for being a tad annoyed at having my English corrected by my daughter's non-native English speaking boyfriend?

[Kladdkaka]

Cheeky bloomin sod. Even though he may in fact be correct.

I was faffing around passed him my daughter's school bag to take upstairs as he went. I said 'Take her the bag.' He laughed at me and asked what sort of rubbish English was that. Apparantly my sentence was grammatically incorrect. He says I should have said 'Take the bag to her'. I then handed him a book about Warwick Castle, asked him to pronounce it, laughed at him and told him to come back when he's spent longer than 2 weeks in the UK.:o

So, MN jury, do I tell him that you all agree with me that my sentence was perfectly acceptable? Or do I lie to him and tell him that you all agree with me that my sentence was perfectly acceptable? :o

sounds like commenting on your english is fair game then... you started it

It's not possible ... I just get this vague impression, you understand ... you're putting him through the mill here, is it kladdkaka?

Seriously - how old is he and how mean are you being? I begin to pity the poor lad.

I have tremendous fun when my mate from California comes over. We wind her up mercilessly.

Wor-wick
I-er-land
Wor-chest-er
v'eye-tamins
to-may-toes

just for starters...

squeaky - what about 'erbs*?

I know it is just unreasonable, but it drives me mad when Americans say 'erbs', it sounds so ridiculous. Or, as Eddie Izzard says, 'they say 'erbs', and we say 'herbs'. Because there's a fucking 'h' in it!

Baiting the foreigners? Hilarious!

troisgarcons Was it on this forum that somebody pointed out the difference between

Help your Uncle Jack off his horse

and

Help your uncle jack off his horse

because if it wasn't somebody just has done!

Andrew I think I'll use that one with P6 next week to reinforce the importance of capital letters.

He's 20. And he does sound exactly like Boris when he speaks. You would never in a million years know he wasn't Oxbridge English. (Unless you took him to a certain castle just south of Birmingham)

i will second 'baiting the foreigners' as not being funny... having been the foreigner who eventually stopped socializing at work because it's very wearing to have 'hilarious' comments all the time.

What's wrong with "Take her the bag"?

YABU

It?s my first post on here, so maybe IABU ... I don?t understand why some of the people who are posting on here think that it is rude for someone you know, to correct your grammar. I correct my son?s grammar, why shouldn?t your daughters? boyfriend correct yours? I wouldn?t however correct someone I didn?t know very well ? I think that would be rude.

Also I don?t understand what difference it makes that he is a ?non-native? ? are you saying he is a ?foreigner?? Would you have accepted the correction if it had come from someone who was native? What difference does it make where he comes from? As a non-native myself are you suggesting I shouldn?t correct someone?s grammar, or pronunciation because I wasn?t born here?

And lastly ? I am obviously missing the context of the situation - but as an adult, maybe you should be a bit more grown-up and help your daughter?s boyfriend with his English rather than making fun of him

NearlyLegless you misunderstand. I'm not baiting the foreigner. Here I AM the foreigner.

I think it is rude to correct someone's grammar, very rude actually, unless you are very close and know they won't mind.

I didn't read the OP as others have - I assumed they were having a bit of joshing back and forth, because initially I (like others) thought the boy was very rude, then the OP's explanation seemed to be that there was more of a jokey relationship?

EllaDee, you read it correctly.

Probably I would find in him a kindred spirit. I was the sort of horror-child who would correct my parents when I was still in nappies. Glare of death at any attempts at baby talk. Quite understand where both of you are coming from...:D

He's getting marmite on his crumpets tomorrow morning. :o

The point is, though, that he's wrong. There's nothing wrong with your grammar.

These are all acceptable forms of the imperative tense:

Take her the bag.
Take the bag to her.

Give me that book.
Give that book to me.

Bring me a glass of wine.
Bring a glass of wine to me.

The "to" is implicit in the verb, as these are verbs suggesting motion towards or away from the speaker.

I'd have seized the opportunity to use his arrogance as a teaching point.

I'm impressed that he knows who Boris Johnson is. Just so long as he doesn't look like him as well.

Does he also use "hither", "thither" and "whither"?

These are colloquially rendered as "(to) here", "(to) there" and "(to) where"!

the one thing I used to hear a lot that bugged me when living in the UK was people saying "I was sat on the bus". I rarely heard people say "sitting". Is this correct and I have never heard of it?

peas-'sat' is not correct in that context.It implies that someone picked up the speaker and plonked them in a seat.So I could say,'I sat dgs in the highchair.' 'I was sitting in the armchair'-or indeed,'I was sitting on the bus.'

peasandlove It's what some people call "demotic" and others "colloquial" and some "chav" English. Similarly I was stood.

I thought he was going to pull you up on your lack of manners and say "Take her the bag please"

"I was sat" disturbs me deeply as well. It is not correct. I would consider it quite common, in both senses of the word.