Not that much of a fan of Alesha's judging, but I couldn't give a rat's titty about her grammar. That is the way she talks. I understood.

[quote=Psychosis;35833784]My friends who speak English learned it in four main ways:
1. From a native German/Spanish speaker who speaks English academically

Out of interest, how did that person/those people learn English??

Same here. She sounds irritating and nothing she says is likely to be particularly profound anyway.

Bits in school and then spending a lot of time in Manchester.

Believe it or not, people can choose not to use the poor grammar of people that they learn from. With effort they can look at other sources and recognise what's right and what not, and pick which parts of that person's speech they use. My friends look at TV, at books, at me and our friends, and at English speaking people they come into contact with, and pull all the good threads that they can from them.

Yeah, I feel well clever and I haven't learnt so much like, in forever!

I just spoke to another friend and she said the only native English speakers at her school were Irish. Definitely not RP.

Once you picked up on her saying 'was' rather than 'were' it leapt out at you every time she said it. I guess it is a London accent which I suppose is no worse than Northerners dropping 'the' and say t'. I have to say I don't like it though.

Someone mentioned that she is a bright girl - I beg to differ; she was one on of those Saturday night quiz shows a couple of years ago, and even allowing for nerves she really was quite dense when it came to General Knowledge, embarassingly so! She make be quite savvy and street smart but it ends there.

The person who said 'of' rather than 'have' was Craig, whilst talking to Tess. Stood out a mile.

Can I just ask whether Alesha's use of 'was' as opposed to 'were' is the only example of her poor grammar from the show? I didn't seem to notice it as much as other people have and was just wondering if there were any others?

Aleeesha is well fick, but she is just keeping it real innit?

u iz wicked!

Personally, I think she is very articulate, clear and well-understood; everyone has a little blip in the linguistic abilities, even her Maj with her famous "We are not amused" when she really means I.

Kettle - pot?

How is it a London accent? I was born in London and do not speak like that. I think it must be poor education.

I agree that it jumped out at you every time she said it, and then I would think about that rather than listen to the rest of her comments.

I think it is unacceptable on prime time BBC.

The "Royal We" is technically correct according to British Royal tradition. It's certainly not just the whim of one person.

Alesha is paid to give an opinion, so it's not quite the same thing. Instead of insulting other forum users, you could try coming up with an actual argument. Just a thought.

But is general knowledge a measure of intelligence? And also, in regards to the 'street smart' comment, Catell proposed in his theory of intelligence that being street wise and street smarts are an aspect of true intelligence (he called it 'crystallised intelligence')

Are we knocking the principal reason she was promoted as judge?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystallized_intelligence

Animals have no book learning, but animal cunning should not be underestimated.

I agree re Alesha's lack of general knowledge - thick as two planks. Lucky she looks like she does or she's another one who would be working on the tills

So, is that in agreement with the view that street smarts are a form of crystallised intelligence or not?

Also, Wikipedia is not infallible. It was Spearman that developed the factors of intelligence which Horn and Cattel identified as 'fluid' or 'crystallised' intelligence.

And just to make clear, I didn't argue that book smarts are a form of true intelligence either (IQ and psychometric tests don't seem to take much stock in that either).

But, it seems we've slightly gone off topic here, so I'll refrain from making any more comments that aren't to do with her grammar

I teach English to French students and Alesha's grammar really grates on me. Last night she said something along the lines of "you dance really natural" aaargh she should have said "you dance really naturally". Of course, the "you was great" is unforgivable !

I know that some people think it's no big deal but it is, sort it out Alesha.

Ultimately there is the bottom line.

At the moment the public are in disagreement, whether she has outsmarted the BBC, outsmarted her followers, or outsmarted herself.

see my post above but just in case, she said something like "you dance really natural" instead of "you dance really naturally" - naturally being the adverb to describe how the person danced, natural is the adjective. So unfortunately the was/were wasn't the only one.

I only listened to her comment once last night and heard her use a 'was' when a 'were' was needed and it got on my nerves even then. I hate people not speaking correctly - especially on television. Sort it out please Alesha, you're not exactly flavour of the month as it is

Made me cringe, I have to say. I think it's partly because she puts such an emphasis on the "was" when she speaks...