because making a correction was tedious, we wanted to get it right the first time. But in this technological age where speed seems to be of utmost importance, some people simply type the first word that *sounds* right, even if it's the wrong word.
Some may not care about homophones, some may not know the difference. Ditto for spelling. Ditto for punctuation. Some people might say this is a result of some larger societal issue (failure of our education system, generational rebellion against standards, personal expression, etc.). I'm not going there.
The errors are sometimes comical, but almost always it seems to reflect poorly on the writer. Perhaps you've heard of the book, Eats, Shoots and Leaves, about proper and incorrect usage and punctuation. Now add the issue of homophones. You could end up with any one of the following:
- eats, shoots, and leaves (OR eats, shoots and leaves)
- eats shoots and leaves
- eats shoots, and leaves
- eats, chutes, and leaves (OR eats, chutes and leaves)
- eats chutes and leaves
- eats chutes, and leaves
To someone who is writing "by ear", any one of these might be "good enough"; for those of us who are more careful, these express different ideas.
I see this use (or misuse) of language most often on social networking sites or web pages that allow comments, probably because that's where most opinions (and their associated emotions) are expressed. And if I can judge the ages of writers from their style and content, it seems to be more common with younger people. Just an observation. No hard evidence. No value judgment. No conclusions.
I have just ended grading one section's midterm in English. I must have come across at least three or four *there/their/they're* cases [by this I mean three or four students making this mistake several times throughout *there* papers 🙂 not just four mistakes]. I must admit that I have somehow lost any hope that there may be a way to rectify this issue. The thing is, though, that we can only trace this problem in writing and not at all in speech because they're all homophones. That is why I don't even see it as an American trait. I'm sure it exists in other English-speaking nations.
If you want to see other nations' problems larger than *there/their/they're*, how about reading French speakers' texts? French is practically one huge collection of homophones. They use it to their advantage making jokes and puns, but the tragedy begins when they sit down and write. I used to read many of my French penpals' letters out loud, or else the letters were at least partly confusing. In that context, I guess *there/their/they're* is not that much of a deal 🙂
I know that sometimes when I am typing rather quickly, I am not paying much attention to what it is I am actually writing. As I think of things, they just flow off of my fingers and words often appear how they sound in my head the way that I pronounce them, and it is not uncommon for many words to be misspelled. Luckily, I have spellcheck that will call my attention to words that I wrote that are not listed in whatever dictionary, but I am less fortunate when the word I actually typed turns out to be a correctly spelled word, but a different word from what I actually meant. This is especially troublesome with homophones, in which I may be writing down the sound that I hear in my head as I say the word without thinking about how to spell it. Strangely, I also find myself quite often typing an "-ing" ending for a word when I meant to type an "-ed" ending for a word, which I cannot fully understand. My guess is that perhaps somewhere in my mind these two verb endeds endings are linking linked together subconsciously.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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