‘Can I get some more paper?’ ‘Yes, it’s on the table over there – help yourself.’

This would be an unremarkable question and answer pattern but the colleague who was asked this question by several native speakers of British English recently was the invigilator of an exam and certainly did not give that response! The expectation of ‘going and getting’ some more paper cannot have been in the students’ or the invigilator’s mind. So what the students meant was: ‘Can I have some more paper?’ (= I’d like to be given some more paper).

This use of ‘Can I get’ for ‘Can I have’ has become increasingly common in the younger age groups of British English speakers. I first remember noticing it in the late 1990s, when the Friends effect was strong in the UK. Now you will often hear someone asking ‘Can I get a coffee?’ or ‘Can I get an egg sandwich?’ at a takeaway counter. It is, of course, common in American English.

Both the UK and US versions of the Macmillan English Dictionary record the ‘Can I have’ formula for requests, giving it the specific context of polite requests for food and drink. They also both record the ‘go and bring back’ sense of ‘get’. But, in common with the most recently published ELT dictionaries, neither appears to show that ‘get’ is being used in requests for something to be given, in British English as well as American English.

Why do we say that someone “turned round” (or turned around) and said something? It’s one of those  expressions people seem to find deeply irritating, and the standard response to what is perceived as “sloppy” English is to imagine it is nothing more than a meaningless filler. I tend to take the opposite view: language isn’t usually random, and most of the things we say or write arose for perfectly good  reasons… though, once in the language, they sometimes take on their own momentum.

First let’s see how this expression works. A trawl through Macmillan’s language database shows that in most cases it’s used with a “speech act” verb – say is by far the most common, but there’s also a nice set of words like criticize, condemn, blame, attack, and  accuse:

Then they have the bare-faced cheek to turn round  and accuse us of falling for the populist headlines!

I told this woman I worked with about it, and she turned round  and called me a murderer!

But I think the clue to how this usage developed may be lurking in sentences like these:

For me to turn round  and suddenly become a nationalist would be very odd.

It will take time for the committee, some of whose members have been urging rate rises, to turn round and vote for reductions.

I don’t think it’s going to be resolved because the Church can’t suddenly turn round and say that what we’re been teaching for years is wrong.

What’s happening here is that someone changes their mind, and this change in their ideological “position” is reflected in a literal change of position. (This is a common metaphor in English and other languages.) And after all, the related noun (turnaround) also means a change in one’s opinions (or one’s fortunes).

But, as many of the examples above suggest, the changes tend to be extreme – from one position to a completely opposite one, a volte face if you like (the same metaphor). And we can see in some of the other words here (suddenly, the cheek), and in the general tone of indignation, that changing your mind so dramatically is seen as unreasonable. These two ideas are nicely captured here:

The bank saw that my business was in trouble and called in my loan. But when I arrived to pay it off, the manager turned round and said ‘Oh if you can pay, there’s no need to’.

So the phrase comes to express a sense of surprise and outrage – then starts being used even in cases where there’s no actual “change of position”. However, there is still an idea of “turn taking”: someone says or does something, and someone else responds, in turn:

What is the point of having a Royal Commission fully investigate this matter if you are then going to turn round  and ignore its recommendations?

It beggars belief that there are those who are afforded sanctuary by a benign nation can then turn round  and denigrate the country and its citizens.

If students are given responsibility, they can’t just turn around and blame the teacher!

So the message to those who see this phrase as further evidence of the collapse of civilization is that – like most things in language – “turned round and said” is quite logical. It can be a useful way of conflating the ideas of a change of mind by one person which seems perverse (and possibly unfair) to someone else.

I’m turning into a grumpy old woman. Or perhaps I’ve been one for ages without noticing and I’m only just becoming aware of how grumpy I can get. I used not to bother when people got apostrophes wrong; I refused to join a society for the preservation of the apostrophe; and I gently corrected my students. But now the misuse of apostrophes is annoying me so much that I’m beginning to think they should be abolished. Let me give you some examples that I’ve seen in the last few weeks. None of the following examples should have an apostrophe – they are all perfectly good plurals.

Shopkeepers are the primary source. I’ve seen potato’s, potatoe’s and even potatos’, cabbage’s, seedless grape’s and mango’s – and all of these have come from just two greengrocer’s. A local butcher has been advertising his wares: organic chicken’s and free-range egg’s. A newsagent has a notice ‘order your paper’s here’. Another shop proudly boasted ‘debt problem’s solved’. Yet another was advertising ‘second-hand fridge freezer’s and washing machine’s’. And finally, ‘Stoves, Fires and Fireplace’s’. That one amazes me: why would you get two plurals correct and decide the third one needs an apostrophe? But it’s not just shopkeepers. I went to a bird sanctuary the other day and read ‘it’s 10,000 mile journey’. I followed a van for a couple of miles that said ‘Working with local police force’s’. And a notice by the side of a road said ‘Water Main’s Rehabilitation’ – which I think means they are repairing the water pipes.

In the time that I’ve collected these, I’ve seen only one sign that didn’t have an apostrophe when it should have had: a fast food outlet called ‘Whats Cooking’.

A few months ago Birmingham City Council decided to get rid of all apostrophes in place names, a decision I thought stupid at the time. Their reasoning was that sometimes an apostrophe has been inserted on a street sign, sometimes not; so one area has signs that say either King’s Norton or Kings Norton, another either King’s Heath or Kings Heath, one road might be either St John’s Road or St Johns Road, and so on. In order to standardize this, all new signs will be made without apostrophes. And now I think I agree with them.

If we can’t get apostrophes right, let’s do what Birmingham is doing and get rid of them completely.

I was recently visiting a primary school and had the great pleasure of sitting in on an assembly that was to be a celebration of some of the children’s fantastic work. It was also a chance for the pupils to bring in things to show to their peers as well. In a nice clear voice, the teacher presiding over the event announced “OK, children, let’s see some of the wonderful things you’ve bought in for us to see”.

I couldn’t believe my ears. Did she just say ‘bought’, surely not! Calming down and assuring myself that I had simply heard wrong, I reabsorbed myself in the exhibition. Several minutes later the teacher again repeated to a young girl “And what have you bought in for us to see”?

Now, this has to be one the biggest language crimes that can be committed. The offender here means to use the word ‘brought’ but instead offers the completely different word ‘bought’. The really galling thing is that this was coming from someone who should patently know better. But she is far from alone.

The sister crime to this is the use of ‘brought’ when the speaker means ‘bought’. ‘Where did you get those?” you might ask. “Oh, I brought those from that shop on the High Street!”

In my 10 years in the UK I have covertly carried out a personal survey to see how many people misuse these two words. I had never experienced this peculiar habit before reaching the shores of England. My wildly less-than-scientific study would suggest that about 20% of people use the word ‘bought’ when they clearly mean ‘brought’ and vice versa. What seems to be further shocking is that no one seems to mind! Oddly, few people seem to use both words incorrectly. It seems much more likely that they use one of these words to cover both situations – thus getting it right 50% of the time. Could it simply be that these people are so lackadaisical in their approach to speech that they couldn’t be bothered to learn the correct usage of both?

Most of you reading this will be thinking ‘yes, I hear people say that all the time’, but do you ever correct them? It’s almost so commonplace that you somehow feel like it would be cruel to point out the foible. Sorry I bought it up!