The great 'HAVE' or 'OF' debate

Curious Scot

Which is correct:

Could OF; Should OF; Would OF

or

Could HAVE; Should HAVE; Would HAVE?

As far as I'm concerned, it's 'HAVE' all the way!!:D

looksee

It isn't even remotely a debate, 'of' is simply wrong. It is a result of people saying could've and other people hearing it as could of.

hullaballoo

Not a debate. Should of etc is incorrect.

Pissartist

Could have should have ect

thejaguar

This could of being so interesting....

endacl

Pissartist wrote: »

Could have should have ect

You’ve gone and done it now!

Let the great ‘is punctuation actually necessary’ debate begin!

Sharp MZ700

thejaguar wrote: »

This could of being so interesting....

Have course it could of.

Yakuza

What about shoulda / coulda / woulda?

osarusan

When somebody says 'Sh'we go shopping tomorrow? / Sh'we invite your parents for dinner?' are they saying 'Should we' or 'Shall we'?

davedanon

Grammar: The difference between knowing your sh*t, and knowing you're sh*t.


The motto on my personal coaster.

Sonny noggs

davedanon wrote: »

Grammar: The difference between knowing your sh*t, and knowing you're sh*t.


The motto on my personal coaster.

I know my sh*t, now you can too:

Mearings

Curious Scot wrote: »

Which is correct:

Could OF; Should OF; Would OF

or

Could HAVE; Should HAVE; Would HAVE?

As far as I'm concerned, it's 'HAVE' all the way!!:D

Come off of it.

artanevilla

Language evolves all the time.

artanevilla

artanevilla wrote: »

Language evolves all the time.

Yes, but in this instance "have" is grammatically correct and "of" plain wrong. The contraction "could've" can throw people for a loop based on the phonetic.

is_that_so

It's just people transcribing the weak form pronunciation of have, /ǝv/ in this case, which is also a weak form of of

barney shamrock

Stick 'could of' or 'would of' in your cv and see how far you get.

lawred2

Curious Scot wrote: »

Which is correct:

Could OF; Should OF; Would OF

or

Could HAVE; Should HAVE; Would HAVE?

As far as I'm concerned, it's 'HAVE' all the way!!:D

debate?

There's just the uneducated way and the educated way.

Loafing Oaf

I used to assume people saying 'could of' were making a deliberate mistake like spelling the 'teh' but seemingly not

Curious Scot

barney shamrock wrote: »

Stick 'could of' or 'would of' in your cv and see how far you get.

I agree with you there. However, I know some people in jobs where a lot of writing or typing of letters is involved who always use ‘of’ instead of ‘have’! (This drives me mad!:mad:)
One woman in particular even uses ‘of’ (quite clearly) when she’s speaking at meetings etc! (This makes me even madder! :mad::mad:)
So, in response to your comment, it seems that the use of ‘of’ instead of ‘have’ is acceptable in a CV.

donegal_man

Pissartist wrote: »

Could have should have ect

Do you mean "...etc"? It's a contraction of "et cetera" NOT "ec tetera".
I tried to ignore it, I really really tried but I just can't.

davedanon

He's saying someone needs electro-convulsive therapy. Bit harsh if you ask me, but each to their own.

Yakuza

davedanon wrote: »

He's saying someone needs electro-convulsive therapy. Bit harsh if you ask me, but each to their own.

If it fixes the your/you're, they're/there/their, could have/could of, saw/seen and other plethora of errors that abound, I'd hear him out...

davedanon

"I seen" is peculiarly Irish, and one of my pet hates. Everyone here says it.

looksee

davedanon wrote: »

"I seen" is peculiarly Irish, and one of my pet hates. Everyone here says it.

I don't say it. I would say I know many more people who do not say than do say it.

I don't agree that it is peculiarly Irish either, along with 'I done' it is very common in England, it is just bad/lazy English.

davedanon

Hmm. I'll take your word for it. But I still think it's very commonly used. And its brother "I done it", as you say.

looksee

I am not disputing that it is irritatingly commonly used, but it is simply not true to say that 'everyone' says it. Yes, I am being a bit pedantic, but this is the English forum and we are in pursuit of clarity in English.

mcmoustache

artanevilla wrote: »

Language evolves all the time.

Certain aspects of it but not something as basic as this.

Take the following two sentences:

"I eat fish"

"I could eat fish"

The first sentence doesn't need an explanation but look at the second one - it's the conditional version of the first. Typically it would be followed by " if some condition(s) hold(s)" or " under some circumstances". It would look something like:

"I could eat fish if I had some".

More examples include:

"I could buy fish if I had money"
"I could catch fish if I had a fishing rod"
"I could sell fish if I had a retail licence"

As you can see, the word "could" is how we make verbs conditional. We can ignore the actual conditions to keep this simple but the important part is the first part as the actual condition can be implicit.


We can also do this with the past participle. The past participle typically takes the form of "I have [past_participle]". For example, "I have been", "I have seen", "I have arrived".

In our scenario, you would say "I have eaten".

We can also make this conditional and when we do, it looks like:

"I could have eaten".

As always, it's a verb being made conditional ("have"). This is how past participles are made conditional and it's also done like this in other languages such as in French.


Let's go back to where this thread started and take the following abomination and deconstruct it:

"I could of eaten"

What does it even mean? Well, we can see that it's at least an attempt to make a verb conditional so let's make the sentence non-conditional and see if we can make sense of it.

"I of eaten"

As you can see, these three words, while actually words themselves, make no sense. It's word salad.

For a simpler example and using the same idea, what about this sentence?

"I could have" which is the conditional version of "I have". If you replace "have" with "of", you get:

"I could of" and the non-conditional form "I of".

As you can see it becomes more and more absurd the more you think about it.

This is why it's not one of those aspects of a language that change over time such as spelling. Ultimately, languages need to be able to say something and "I of" does not.

davedanon

Depends on the circles in which one moves. I live in south Dublin, and the overwhelming majority of 'ordinary' people in and around Tallaght and Firhouse favour 'I seen' and 'I done'.

I don't say it, despite being from De Northside. Irony.