"A bit late. Sorry. Sean O'Leathlobhair wrote on 14 Jul 2004:"
"Are you not a native speaker yourself? I didn't realise but I didn't wonder until now."
"Yes, I am a native speaker of AmE and have been for 60 years."
You had me confused. First I thought that you were and then some of your comments / jokes made me doubt it. I cannot complain I do the same with my own jokes. In another thread I made a silly joke about averages and a whole pile of people took me seriously and started explaining the mathematics.
"". . . fewer and fewer (or should that be ... ." "fewer and fewer" since "Anglophones" is a countable noun."
"You'll have to forgive my sardonic potshots at the "whatever native speakers say is okay" school of usage."
OK, see above.
"The following negative verb "don't care" makes the sentence a ... do care" which I guess is not your intended meaning."
"Sorry about that. A thinko. I wrote "fewer and fewer" but I was thinking "more and more", apparently."
If you had not made me doubt your native status, I would have just presumed a simple mistake and not commented.
"I have never heard a native say: "I can't drive ... that is because of the "on me" at the end."
"It's quite common in the lower registers of AmE. It may not be so in BrE I don't know anything about that but a bit of googling will confirm that "stolen on me" is common enough in left-pondia."
I don't recall ever hearing "stolen on me" anywhere. I don't have enough US experience for that to say anything about US usage but I have a lot of UK experience. I have noted some Americans saying "He hit on me" which also does not seem to be normal here. In that case, just dropping the "on me" does not seem to correctly translate it. If I have understood the phrase it is: "He made a pass at me".
"Drop that and get "I can't drive you to work ... verb "have" which means it has many jobs to do."
"But it's impossible to distinguish this "had" from the causative "had", so I'd say that this usage of "had" ... nice to tell native speakers that they're wrong sometimes when they speak their own language, but it's a fact nonetheless."
Please forgive the grammar lesson. Remember that I was under the delusion that you were not a native. Indeed it is not usually possible to the intended meaning from the words alone. As some others have commented, the likelihood of the person doing the job themselves is a clue.
I see your logic and I may try to be more careful with my own usage as a result of this discussion. But I won't go around preaching or expecting anyone else to change.
I would agree that when considering invading another country, precision (*) is desirable. Do you think that poor use of language contributed to the poor intelligence?
(*) Of speech, not guided missiles.
"I would be happy to say "I transferred the money ... should I give this detail if it does not matter?"
"In my international business, it mattered to the guy I was sending the money to. Because he was in Japan ... your account two hours ago. Has it arrived yet?" That kind of speed occurs only when doing it via ATM."
Seán O'Leathlóbhair