I've always used "as I said." But I'm seeing and hearing more and more people using "like I said." Which is correct? Or is it one of those phrases that are becoming more acceptable, like "You've got mail."
As I said vs. Like I said
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"Like I said" is grammatically incorrect but has been common in casual U.S. speech for at least 50 years.
The only thing is that in a novel, it will make the character's speech sound slangy, which is okay, if that's the effect you want.
As I said
It should be "As I said" for formal writing, and "as I said" for characters in fiction who are educated, or for narration where grammar counts. Otherwise, it should be "Like I said."
It should be "As I said" for formal writing, and "as I said" for characters in fiction who are educated, or for narration where grammar counts. Otherwise, it should be "Like I said."
Hmmf. The above assumes that all educated people make the effort to speak in proper grammar. I certainly don't. My writing usually falls somewhere between textbook-proper and functionally appropriate. My speech, on the other hand, ranges from collegiate to working-class to complete goofball nonsense.
I had much the same thought but hadn't posted it yet. An educated person's speech varies with the situation. "Looks like it's gonna rain" would flunk you on a grammar test, but it's good enough around the house.A. J. Luxton said:
A. J. Luxton said:
No, it assumes that in writing one of the only ways a writer has to show a character is educated is by his speech. Dialogue is never, ever realistic. That's a mistake many new writers make. Dialogue only reflects realism.
If you have an educated person speaking the same way as an uneducated person, rotsa ruck on getting anyone to buy that book. Most agents and editors will stop reading the first time it happens.
And, in all honesty, a great many educated people do, and should, speak considerably better than an uneducated person. If I spke teh same way the average person does, I'd go back to grade school immediately.
Even if true, which it probably isn't, do not try to tell a reader that the guy speaking like Joe the mechanic is a college professor, or that the lady speaking like the local waitress is a the editor of the local paper. It isn't believeable. Life does not have to be beliveable, but fiction always does.
Jamesaritchie said:
1. This assumes there are but two ways to speak. "Like an educated person" and "like an uneducated person." There are many, many, many more than two speech patterns in English. I was pointing out that educated does not have to conform to a single, formal mode. There are as many different kinds of educated people as there are of people. Educated people can, in fact, be casual.
Ex.:
"Jenny, like I said, I don't really agree with your politics, but that was a fan-freakin'-tastic lecture on string theory!"
Maybe you just don't hang out with the same physics majors I do.
Jamesaritchie said:
2. A great many educated people can always overwhelm a single uneducated person through sheer force of loudness. How will I know if they speak better? Pitting one against many is hardly a fair contest.
(I don't normally nitpick so gratuitiously, but this IS the grammar forum and you are protesting that if you "spke (sic) teh (sic) same way the average person does, (you'd) go back to grade school immediately."
Um.
Kind of offensive to anyone who works in a day job where the object is communicating with people of all classes. If one is trying to give good customer service, and speaks in words one's customers will not understand, it shows that one is just educated enough to . . . lose one's job.
Heck, kind of cheeky at least to anyone who says, "Think it's gonna rain?" (Although the ultimate arbiter of language, time, seems to favor utility over propriety in every instance.)
And that whole "golden chain of being" thing, where the high classes must be high and the low classes must be low, is, uh, rather out of style)
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My mother, strict grammarian that she was, always blamed the like/as adjective/adverb confusion on that old Winston cigarette jingle.
Communicating.
It's your family who teach you to speak. You can choose to alter the way you speak but your family set the mould. If your family can speak complex grammatical English then you have a clear advantage, especially in literary activities and within our education systems as they now are.
Good simple grammatical English is understood by everyone, including English as a second language people, and is very useful for communicating with anyone.
If however you can or choose to use only idiomatic speech, which isn't always grammatically correct, all the time then you will have problems in communicating.
It's your family who teach you to speak. You can choose to alter the way you speak but your family set the mould. If your family can speak complex grammatical English then you have a clear advantage, especially in literary activities and within our education systems as they now are.
Good simple grammatical English is understood by everyone, including English as a second language people, and is very useful for communicating with anyone.
If however you can or choose to use only idiomatic speech, which isn't always grammatically correct, all the time then you will have problems in communicating.
stormie said:
You shouldn't confuse written language with spoken language. The "grammars" are different. Writing has specific rules that were invented out of convention and necessity. This is one of the reasons why grammar confuses a lot of people. Many try to pin written grammar on spoken grammar and vice versa.
There is nothing grammatically incorrect with "like I said." Just as there isn't anything incorrect with splitting an infinitive, ending a sentence with a preposition, or using a double negative.
Strongbadia said:
You're right: nothing wrong with splitting an infinitive. That's an archaic grammar rule stemming from latin where you can't split an infinitive. Besides, when people try not to split an infinitive, it many times sounds stilted.
Okay, too, with ending with a preposition. Sometimes you can't get around it without sounding stilted. An editor changed one of my sentences once, taking out the preposition at the end of the article. It didn't work.
Using a double negative: well, two negatives make a positive. "I don't know nothing." Fine if you have character who speaks that way, otherwise, in an essay or spoken language, it doesn't seem to work.
