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Is the following sentence grammatically correct?

I bought a real heavy book.

I feel it should have been a really heavy, but I heard people use a real heavy all the time.

Marv Mills
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packetie
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  • People say things all the time that are incorrect in formal contexts. For example, lots of people "lay" down to sleep when they ought to "lie" down. What aspect of that phenomenon concerns you in this case? – phoog Jun 10 '15 at 08:53
  • Lots of adjectives are used in English as intensifying adverbs. Insisting that these are ungrammatical is bloodily wrong. – Peter Shor Jun 10 '15 at 08:57
  • "real heavy" instead of "really heavy" is typical of spoken American English. – rogermue Jun 10 '15 at 13:04

3 Answers3

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It is common in speech, not so much in writing. The same could be said, more or less, for any shortened form of -ly adverbs.

As for using "real" or "really" to mean very or quite, well—opinions vary on the advisability of this usage in formal writing. But I would not advise using it in your Masters thesis, for example.

Brian Hitchcock
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Grammatically, it is perfectly correct and standard. It's of the form:

[Noun/pronoun] [verb] [article] [adverb] [adjective] [noun].

Where the adjective modifies the following noun, and the adverb modifies that adjective.

The question isn't one of grammar, but whether real can be used as an adverb.

Real has been used this way since the mid-17th century at least, but only in some regions. This has led to it generally being considered of colloquial or informal use. In such uses it is arguably superior to really as using real may seem more genuine and less fussy, but in formal use really would be preferred by the same token.

Jon Hanna
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It is probably grammatically okay, but would be considered immature and poor quality writing unless spoken as dialog by a particular type of character. One should also avoid words like "very". Instead choose words that are strong without modifiers. In this case "onerous" might be a good choice. Others: weighty, burdensome, depending upon the shade of meaning one is seeking .

Source is "Strunk and White" and "Roget's Thesaurus".

Tim Mears
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  • Considered immature and poor quality writing... by whom? By those that are still stuck with the idea that Struck and White wrote a bible for all time? Sure, in certain situations, environments or settings, some, maybe many, of their advice still makes sense if applied with reason. But the knee-jerk "S&W say so, so it's baaaaaad" only survives today among, excusez-le-mot, pedants and certain tribes of teachers — and those under their influence, alas. – oerkelens Jun 10 '15 at 08:28
  • My answer was far from kneejerk. .Also the others who posted agree, but used different terms to say so. The forms we use in Standard English are set up so we can communicate with one another and know not only what we say, but with what shade of meaning. The answer to "by whom" is: by an individual who has devoted nearly 60 years of his life studying the English language and speaks five languages and also has a degree in English, and been an editor for a major US magazine. And i never said "bad" what I said was "immature". Read your own post. 'Nuff said. – Tim Mears Jun 13 '15 at 05:02