Conjugations of he/she/it

[Noelia]

In order to sound more natural I sometimes skip the pronouns when I say a sentence:

Sounds great! (it)
Smells bad! (it)

But I recently watched a movie, with the help of English subtitles and I found this:

sound great?


I was wondering why they didnt use "sounds" instead. And the only answer that came to my mind was that maybe, in the case of questions, it's the auxiliary verb that is implied and not the pronoun:

sound great? (does that)

Can someone confirm this, or was it just a typo in the subtitles? Because I used to conjugate it in third person even in questions, and now I'm thinking that I might have been wrong all this time!

Noelia

[Robie]

If I continue in this forum, I'm eventually going to learn all I ever wanted to know about english because your questions really make me think.

At first I thought the subtitle was wrong and was going to recommend your own advise about not trusting subtitles. But the more I think about it, the more I think it was right. I can't think of a time I'd say "sound great?" but I WOULD say "sound good?" or "sound ok?" - as you said dropping the auxiliary verb. "Sound great?" fits but I think it just seems odd to me for some reason.

Other examples I thought of are:

(Do you) wanna/want to go?
(Do you) wanna/want to come?
(Are) ya/you coming?
(Did you) get it?
(Do you) got it? (Ok, so this one is bad grammar but "have it?" doesn't work. "Got it?" would be perfectly normal for me.)
(Are you) ready?

Everything that I thought of drops the auxiliary verb and usually the pronoun in questions.

Robie

[Noelia]

Hi Robie!

You have no idea how much Spanish I learned by teaching it... When I was studying French, and didn't know English at all, I knew there was a mood called subjunctive, but I never imagined it was used on special ocassions.. There's subjunctive in French too and they use it the way we do so it was just remembering the conjugations, seemed normal to me, until I learned English and saying things like "I hope she can do it" You have no idea how that sounds when you first learn it, it's like you're saying something wrong.

I think you're right, the subtitles said "sound good?" and not "great"

I was so focused on the question that I used the wrong word, but I do understand you cant use "great" in that question.

How about present/past tense ? You said

- Get it? (did you)

But does that apply to everything?

- see the movie yesterday? (did you)
- go to the mall last week? (did you)

Can you say:

- saw the movie?
- went to the mall?

And if both are correct, which one is the most common?

Thanks!

[Robie]

You know, when I talk to my friends about things that I learn about English - now that I’m learning Spanish, I tell them that I tend to choose my words more accurately than I did before. It's not that we don't have different verbs for different situations but we are lazy in verb selection. The perfect example is the use of the word “get”. We use it to mean a lot of different things.

So, for the question “Did you get (something)?”, I could mean things like:

Did you get the milk at the store? Get = to buy
Did you get the email? Get = to receive
Did you get the flu? Get = to contract (a disease)
Did you get the joke? Get = to understand
Do you get the joke? Get = to understand

Given that, when I said “(Did you) get it?” I think the context is referring to the use as in “to understand” and even though it’s past tense, it really means in the recent past – such as only moments ago. I added “Do you get the joke” because I think that’s a better context of what I was referring to. It’s really in the present tense, I think.

The other examples you gave are not natural to me but now that I think about it, maybe we do use this occasionally in the past tense if it refers to 1st person. For instance, I can think of one phrase that is in past tense. It’s a slogan that someone invented and it stuck around and made him/her a lot of money!

Been there, done that.
Or
Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt.

These are used when someone suggests that someone else do something or go somewhere and the other person is making a point that it’s either a boring idea or a good idea but it’s not a unique idea. The second phrase, of course, is more emphatic than the first one.

I think I might say “(I have) been there” or “(I have) done that” independently and it would sound ok in extremely colloquial settings. I wouldn’t say “(You/he/she/it/they have) been there” though. And in general, I think I would recommend staying away from this in the past tense. It’s too short, too informal, and too erratic to form a rule around it.

Robie

[sendai]

(Do you) got it? (Ok, so this one is bad grammar but "have it?" doesn't work. "Got it?" would be perfectly normal for me.)

I think this is actually "(Have you) got it?", in which case the grammar is fine.

I pretty much agree with everything Robie said.

By the way, this happens in Spanish, too. People often ask each other, "listo?" or "seguro?". So the idea isn't strange to any of us. The difficult thing is know when you can do it and when you can't.

[Noelia]

Thank you... Yes I did know the expression "been there, done that" thanks to Disney, of course, it was part of one of their songs....

So, if I say "saw the movie?" that's wrong, the "did you" is already implied when I make the question intonation, and therefore (I sound like Daniel now) I have to use the present tense:

see the movie?
yeah, saw it yesterday

Noelia

[mahlele]

I think alot of these short phrases are simply laziness. I would say sound great?
and your last sentence, noelia...yeah, saw it yesterday....i'd say...yep, saw it. cuz i am reaaalllly lazy...hahhaa,
marlene