When I posted the original question, I was asking about the written word, as in a story or essay. Or even postings on writer's boards. (I've been seeing a lot of "like I said." But as reph said, it's being used so much, that it's now acceptable like "You've got....")
Thanks to all for your discussion on this!
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stormie said:
Two negatives make a positive in math, not in language. English is a Germanic language and more negations should be used to strengthen someone's "no" answer. This rule is also one that was adopted from Latin. This comes from a man by the name of Robert Lowth.
It is not a real rule of English grammar. You will never in your life say "I don't want no more bread" and someone will give you bread thinking that you must have meant you wanted more. The reason we use double negatives is because they are a natural part of the language.
I am not saying that you should use them in an essay or writing; but realize it is a rule that people adhere to for no reason.
I beg to differ on your point that English is a Germanic language. It is not, at least not exclusively. While English is a “sister language” to German, for example water, German is hardly its only source. English also comes from Latin, from which French, Italian and Spanish are derived, so it is also a romance language. From whatever language you wish to argue that English is derived, double negatives are still grammatically incorrect, whether written or spoken, and so are many other idiomatic manners of speech that people use. Don’t make it right, do it? Oh, and two negatives do make a positive in English, and make the speaker sound uneducated to boot.
CaroGirl said:
Where do you get your information?
English is a Germanic language in the sense that it is from that family of languages. It is not a romance language. The morphology isn't even close for one thing. It isn't close to Latin, either - even though people tried to make its rules similar to Latin's.
Two negative never ever make a positive in speech. The reason you think people sound uneducated when they used double negatives is because that rule was implemented when the new rich of the industrial revolution started sending their children better schools because they had money. It became on of the markers to speak correctly, not because it is inherent in the language.
Plus if it is a romance language, where you can use double negative, then you prove my point.
Sorry, but you couldn't possibly be more incorrect.
Okay, yes, English is considered a Germanic language, and is not a romance language, but it was strongly, and almost equally, influenced by the Normans, who spoke Norman, which is closely related to French. English belongs to the western subbranch of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family of languages.
All that aside, I agree that no language, including English, is static, and does (and indeed must) change. However, I do not agree that aspects of it, like the double negative or the interchanging of fewer and less, are in a position to become subsumed. Simply because a cross-section of the English-speaking population, which is by no means even half, chooses to use these idiomatic speech forms does not mean that the language is about to absorb such changes as correct (and yes, there is a right way and wrong way to both write and speak the language). It's simply not wide-spread enough and there are too many detractors who disagree with it.
All that aside, I agree that no language, including English, is static, and does (and indeed must) change. However, I do not agree that aspects of it, like the double negative or the interchanging of fewer and less, are in a position to become subsumed. Simply because a cross-section of the English-speaking population, which is by no means even half, chooses to use these idiomatic speech forms does not mean that the language is about to absorb such changes as correct (and yes, there is a right way and wrong way to both write and speak the language). It's simply not wide-spread enough and there are too many detractors who disagree with it.
CaroGirl said:
Fewer and less are on a different scale than double negatives.
You are right in the sense that there is a right and wrong way to write and speak. My only point is that the double negative rule is crap because there is nothing inherent in the words or the syntax that make it not possible or not comprehensible. It is an erudite, urbane, social rule.
I don't really think they should be used liberally or that we should let the language just erode. Otherwise, we would all start asking "Where you at?" and we would get our "smile on" like the commercials tell us to do.
Yes, double negatives are wrong. But they are wrong for social reasons not grammatical ones.
But why do you distinguish between social reasons vs. grammatical reasons? Not every grammatical convention or rule can be traced to the origin of a language, nor should it be. Social convention often becomes grammatical convention. Who would have thought, 20 years ago, that the word access would ever be used as a verb? But the ubiquity of computers in our society led to access being universally accepted as a verb in English. Voila: changing grammar in action.
Simply because you can't trace the use of the double negative, or, more accurately the proscription against it, to a solid grammar rule that comes from some other language from which English derives, doesn't make the double negative any less a grammar issue. Double negative are wrong for English grammar reasons. I'm really glad, however, that we agree that the double negative is, in fact, wrong.
Simply because you can't trace the use of the double negative, or, more accurately the proscription against it, to a solid grammar rule that comes from some other language from which English derives, doesn't make the double negative any less a grammar issue. Double negative are wrong for English grammar reasons. I'm really glad, however, that we agree that the double negative is, in fact, wrong.
CaroGirl said:
But one can trace the origins of the double negative. In fact, it has been traced. The reality that words can change parts of speech isn't anything new or exciting. There are really only a couple of parts of speech anyway- nominal and verbal. You can plot on a contiuim what parts of speech are more "verby" or which ones are more "nouny."
Words can change easily. Facsimile is a noun. It was clipped to "fax." Not the clipped version is a noun and a verb. Table is a noun and by a zero morph it becomes a verb - i.e. table an idea.
My point is that multiple negation is possible and logical in English. The double negative is common in medieval English literature.
