ESL SUPERBLOG

The first person subject pronoun, "I", is always written in uppercase (majuscule). In French and most other languages it is written just like all the other pronouns. I spent ages this morning (it's my day off) trying to find a decent explanation, without much success. The most common theory is that when the old English "Ich" (like in German) became reduced to "I" it was thought to be too small and insignificant to be a real word and could easily get attached to the end or beginning of another word. So scribes and later printers took the habit of capitalising it. If you have another explanation, let me know. In emails and text messages the lowercase "i" is now becoming common. Personally, i don't approve!

A colleague showed me a website with grammar exercises based on the difference between "have" and "have got". Apparently, the teacher who wrote the exercises, who is British, thinks that the question, "do you have?" is an Americanism that is not acceptable to speakers of British English. So when presented with a choice between (a)"Do you have a car?" and (b)"have you a got a car?" the exercise will tell that only (b) is correct. It's no surprise that students of English are always obsessed with learning grammar rules when the teachers themselves keep making life unnecessarily complicated. Both are correct. In fact, "do you have" is probably more correct than "have you got" because it follows the standard rule for asking questions - "do you want?", "does he need?", "do they go?", etc. What's the problem? If your teacher told you the same thing, let me know. I'd like to know if this kind of problem is common.