Don't Do It!

      

              I have a pet peeve that I’d like to share with you. Before I do I just want to protect myself from friends and neighbors and strangers on the street by saying that I LOVE Oklahoma and I LOVE living here and I hope to stay here for a while. So please, no tar and feathers or transportation offers.

            My pet peeve is a little phrase that I hear almost daily, and it’s a small part of what makes people in other areas think that Oklahomans are hicks. I hear professionals say it, I hear it on the news, I hear it at the grocery store, I hear it at church, and I hear it on the playground. The phrase is “I done it”. Of course there are other variations- “he done it”, “we done it”, “she done it”. All wrong. And the sound of those words has the same effect on my ears as fingernails on a chalkboard.

            Okay, I’m not the grammar police and I don’t always use the right word at the right time. Editors often complain that I misuse the word “which” and I’m guilty of saying “he’s got” instead of “he has”. Confessions aside, the phrase “I done it” still sounds like something from an episode of “The Beverly Hillbillies”.

            Some linguists will say that “I done it” isn’t necessarily wrong, but simply a variety of English that differs from the standard. It may even be regionally acceptable. However, it also stigmatizes a person in certain situations. If I hear a professional person such as a doctor or a teacher use the phrase, I immediately have a lower opinion of them. I can’t help it.  Emily Post once mentioned “I done it” in her explanation of “phrases avoided in good society”. She said, “People who say ‘I come,’ and ‘I seen it,’ and ‘I done it’ prove by their lack of grammar that they had little education in their youth. Unfortunate, very; but they may at the same time be brilliant, exceptional characters,…”. I agree completely. It’s simply a matter of giving the wrong impression by using the wrong words.

            Most people probably aren’t aware they even use the phrase. They have heard it for so long that it doesn’t even register in their brains.  So here’s a quick English lesson. Do not quit reading, this will be painless. If you look up the word “done” in the dictionary you’ll find a brief notation just before the common definitions that says “done-past part of DO”. What this means is that “done” is a form of “do”,  the past participle form of do. You don’t have to understand what a past participle is or memorize a bunch of rules. Just repeat after me: Done has to have a helper word. Look at the following phrases,

            I do, I did, I have done

            He does, he did, he has done

            They do, they did, they have done

Or try this:

            I do this each day. I did this yesterday. I have done this before.

            He does this well. He did this well. He has done this well in the past.

            They do this often. They did this yesterday. They have done this before.

See a pattern? If this is still too confusing, just try using another word instead of done. Try “I finished, completed, made, repaired, or accomplished it”. Try anything, please,  except “I done it”..

I realize this topic is probably low on your list of priorities. You may even be thinking “this woman has way too much free time on her hands”, but I have to ask you a question. Why would we want to give the rest of the world the impression that Oklahomans are uneducated hicks when we know for a fact that many of us are brilliant, exceptional characters?

(Next time we’ll talk about “fixin’ to”, “ain’t”, and “I seen it”. No tar, you promised.)

      

      

Comments

[katrina]

Just so you know...your favorite son-in-law is a repeat offender of "I seen." Drives me up a wall!!!