There is nothing wrong with the double negative based upon the rules of the language - the way the language really operates. It is a social rule, rather than one that breaks a grammatical rule.
There is no reason why any one can never have multiple negations. For certain contructions and distinctive meanings, one can't not avoid it if one wants to keep the subtle meaning of the sentence.
I add the following for clarification:
http://www.americandialect.org/americandialectarchives/nov97429.html
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 1997 08:08:30 -0500
From: Robert Ness ness[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DICKINSON.EDU
Subject: Re: Double Negatives
Lowth indeed wrote "Two Negatives in English destroy one another, or are
equivalent to an Affirmative," but he was pre- and- proscribing here, not
describing. "It is not the Language, but the Practice that is at fault,"
as he wrote in the Preface to his Grammar (1762).On Sun, 16 Nov
1997, Kusujiro Miyoshi wrote:
From: Fumiaki Ushio, Tokyo (kw900325[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]s.soka.ac.jp)
It might be of some help to remember the remarks by Robert Lowth.
He was a grammarian in the eighteenth century, that is, 'the age of
reason,' and I believe he was the first who said in a decisive manner
that double negatives were affirmative. In the period of OE, as well
as in that of ME, it was custom for the people that double negatives,
or I'd say even triple negatives, just intensified negation, if I
remember correctly. I believe double negatives gradually came to be
accepted as affirmative between 1500 to 1650.
Regards.
http://www.grammardoctor.com/page3.htm
"The rule about double negatives is not a natural English rule. It was devised by an amateur (don't try this at home) eighteenth-century grammarian named Robert Lowth. In his 1762 book, he reasoned that in language, as in mathematics, two negatives make a positive. "
http://homepage.mac.com/hempelma/engl227/ulsiv1.html
Double Negatives
The double negative ``rule'' was invented by Robert Lowth, a British priest, who eventually became the bishop of London. In his book, Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762), he states the rule that two negatives affirm (I am not unaware = I am aware); see for more information. Lowth didn't like the fact that English, a Germanic language, didn't look like Latin, which was considered the most clear and logical language.
The ``rule'' that two negatives equal a positive is not true. English has always had double negatives. Lowth's grammar enjoyed enormous success, but even still, his rule never made it past written English. Double and triple negatives are found in spoken English, but they are not tolerated in written English, which is typically more formal.
On occasion, even in written English , we use double negatives that do not affirm. The sentence, ``He couldn't sleep, even with a sedative'' has the same meaning as ``He couldn't sleep, not even with a sedative.'' In the second sentence, the second ``not'' reinforces the first. In other words, we use two negatives and the sentence does not affirm, thus showing that Lowth's rule does not always work.
In some cases, Lowth's rule must be broken to obtain a grammatically correct sentence. If the sentence ``No one thought so, not even you'' is changed to read ``No one thought so, even you,'' it creates a weird sentence. The two negatives are necessary for the sentence to be correct, and yet the two negations do not affirm. In essence, the double negative rule doesn't make sense historically, and it doesn't always apply where it should. Rather, this rule is an issue of social class and good manners. If you follow this rule, you belong to the ``educated'' people.
http://nutsandbolts.washcoll.edu/topten.html
An example: double negatives as a way of emphasizing negation have a long history in spoken and written English stretching back to the time of Chaucer. But in the 18th century classically-oriented grammarians, aware that in Latin double negatives cancel out, applied the same rule to English: "Two negatives in English destroy one another, or are equivalent to an affirmative" (Robert Lowth, A Short Introduction to English Grammar, 1762). The grammarians have driven [font=Times New Roman, Times, serif]the poor old double negative into the gutter. It is not recommended for formal writing.[/font]
A discussion of double negatives doesn't make sense without distinctions among kinds of negatives. Two negatives do make a positive in "I am not unaware." They don't make a positive in "I'll never give up, not ever."
Standard English doesn't use double negatives (in the simpler sense of negatives: "I don't want no junk mail" ), as French and Spanish do, but it comes close in some uses of "any" and "either."
Standard English doesn't use double negatives (in the simpler sense of negatives: "I don't want no junk mail" ), as French and Spanish do, but it comes close in some uses of "any" and "either."
reph said:
Yes, if you count "I am not unaware" as a positive statement, then I do stand corrected. I wasn't counting those constructions as positive. So, thank you for pointing that out to me.
Of course standard English doesn't use double negatives - I was trying to show how arbitrary and manufactured the rule is.
Ack! Ack! Cough, spit! If the universe includes me, then "access" is not universally accepted as a verb. It still looks wrong. I guess you can tell I was around before "access" began moonlighting as a new part of speech. I don't accept "impact" as a verb, either.CaroGirl said:
I can't be the only one to deny access to "access." I fairly often see "gain access to" in documents I had nothing to do with. Some writer or editor must have used that phrase deliberately, in preference to "access" alone.
Well, rules are made up by people. Are you proposing that some rules are arbitrary and others are natural? Let's see an example of a grammatical rule that grew organically and couldn't have been otherwise.Strongbadia said:
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