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As annitacm pointed, one of my wss has some typos. Instead of "infinitive" I wrote "participle", forgot to erase an article before a proper name (I was using other example) but before updating this printable, I have a question:
She pointed that my example "Has your sister ever been to US?" is not correct, and the correction is: "Has your sister ever been to the U.S.A.?"
I know the second form is correct, but since I have heard many times Americans using the former, I got astonished. I would like to know if it �s really wrong, or if it is substandard, or something.
For the ones who downloaded it, I hope you had checked before printing. I �m not a native speaker and I write my wss completely, I don �t copy examples, grammar rules or anything from books or sites. Sometimes I even risk writing a short story (since I �m a writer in my native language) but sometimes I have to prepare 2 or 3 wss at a time, with no time left for corrections, so I ask my students to help me find mistakes.
Most of my wss are fully editable, so if you find a mistake you can easily erase and correct it (but please, let me know by email [email protected] or through PM, so I �ll update the printable). After using a ws, when I find a mistake I usually update it, but sometimes I have so many things to do and so many deadlines to worry about that I simply forget, till the next time I have to use it.
I have many blogs, social nets, groups, students, kids, parents, classes, lessons, and to much homework to correct, housework to do... maybe I �m like a duck, that wants to fly, to swim and to walk and at the end doesn �t do anything properly. Indeed! But I �m working on it!
Thanks in advance and sorry for the inconvenience.
I have never been to US would be incorrect. Even if you think you hear native speakers say this, it �s likely the is there, but they just speak too quickly to hear it. Of course, it might be that the speakers you �ve heard aren �t native - immigrants perhaps - or just have poor English. You could say My sister has never been to America though.
In a nutshell, the article is mandatory with the US/USA (I think the version without puctuation has now become the standard), as with the UK, the Bahamas and the Philippines (and possibly a few more obscure examples.
Thanks, I agree with you, but after the correction I looked for some examples and found several lessons using examples "he has been to US", "They have been to US", etc. And the people who talk to me are native speakers (Americans, not immigrants) and they don �t have poor English. Isn �t it incorrect or substandard?
It is incorrect indeed.Maybe it �s the result of our fast online culture including chatting, texting and emailing, where abbrevations and acronyms are getting more popular. HAND.
You could say/write "Has your sister ever been to the US?". The only problem with your original wueation (in this post, I haven �t seen your worksheet yet) was in leaving the definite article out. If that question was asked in Australia then people would understand that US is an abbreviation of USA, which is an abbreviation for �The United States of America �. US is short for �United States� with �America� as unspoken & understood.
You �re true that some people don �t say/write a lot of things "correctly". I always tell my students that there �s "playground English" and there �s Academic English and I teach them the latter. In Academic English, the only correct version will be "the US/the USA".
Dear Zailda, it is incorrect to leave out the article before countries
that are made up af a group of states or provinces. We would not say The France
or The Germany, but we must say The British Isles, The The United Arab
Emirates, the U.S. , The United Kingdom, The UK, the Bahamas, The Soviet Union.
http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=45510 give the rule that for
collective and plural nouns and for "State", "Union",
"Republic", a "The" is required.
http://rpi.edu/web/writingcenter/esl.html agrees.
As to your question, if it is acceptable to use to US in substandard English, I
could not find any reference to leaving out the article before the country name
in substandard usage. There are many Englishes in the world? Indian English,
South African English, Malaysian English, etc, and it is possible that in one
of these non-American/British/Australian Englishes, people who grow up speaking
these Englishes are native speakers, but their primary language exercises influence
on how they speak their country �s brand of English.
A second explanation could be that if the native speakers have been in close
contact with a non-English environment for an extended period of time (years), they
take on some of the common mistakes of the culture where they are living
because they hear the mistake so often that it starts to sound normal and
becomes a part of their own language usage. This can happen to a native speaker
with a spouse who speaks almost flawless English as a second language, as well.
The native speaker may pick up the spouses mistakes.
I know we use the article before "the" US or "the" UK but I didn �t know why. Thanks for the explanation, I like to know "why" things are this or that way.
