This rant about bad
English grammar was posted in the Facebook page of Jose Carillo's English Forum
recently by visitor Zzyggy Zubiri:
“Pardon my grammar and
punctuation, for I wasn’t a very good student then. My English may not be that
good but still, I find from reading Internet forums that unlike people in India
and in other nations that use English as a second language, Filipinos have a
very irritating, if not confounding, way of using the past tense with words
like ‘did’ or ‘would,’ as in ‘did helped’ or ‘would cared.’ Now I’m starting to
think that by sheer force of numbers, they may be correct.
“Is this what our
teachers are teaching in school nowadays or should the teachers themselves be
taught? Or, more disturbing is—am I wrong?”
My reply to Zzyggy
Zubiri:
Even by sheer force
of numbers, not by a long stretch are those Filipinos correct when they use the
past tense of the verb with words like “did” or “would,” and I’m absolutely
sure that their English teachers aren’t teaching them that terribly wrong usage
either. It’s just that being nonnative English speakers, many Filipinos can’t
seem to grasp the fact that in English, it’s the helping verb—not the main verb—that
takes the tense.
I’ve taken up this
grammar quirk every now and then in this column and in the Forum over the years
(http://tinyurl.com/olyxuw5). However, as I had pointed out to an incredulous
lawyer puzzled by the cluelessness of some people about that usage, it does
need some brainwork to grasp the difference between the tensed main verb and
the non-tensed bare infinitive in English sentences.
The thing to keep in
mind is that in English, the auxiliary or helping verb “do” works in two basic ways:
(1) as an intensifier to emphasize or to insist on something, (2) to indicate
that a question is being asked and to give an emphatic answer, whether
positively or negatively. But mark this rule: in both usages, it’s not the main
verb but the helping verb “do” that takes the tense.
1. “Do” functions as an intensifier. It emphasizes a
response to a probing question in the present tense or past tense, taking the
position right before the main verb of the response. For instance, to the
question “Do you really know this woman?” or “Did you really know this woman?”, the typical emphatic positive response is “Yes,
I do know this woman” or “Yes, I did know this woman.” In such responses,
it’s the helping verb “do” that takes the tense. The main verb remains in its
base form (the infinitive stripped of the function word “to”), which we shouldn’t
confuse with its present-tense form. Thus, in the examples presented above, “know”
is a bare infinitive and doesn’t take any tense at all.
2. “Do” indicates that a question is being asked. As we all know, “do”
takes the front-end position in present-tense and past-tense questions, as in “Does she take unsolicited advice?” and “Did
she take unsolicited advice?” In future-tense
questions, the auxiliary verb “will” or “would” takes the place of “do,” as in
“Will she take unsolicited advice?”
or “Would she take unsolicited
advice?”
Take note that in positive
answers to such questions, it’s not the main verb but the helping verb “do” or
“would” that takes the tense: “Yes, she does
take unsolicited advice.” “Yes, she did
take unsolicited advice.” “Yes, she would
take unsolicited advice.” When the answer is negative, the helping verb
must be positioned before the word that negates the main verb: “No, she does not take unsolicited advice.” “No,
she did not take unsolicited advice.”
“No, she would not take unsolicited
advice.”
Always, it is not
the main verb but the helping verb that takes the tense.
