Good English and Bad

The author Bill Bryson says that there are many standards of usage which shift over time. This shift is seen by many different words and phrases, which to us now, would sound odd. An example of this is when we are referring to one person. In the eighteenth century, it was correct to say "you was", which now sounds odd due to the shift in the english standards. This is also seen by "I'm hurrying, are I not?", which nowadays sound odd and is grammatically incorrect. The English language has now shifted to make the phrase "I'm hurrying, aren't I?", which in the English Language today would be perfect English. When Bill Bryson talk about "Bad English", he refers to the simple grammatical mistakes which are easily made. This can often happen, especially if English is not your mother tongue, as one will sometimes use their Mother tongue grammatical style and apply it to the English language. This will most likely cause the grammatical structure to be incorrect, resulting in "broken English", which will be hard to understand as seen by Mrs. Tan's broken English in "Mother Tongue" by Amy Tan.

I often make lapses in grammar as English is not my first Language. As I speak or write in English, I often make grammatical errors as German is similar to the English language. Even though German has helped me understand the English language better due to the similarities at first, it has now become less useful for me that the languages are so similar. This is because, even though they are similar, the sentence structure and grammar is different, making it easy for me to make grammatical mistakes as they sound similar. These grammatical errors however have never hindered me very much, as I am still able to get my point across.