In article <slrnddk4v0.ims.chris@ccserver.keris.net>,
Chris Croughton <chris@keristor.net> wrote:
> I happened to hear an American pops ong recently which contained a usage
> which seemed strange to me:
>
> "I do love you much."
>
> In British English that is wrong. Is it acceptable American, or a
> dialect form, or a slang usage?
>
> Following comments are about British English use of 'much'.
>
> It seems that 'much' can't be used without some sort of qualifier. "I
> love you very much", "too much" and "not much" (or "I don't love you
> much") are acceptable, [...]
The same holds for American English. Pop songs should typically not be
used as examples of correct English :)
In addition, American Youth English (not quite slang, not quite a
dialect) often uses the strange rule "if it's reasonably clear what I
meant, then it's correct-enough for this situation." I suspect that
those who frequent this group prefer their English a tad more structured
than that.
In addition, the manufacturing of cute-ish sounding words in order to
draw attention to and/or emphasize a point leads to such things as "I
love you muchly" and "you are filled with beautiousness." I speculate
that this sort of thing became popular with the "Pogo" comic strip (Pogo
spoke using that manner of manufactured words, often.)
--
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