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From a British speaker, "I hope you wasn't too late." In the USA we would say "weren't". Was this poor grammar, or is this acceptable in the UK? I immediately thought it wrong; however, I don't want to be too presumptuous.

Kevin Campbell
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    No, it's ungrammatical in the UK in Standard English. – BillJ Jan 16 '19 at 15:57
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    ... but to clarify @BillJ's comment, it is 'grammatical' (it's just the common way of saying things) in certain communities (those, you might say, don't speak 'well'). It's just a different way of speaking. You may pass judgement on those communities for not speaking your version and cal them 'wrong', but it's how they speak (and it's just a different rule). Of course, you don't want to use this in school, work, or anything but very informal contexts using standard English (US, UK, Aus, etc). – Mitch Jan 16 '19 at 17:24
  • Thank you for these responses. I wondered if it were colloquial, or if it was simply driven by poor intellect. As an engineer I am a bit of a perfectionist and when considering hiring someone to represent my company, I want them to be literate. This clearly bothered me since it was written in an email, but since they are in England, I didn't want to be too judgmental. – Kevin Campbell Jan 17 '19 at 19:35
  • Written in an email... ouch ... bad news for the candidate, who sounds who might be a Londoner. That is someone who writes as they speak and I think it would have been easily overlooked had it been uttered in fact speech but in writing, the error screams out. – Mari-Lou A Jan 17 '19 at 19:50

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