Dear Editor,

It is not the typical topic that I would address in my writings, but I feel compelled to question Jamaicans’ obsession with the tense ‘would have’ in both their oral and written communication.

Suffice to say, it is very jarring to the ear whenever I listen to people who overuse and misuse ‘would have’, even though they speak very confidently at times.

Granted, most people just engage in spontaneous oral discourse without really reflecting on the syntactic nuances they are using; therefore, mistakes are permissible. However, the constant incorrect use of ‘would have’ indicates that many Jamaicans are committing an error of which they are unaware.

In linguistics we refer to this as fossilisation. This occurs whenever a linguistic feature, whether correct or incorrect, becomes ingrained in the learner’s or speaker’s language system, making it difficult to change over time.

It is safe to say that ‘would have’ has been fossilised in our context to express the simple past tense. However, in principle, ‘would have’ falls under the conditional perfect tense, which is used to describe an action in the past that would have happened, but it didn’t due to a different event or circumstance. It is usually introduced by the ‘if’ clause.

If you want to express an action that occurred yesterday, which was completed, use the simple past tense. For example: “Yesterday I went to the cinema.”

However, if something prevented you from going, you employ the conditional perfect. For instance: “I would have gone to the cinema if I had sufficient funds.”

As a linguist and language educator, I am fully aware that English is not the first language of the majority, but there really is nothing ‘cutesy’ or sophisticated about using the conditional perfect in place of the simple past tense. It affects communication and often leaves the interlocutor confused.

Did the event or action happen or not? If it happened, use the simple past tense.

Oneil Madden

maddenoniel@yahoo.com