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To know
Message from smartway posted on 06-10-2009 at 12:43:38
Hello,
I need your help to understand:
Yesterday,when I was reading a novel in English I found this sentence:
"I knowed that most of them wouldn't have took it as a gift".
To know is an irregular verb,so the past of this verb is knew,but why we used do they use knowed and not knew in this sentence?
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Edited by lucile83 on 06-10-2009 13:02
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Edited by lucile83 on 20-11-2009 15:26
Message from smartway posted on 06-10-2009 at 12:43:38
Hello,
I need your help to understand:
Yesterday,when I was reading a novel in English I found this sentence:
"I knowed that most of them wouldn't have took it as a gift".
To know is an irregular verb,so the past of this verb is knew,but why we used do they use knowed and not knew in this sentence?
-------------------
Edited by lucile83 on 06-10-2009 13:02
-------------------
Edited by lucile83 on 20-11-2009 15:26
Re: To know by lucile83, posted on 06-10-2009 at 13:01:12
Hello,
"I knowed that most of them wouldn't have took it as a gift".
there are 2 mistakes in that sentence:
'knowed' which should be 'knew' as you say in your post
and
'have took' which should be 'have taken'
I don't know what sort of book it is but I would just put it into the dustbin!
Bye!
Re: To know by jonquille, posted on 06-10-2009 at 23:28:14
Hello!
"I knowed that most of them wouldn't have took it as a gift".
I don't know if I'd go so far as to "put it into the dustbin" !
If that line comes from a novel, I suspect it's part of dialog. Language such as that in a dialog is often used to portray a character's intellectual or language ability...or just the language used in a certain area (whether right or wrong!). I have seen similar use of language in dialogs in French text.
When you are trying to translate or understand text in a novel, be aware of the context and the characters that are being "described" by their language.
By the way...what is the novel?
Happy reading!
jonquille
Re: To know by eileen_zh, posted on 07-10-2009 at 02:49:26
hello
I suggest you should be careful with the writer of the novel you want to read.
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Edited by lucile83 on 07-10-2009 06:46
Re: To know by intrepid34, posted on 07-10-2009 at 08:26:16
Good morning!
I would be inclined to agree with Jonquille. It's written in the first person so obviously direct speech. And yes, English people speak their language just as badly as French, German, Italian, etc.... nobody is perfect. Your book may be based in the cockney area of London, or maybe in the north where the language is pretty familiar. Don't worry...
And yes please, I would like to know the name of the book too!
Love
Intrepid
Re: To know by krnntp, posted on 29-10-2009 at 15:27:24
Hi Smartway,
Don't worry, it's not a new verb tense! Lucile83 is right, the sentence is hopelessly ungrammatical. It sounds to me like some sort of rural dialect.
I can't tell if it is from the U.K, or from rural America. For all I know, it could be any writer from Dickens to Steinbeck :-) But the character who is speaking definitely sounds like a picturesquely uneducated yokel.
Translated to normal English,
I knowed that most of them wouldn't have took it as a gift
becomes
I knew that most of them wouldn't have taken it as a gift
Yee haw!
Best regards - krnntp
Re: To know by lucile83, posted on 29-10-2009 at 15:43:19
Hello smartway,
Could you tell us the name of the writer and the title of the book,please
Thank you so much !
Re: To know by angel_peace, posted on 30-10-2009 at 15:42:35
Don't be bothered about that, because it is an old English. If you read an old novel, you can find words that are not actually applicable nowadays. They used that before. In this world, there's nothing constant but change especially in language. We keep on improving so there's so many changes. Like for example, the plural form of medium is media... but today, you can use medias as a plural form... Language is dynamic, so it will change as time passes by because people keeps on learning...
Re: To know by leocomix, posted on 03-11-2009 at 11:43:56
It's old English. Your novel must be about the 18th century or before.
Re: To know by lucile83, posted on 03-11-2009 at 11:57:41
Hello,
I found that :
knowed (nōd)
v. Chiefly Southern & Upper Southern U.S.
A past tense and past participle of know.
It seems to be a sort of dialect then.
Bye.
Re: To know by cecil_ward, posted on 03-11-2009 at 16:53:12
Aside from the possibility of dialect as mentioned before, this could be real genuine English, but from the speech of a small child. Small children do sometimes generalise verb forms before they learn about irregular verb forms like know - knew.
English has changed over time and indeed at certain times regular and irregular verb formas have co-existed;
Example "hung" vs "hanged" is a standard 'split' now in English; in my English the form "hanged" is confined to the usage "be hanged"="die/be killed by hanging after being sentenced to death".
Further examples: I believe in the USA some people say "dove" (my English "dived"), and "brung" (my English "brought").
Re: To know by gracetang, posted on 20-11-2009 at 15:20:26
It may be taken from a dialogue. Sometimes, writers purposely make some mistakes in order to despict the main charactericts of some characters and reflect their educational background. In Mark Twin's novel,there's a naugty boy named Tom Sawyer whose speech is not always grammadically.It may not be the errors of the writer.
Re: To know by lucile83, posted on 20-11-2009 at 15:26:38
Hello,
It may be anything I believe, but smartway is not interested in her topic any more;I'll close it.
Thanks for your answers.
