ira

>I deal every day with students who think up odd constructions and then think up odd logic to defend the constructions. <

They go on to become editors of "descriptive, not prescriptive" dictionaries.

ckenb

FlannerUK,

You greatly overestimate the power and influence of the French Academy. It does not make rules for the French language -- it writes a dictionary. And it takes the Academy decades to finish an edition.

French, like English, is a natural language that evolves over time and varies from region to region, country to country, and social group to social group.

You compare Shakespeare to Racine, but what about Rabelais? Montaigne? The Renaissance poets including Ronsard and du Bellay? Not to mention Voltaire, Diderot, Baudelaire, and on and on in later periods.

caroline_edinburgh

I think this business of "doing good" (in the non-Mother Teresa sense) was started in the UK by semi-educated football pundits, as in "the boy Lineker done good" (to mean he did well). I've never heard a 'normal 'person use it.

AustraliaZooIsGreat

>he had gotten on the train" for example?


That's just extremely bad English. I don't care where you're from.

He got on the train. Simpler, in the past tense and correct use of English.

PatrickLondon

Well for what it's worth, 'got', 'have got' and 'had got' (or gotten in each case) are not synonymous, or intended to be. They're different past tenses expressing different meanings.