I seen that guy yesterday.

I done a lot of work yesterday.

Reading those sentences in your head might drive you crazy. Such terrible grammar!, you might say to yourself. And yes, they are grammatically incorrect. They should be, of course:

I saw that guy yesterday.

I did a lot of work yesterday.

What interests me about such utterances is: how wrong are they really, and why do people get so annoyed by them? First, let’s look at how exactly they’re wrong.

The two sentences are examples of the past simple tense, referring to a discrete action in the past. To construct this tense, we need a subject (I in both these cases) and a past simple form of a verb (to see becomes saw, to do becomes did). We might also have an object of that verb, and quite possibly a time indicator like yesterday. Continue reading →