I have a story for which the plot requires I use AmE and I want "standard" American speech.
Someone told me they think something I've used is wrong. It sounds natural to me. I suspect this person's native dialect of American is further removed from standard American than my Australian version of BrE!
The context is two girl friends are talking. One is the lowest of the low on the social ladder at school and the friend, less low, is speaking:
"I can tell you, it's not much fun having those x-ray eyes burning holes in your underwear."
My use of 'your' is idiomatic. She is not telling her friend what they feel. And she's not just saying how she feels herself either. If she meant that she'd use 'I' as the subject of the clause, not 'it's not much fun'.
To me, she's saying it's not fun for her, and she knows others feel the same, even if the friend she's talking to has not experienced that ... because they are fat and both know that not even the sleaziest of guys bother to leer at her.
I don't know how many others would interpret that the same way. My understanding may be eccentric, Australian, British English, or an accepted usage everywhere except in some dialects which don't use it.
How do others interpret that, and what dialect do you use?
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The same person has told me that, in their native dialect, ain't is the proper contraction of am not - meaning just the first-person, singular, present-tense form of 'to be', not other forms of it. He explains this as maintaining what were standard contractions from Elizabethan times.
I'm sure he's correct for his dialect of American, but I wonder if other dialects make that same distinction?
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I don't like my choice of 'underwear' above anymore. I now favour 'knickers' but that's BrE. Do others think 'panties' is better for standard American?
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What do others do for singing some words from a song?
I can't find anything in CMoS. My first thought is double quote marks (for aloud) and italics font (something special). My second thought is Roman font enclosed in two crotchet symbols.