FGC Goal #1: American Phrase #37: YOU GUYS HEAR ABOUT?

By Robby

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Improve Spoken English

Current Goal: Learn 50 American Phrases in 25 Days!

Morning!

Today’s American English phrase is YOU GUYS HEAR ABOUT?, and it’s a very handy phrase for situations when you’re approaching a group of people with an intent to tell them some news.

And by the way, this phrase is a typical example of how we can omit words in conversational English, and while some perfectionists will consider such a grammar construct a mistake, in reality it’s exactly how people are speaking in real life!

Obviously, grammatically correct way of wording this phrase would be the following: “Have you guys heard about?” or “Did you guys hear about?” – depending on context.

In real life conversations, however, native English speakers quite often omit the auxiliary verbs from the beginning of sentences, and the resulting sentence is something of a crossbreed between a question and a statement.

And if you think about it, this phrase YOU GUYS HEAR ABOUT? doesn’t even follow any English grammar rules!

Hadn’t I known that such a grammar construct exists, I would have told you that it’s either

DID you guys HEAR about?

or

You guys HEARD about?

I mean – I would have thought that the moment you do away with the auxiliary verb TO DO in the beginning of the sentence, the main verb TO HEAR changes to Past Tense.

It turns out it’s not the case, and you’re perfectly fine to say things like YOU GUYS HEAR ABOUT? which doesn’t really make any sense if you’re an English grammar buff and you like following grammar rules by the letter!

Thanks for tuning in,

Robby

English Idiomatic Expressions

P.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out the English Harmony System HERE!

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  • Racso

    This is just a constructive opinion…your blog, in my opinion, is one of the best, if not the best, when it comes to English language Improvement. I have improved my vocabulary and continue to improve with it. However, sometimes I find some expressions in your articles that are not used so frequently in real life. The other day I was trying to use the expression “up to scratch,” while speaking with two native english-speakers, and they didn’t know what that meant. Both of them were born in the US and graduated from high school; so, it goes without saying, they are fluent in English. As a result of that, I searched the origin of that expression and found out that the expression is mostly related to sports, more specifically to boxing. In a nutshell, the expression is a jargon of a discipline. After that, I also searched its frequency of use in relation to other expressions that I know are popular, such as “whether or not” and “for the most part.” The graph of GOOGLE BOOKS NGRAM VIEW showed that “up to scratch” is barely used, when compared with the use of the other two phrases; in fact, its use is marginal. The bottom line is that now I try to pick and choose among the expressions I stumble upon. Anyways, I’m very thankful to you for all the information that you provide us and because you also have done the dirty work for us, reading lots of books to learnlearn all that vocabulary.

  • ASHKEEN AHMED

    could you help me to use phrasal verbs and idioms in our daily routine?

  • idiomrobby777

    You can find the full list of all phrases published on this blog on this page: http://easyidioms.com/sitemap/

  • Crackpot

    Hey, the idioms you chose are interesting. Why don’t you publish the complete list of the in one single page?