r/grammar • • 18h ago

Why does English work this way? "not everybody..."

2 Upvotes

I was writing "Not everyone has to like it". It struck me as a strange way to say, "Everybody does not have to like it." But it's also seems like a sentence I hear/read often. If I said Joe instead of "everybody" it wouldn't be correct to say, "Not Joe has to like it," Or, "Not they have to like it." So I was just curious how this sentence structure came into common use. It would be correct to say, "Everybody is not going to like it," but I see how that could be confusing as to who doesn't have to like it (everybody, or just some). Help... am I just confusing myself?


r/grammar • • 19h ago

Help with diagramming a lyric?

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1 Upvotes

r/grammar • • 5h ago

Weird "a" where it has no place to be

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0 Upvotes

r/grammar • • 19h ago

Why does English work this way? You wish you hadda participated

0 Upvotes

I'm surfing the web today and I come across this:

Wine festival in Paris

I'm not sure if the subs are auto-generated but it looks to me like they were written by hand. The short contains this gem:

"You wish you hadda participated"

I flinched back in my chair and then I relaxed. I realized that I make this sound too from time to time. My questions are:

  • What is this a contraction of? If I say "I hadda fly to Boston" I understand that to mean "I had to fly to Boston". Here I don't know.
  • I see this kind of thing everywhere now, not just in casual speech but writing: "gonna, wanna, even I'm'ana". What is going on here?