We had a lot of this discussion in the ‘I could care less’ thread. “I didn’t do nothing” is in general usage, understood and accepted by native English speakers. Is it correct? Depends on your point of view and what your standards for correctness are, prescriptive, descriptive blah blah blah. However by strict grammatical rules it is incorrect, so no, they are not “surely” the same depending on the definition of ‘correct’ you are using. The same may or may not apply to the use of ‘their’ rather than his/her. Perhaps not a great example but hopefully you get what I meant by it!
Note that I am not getting into the debate on the correctness or not of this one. All I was doing was summarizing the conclusions of the article.
No, just say “maybe.” Otherwise she will go around thinking that the way to learn English is by memorizing rules rather than observing the behaviour of native speakers.
“Everyone is bringing everyone’s lunch” sounds a bit like a kind of mix-up. Or the royal “we” sort of thing. “Everyone is bringing some lunches” sounds like there are going to be a few lunches too many.
You know what. I am going to solve this problem one day by naming my first-born child Everyone. Then you could say, “Wow, ImaniOU’s some mom. She gave birth to Everyone in Taiwan.” “Aw, isn’t Everyone cute?” “Is Everyone here?” and of course, “Everyone is bringing his lunch today.” Unless I have a girl in which case it’ll be “Everyone is bringing her lunch today.”
Of course Nobody! After all, Nobody is perfect. I like Somebody - Somebody farted! Somebody needs to take out the trash. Could Somebody please help me squeeze this? :eh:
Yes, but Billy Bard also had his actors squish cow organs on stage for humor. I don’t think the people at the National Theatre would appreciate having to scrape drying eyeball goo from their stage. Even for the sake of Shakespeare.
“Everyone is bringing his own lunch,” used to be standard but by the 1970s was thought sexist. I wasn’t there in the rest of the English-speaking world when these things transpired, but in America, the idea of avoidance of sexist language began to make its way into the grammar and writing manuals, and some proportion of Whoever Is in Charge of These Things began to prescribe “his or her”–but most people didn’t (and still don’t) like hassling with “his or her,” and many people already used their even before the sexist-language issue.
So their, pun intended. By the way, adding the original tag question to the above quote, and using the “he or she” construction, it would be, “Everyone is bringing his or her own lunch, isn’t he or she?”
In closing, let me say that England expects every man and woman to do his or her duty. Or their duty. Or their duties. Or their respective duties.
