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Avoidance of shall | ||
Tags: Morphology | English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Taipale Newbie United States Joined 4352 days ago 5 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Russian | Message 25 of 37 23 October 2012 at 1:37am | IP Logged | ||
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I can't remember ever hearing 'shall' except in quotes. I wouldn't call it archaic, but certainly obsolete (here in the US). I've always understood it as implying some kind of obligation or determination, maybe because I've seen it in legal contracts. The 1st person distinction doesn't seem likely because they totally different verbs. Anyway, if you want to sound like a native avoid 'shall' entirely and just use 'will' to express future tense and 'should' for suggestions.
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| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6393 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 26 of 37 23 October 2012 at 6:52am | IP Logged | ||
I think "Shall we?" as a question is still used in the US, though, meaning "Are you ready to leave?". Possibly a bit old-fashioned, but it's still heard, at least on American sitcoms! A: Shall we? B: Let's. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4479 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 27 of 37 26 October 2012 at 1:17am | IP Logged | ||
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''Shall we dance?'' is an obsolete form of modern ''Would you like to dance?''
Kesha used it in her video of ''Blow'', invoking some pseudo-antique mystique. ''Shall we'' is not unlike It is I, in American English... Every time someone asks me: Shall we?, I reply: Yes we shall or No, we shan't! LOL Edited by Medulin on 26 October 2012 at 1:20am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Glarus Girl Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4386 days ago 50 posts - 108 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Swiss-German | Message 28 of 37 26 October 2012 at 12:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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I was born in London and I use 'shall' and 'shan't' all the time as do the people around
me. I was listening to Paul Noble's German course (in which he never utters a single word of German!) and he mentioned that no one says 'Must I?' any more but say instead 'Do I have to?' but it's still said in my 'world'. I don't believe speaking like this is old fashioned or antiquated at all it's just people tend not to speak properly and the English language is full of slang and Americanisms so when something is spoken correctly it sounds strange because no one hears it any more. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| michaelyus Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4376 days ago 53 posts - 87 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: Italian, French, Cantonese, Korean, Catalan, Vietnamese, Lingala, Spanish Studies: Hokkien | Message 29 of 37 27 October 2012 at 1:41am | IP Logged | ||
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I have to say that I, a born and bred Londoner (and technically a Cockney at that), also use "shall" for first-person offers. I additionally use 'shall' when there is a sense of absolute duty or impossibility of resistance, independent of volition. E.g. "Well that shall have to go then". It is a marked future tense for me though.
I've also read about the first person suppletion (the 'I/we will' but 'you/he/she/it/they shall' for the emphatic future tense, and reversal for the simple objective future; and of course the indirect speech rules that are incumbent upon one who has makes this distinction); I can't say this is an active part of my grammar. I suppose such a paradigm tries to codify the apparent contradiction in having the use of "Shall I...?" with the latter usage I have above. I don't think it's a particularly accurate characterisation though. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Spinchäeb Ape Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4281 days ago 146 posts - 180 votes Speaks: English*, German | Message 30 of 37 27 October 2012 at 4:16am | IP Logged | ||
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I speak American English. To me "shall" sounds perfectly fine when used with "I" or "we." When used with "he," "she," or "they," it sounds stuffy or fake. It also sounds more natural when used in a question. "Shall we go now?" That sounds less stuffy to me than, "We shall go now."
These are just my sensibilities. I've lived in 6 different states. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Betjeman Groupie Germany Joined 5954 days ago 85 posts - 204 votes Speaks: German* | Message 31 of 37 29 October 2012 at 10:18am | IP Logged | ||
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I suppose that the answer to this question is quite simple, leaving, in fact, little or no room for
interpretation (but I may be wrong). First, I would like to point out that there is a distinct difference between asking "Shall we do this" and saying "I shall do this". The former is a request, the latter a statement about the future. While the request might have fallen out of use among Scotsmen (see the OP), it is still taught in contemporary language courses and probably more often heard in England than in Scotland or the US (not being a native speaker, I have to make a guess here). As for the second example, "shall" seems to have been the only acceptable future auxiliary for the first persons singular and plural but this has widely fallen out of use now. In the old Assimil English Without Toil course, dating back to 1929, it was still taught that way. It is worth mentioning that "will" was not only a future auxiliary back then but also used to express wishes. So "I will go there" actually meant "I want to go there" whereas "You will go there" meant "You are going to go there". Accordingly, "should" was used as the equivalent of "would" in the first persons ("I should go there if I was you"). When I started learning English as a second language 35 years ago, the will-form was already used for all future cases, at least at my school. However, some contemporary British writers continue to employ the shall-future in their works, for example crime writer P.D. James, mostly to indicate that a person is educated or belongs to the upper class. (EDIT: See Elexi's enlightening comment on this aspect.) Grammarian Michael Swan writes in his excellent book Practical English Usage, "Will and would have now practically replaced first-person shall and should." Personally, I like old-fashioned (EDIT: or so I thought) expressions like these to add colour and variation to the pleasantly streamlined English grammar. Edited by Betjeman on 30 October 2012 at 11:56am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Gala Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4361 days ago 229 posts - 421 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 32 of 37 29 October 2012 at 2:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've known one American who customarily used the word shall, and it was a deliberate
archaic affectation on his part. He also wore ascots, used the word "thrice," and referred to the decade between 2000 and 2010 as the "aughts." 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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