I was prompted to write this entry after answering a question about the subject in a language forum.

What it comes down to is what I call half-truth teaching, where something is presented to the student which is true a fair bit of the time but should, nevertheless, not be taken literally. With a bit of elaboration or better phrasing things would be better.

You know the kind of thing I’m thinking about. “You should never start a sentence with ‘and’ or ‘but’.”

But for this example, they might have had a point. And that’s not all.

The subject I have in mind today is the indefinite article.

Hands up who was taught that a becomes an before a vowel.

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On a language forum that I frequent a Romanian girl has asked whether the sentence “I haven’t a car” is correct English, since she had read it in a book but was expecting to read “I don’t have a car” or “I haven’t got a car”.

There are the usual responses that are less than ideal, including one where a chap who was against the usage adjusted his position to say that actually it is permissible.

I don’t want to say that I would never use “haven’t”…

For example I would use the following in everyday speech:
- I haven’t eaten all day.
- Did you take the garbage out.?
No…no I haven’t.

Well, that was enough for me. He’d given a misleading answer in a thread that was all rather amateurish and riddled with inaccuracy. I felt the urge to inject some facts into it, and I think that this makes for a nice blog post, so I’ve copied it here.

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