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I believe usage trumps authority when it comes to the rules of English. However, I also believe that errors are just errors.

I keep hearing "ly" being left off of words even in common idioms. Enough so that I'm starting to wonder if adverbs are out of style in the 2020s and I'm just too old.

Is "Don't take it personal" still the flagrant grammatical error I remember it being?

candied_orange
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    Have you checked in any dictionaries to see if they mention a flat adverbial usage? There are other threads here looking at flat adverbs and resultative/depictive constructions that look similar (eg 'the water froze solid'). But I'd certainly avoid this one; it's possibly considered more acceptable in the States than in the UK. – Edwin Ashworth Nov 02 '23 at 22:44
  • From Nobel Prize–winning litterateur Bob Dylan (starting at 0:10): "I didn't mean to treat you so bad. / You shouldn't take it so personal. / I didn't mean to make you so sad. / You just happened to be there, that's all." – Sven Yargs Nov 03 '23 at 00:36
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    The doublethink in your first paragraph is truly impressive :) – AakashM Nov 03 '23 at 09:41
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    candied, slang is slang, informal is informal. You, and everyone else, is completely aware that "... personal" is just an informal version of the correct "... personally". What is it you're asking? I could immediately post 50, maybe 100 questions, or perhaps a better word is "thoughts", on here saying "I've noticed that A is now often casually spoken as B." Like, yes, you'll find 100s of people on this list who agree with you that the English-speaking world is becoming stunningly illiterate - ok, yes, agreed! – Fattie Nov 03 '23 at 11:48
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    '"How are you?" "I am good."' 'Am' is clearly a verb here, as is the possibly implicit 'doing' but it's weird to hear somebody say "I am [doing] well." I think people are just colloquially bad at grammar, personally. – user121330 Nov 03 '23 at 17:08
  • @EdwinAshworth "it's possibly considered more acceptable in the States than in the UK." I am so sick of this type of seemingly uninformed comment. For just about every single instance of BrE speakers claiming around here that some colloquial speech is AmE, British English has tons of similar examples. The Brits and other English speakers of the world from Cape Town to Sydney and Auckland etc. all have colloquial speech forms. Acceptability is a term best suited to an Agatha Christie novel and English drawing rooms. – Lambie Nov 03 '23 at 17:31
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    This hits my ears like the U.S. regional "I'm telling you true." – DjinTonic Nov 03 '23 at 18:08
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    Sounds like someone needs to learn to think different. – John Smith Nov 04 '23 at 02:39
  • @Lambie there's a reason why Bernard Shaw (or whoever the real author was) said that America and the UK are “two nations divided by a common language". There are of course some significant differences in speech, styles and idioms. For example your comment, mocking American regional speakers, under tinfoils answer: Yep, varmints who ain't got no book larning is pure Americanism. Doesn't mean it's inferior to British English or unacceptable English, it's just very informal and it would never be heard or uttered by a born and bred English person. – Mari-Lou A Nov 04 '23 at 08:37
  • @Mari-LouA Oh, "Yep, varmints who ain't got no book larning" isn't British? You must be kidding if you think I don't know that. My point was very clear. I am probably one of the few AmE speakers who is very familiar with BrE... – Lambie Nov 04 '23 at 14:12
  • @Lambie then I misunderstood your earlier comment directed at Edwin: ""it's possibly considered more acceptable in the States than in the UK." I am so sick of this type of seemingly uninformed comment." – Mari-Lou A Nov 04 '23 at 15:04
  • Duplicate of https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/177043/american-use-of-personal-regular. I agree it's more common (in AmE, and particularly internet-influenced BrE speakers) now than it was in 2014, updated answers or those addressing that history should be welcome there, closing it as a duplicate of this one asked more than 9 years later is insane. – OJFord Nov 07 '23 at 11:36

2 Answers2

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As Huddleston & Pullum (2002) note, there are a number of adverbs that are "identical in form with adjectives" but are "restricted to informal style" or "clearly non-standard" (p. 567). One example they give is the use of real in "That's real nice of you"; in formal contexts, of course, really would be used instead, but real is quite common.

It seems reasonable to put the personal in "take it personal" in the same category, though it's more marginal and largely restricted to this specific idiom. Ngram suggests that, while still much less common than "take it personally," "take it personal" has increased in popularity over the past few decades in American English, though it remains exceedingly rare in British English. I suspect that Ngram may be underestimating the frequency of "take it personal," since this construction presumably occurs more often in informal speech than in written works.

alphabet
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  • I believe the use of "real" instead of "really" as an adverb is still much more common in the US than in the UK. – BobRodes Nov 04 '23 at 18:20
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It depends on whether your definition of a flagrant grammatical error includes colloquial usage (since 1829!) as documented by, say, The Oxford English Dictionary:

personal
ADVERB
colloquial. to take (something) personal: = to take (a thing) personally at personally adv. 3c.
Source: Oxford English Dictionary (login required)

Here are a few OED attested usages, including the earliest offered:

1829   Oh! if you'd call anybody a contemptible fool—I don't take it personal—I think I had better adjourn. —E. Fitzball, Flying Dutchman ii. iii. 31

1845   If my gun did not snap, call me a coward, and I won't take it personal. —T. B. Thorpe, Big Bear of Arkansas 27

1938   Lem's different. He takes things personal. —M. K. Rawlings, Yearling xvi. 186

You might be old, but probably not that old.

Tinfoil Hat
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