Please state in which country your phrase tends to be used, what the phrase is, and what it should be.

Example:

In America, recently came across “back-petal”, instead of back-pedal. Also, still hearing “for all intensive purposes” instead of “for all intents and purposes”.

  • shyguyblue@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1071·
    2 days ago

    “Could of…”

    It’s “could have”!

    Edit: I’m referring to text based things, like text and email. I can pretty much ignore the mispronouncing.

    • Usernameblankface@lemmy.world
      2·
      22 hours ago

      It’s definitely a mistake, but I think it has slipped by because spell check wouldn’t have a reason to mark it, and not everyone uses grammar check, so they think it’s correct to spell it out by the sound of the contraction.

        • MudMan@fedia.io
          111·
          2 days ago

          I am viscerally against this concept.

          It’s one thing to include the spelling as a way to capture the phonetics of an accent or a dialect, entirely another to accept its use in writing when using a neutral voice.

          If anything, because it’s so often just a misspelling I would avoid trying to use it as a phonetics thing just as a matter of style. At this point everybody would think I’m making a mistake instead of trying to mimic a way of speech in a way they’d never do with “coulda”.

      • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
        21·
        2 days ago

        I mean no? The have in could have is pronounced the same as of, but at least AFAIK no dialect explicitly says could of. Tell the other person to not mesh the two words together and they’ll say have. I think.

        • IronKrill@lemmy.ca
          2·
          2 days ago

          Minor nit pick from my experience. If the word is written out “could have” I enunciate the entire word. I only pronounce the contraction “could’ve” as “could of”. And vice versa when dictating.