Am I being rude

[Beryllos]

… My biggest issue is the use of “of” when it should be “have.”
Like “I couldn’t OF said it any better.” …

… I just hope “could of” does not change into acceptable grammar usage…

This evening I was reading a short story, Thank You Ma’am, by Langston Hughes, first published in 1958, and there it was in black and white:
could of
It occurred to me that this usage could be even older, so I looked it up in the dictionary. One of the definitions of “of,” tagged as nonstandard, is
“have” —used in place of the contraction 've often in representations of uneducated speech. Example: I could of beat them easy (from You Know Me Al, by Ring Lardner, published in 1914).
The dictionary places the first known use circa 1800.

What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done;
and there is nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:9

 

[JimmyG88]

Aside in defense of Latin.

When it is taught at all – My hobnobbing with Latin teachers leads me to believe one of the major hurdles for Latin students is that (in the US, at least) students are no longer taught English grammar! How can students know to not split infinitives if they know not what an infinitive is?

FTR, It is impossible to split an infinitive in Latin, which is why grammarians proscribed it in English for so long.


tee

I fear you are correct. Not knowing an adverb from an adjective also considerably hampers the student’s ability to learn any language other than English