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Bad English

From This Might Be A Wiki

No, not the 80s band.

  • Alphabet Lost And Found - "Where they gonna go"
  • Am I Awake? - "When I get through this day, can someone tell me how, and how much longer now, am I awake?"
  • Ana Ng - ... If there was a me for you should be If there were a me for you. (past subjunctive [formal] rather than past indicative [vernacular])
  • Asbury Park - "Me got kicked in the head"
  • Brain Problem Situation - "And I think, maybe, but I don't know, but I'm starting to feel like I got a brain problem situation on my hands."
  • Broke In Two - "Then is when I maybe should have wrote it down". Wrote is past tense of write. Should be have written.
  • Cut The Strings - "I don't need no ten dimensions / Ain't afraid of quantum jitter"
  • Dee Dee And Dexter - "Don't need no super powers"
  • Half A Boy - "You never took me serious"
  • If I Wasn't Shy - Should be If I Weren't Shy (past subjunctive [formal] rather than past indicative [vernacular])
  • I'll Sink Manhattan - "A river of tiny tears flow from your crocodile eyes" subject/verb agreement ("the river flows", not "the tears flow")
  • I've Got A Fang - "Her head exploded like 'a' atom bomb" should be "Her head exploded like 'an' atom bomb"
  • Maybe I Know- "I feel so badly" -- This would mean that the singer does a bad job of feeling. Strangely, the line is "He really loves me" in the original. Although the Johns reverse the gender throughout the the song, I don't know why they changed this line entirely.
  • Metal Detector - "Don't need no volleyball / don't need no squawking gull"
  • Number Three - "There's only two songs in me..." - "songs" is plural, therefore the sentence should read "there are only two songs in me..."
  • Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head - "Didn't have to write no-one a good-bye note" (double negative)
  • Rat Patrol - "Wilderness of mirrors shine"
  • Robot Parade - "There's electric cars. There's electric trains."
  • Stalk Of Wheat - "And I was out of ideas, like I is, like I is" - should be like I am
  • Subliminal - "While lying there in my bed there was a message for me" - This technically means the message was lying in his bed.
  • The Shadow Government - "I doth protest" - "Doth" is an antiquated conjugation of the verb "to do," but for the third person singular (as in, "The lady doth protest") and not the first person singular as it is used here.
  • Thunderbird - "We like fun me and my girl" - Me is one of the subjects in this phrase. Should be I. Also, when there are other subjects in a sentence, the first person pronoun follows the other: "We like fun, my girl and I."
  • Tigerella - After work she gets the polish out and paints 'em pretty claws -- 'em as contraction of them; should be those
  • Twisting - "There's not a lot of things that she'll take back"
  • Your Racist Friend - "I know politics bore you" -- Used in this context, "politics" is singular, so the line should be be "I know politics bores you". If it were "I know my politics bore you", then either "bore" or "bores" would be valid. [1]
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