Hi,
Instead of saying “He does love you”, can I also say “He do loves you”?
Thanks,
Cantik
Hi Cantik,
I’m afraid you can’t say that because you need the infinitive after ‘do’.
Alan
Okay Alan, I was just wondering because I just heard it on TV. Thanks!
Hi Cantik
What show did you hear that on?
And are you sure you didn’t hear “He too loves you”?
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It was a movie with Michael Douglas in it, and his real life father too, and his real life son also, if I’m not mistaken. And in that movie they were playing as a Jew family. I don’t know the title because I didn’t watch it from the beginning.
I don’t remember the exact words but it was Michael Douglas who said that his father (in that movie) doesn’t love him, and that’s when the mother said “He do, loves you”, I think. But now that you’ve mentioned that, probably I just misheard.
Thanks for the input, Amy!
I just checked, the movie was “It runs in the family”.
Just curious and of my two cents, I have a hunch that ‘He do loves you’ is possible in a very informal way of spoken English. Informally the speaker could have said ‘He do love you’ but after he/she had said ‘He do’ he/she recalled the subject ‘He’ so then ‘loves’ was applied to make the combination of ‘He do loves you’. To my nonnative ear, though, the expression doesn’t sound very strange, however incorrect it is, especially if in a context or situation of the South in U.S.
That is EXACTLY how I felt when I heard what I think I heard. Thanks for expressing your two cents, Haihao!
And the interesting thing is, someone would say ‘he do’ AND ‘he loves’ but not ‘he love’. DO sounds special. So the combination is not SO unnatural.
Hi,
What about - he does (pause) loves you?
Hi Alan,
Neither very strange to me. He, the third person, remains in the speaker’s mind all the way. 
Regards,
Haihao
Yes, yes, I agree with Haihao, that we cannot exactly know what’s on the speaker’s mind. So there is a possibility of both (He do… & He does…).
Hi you two
I can assure you that “he do loves you” IS quite unusual.
IF it is in fact “commonly used” somewhere in the US, I’d say it would be limited to some sort of local dialect. IF!
EDIT:
Haihao, the movie takes place in New York City, not in the South! And the family is Jewish.
So, IF you want to make any assumptions, I’d say you really should take those facts into account.
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Thanks for the confirmation Amy. In any way, I think I will never use “He do loves you”, now that Alan has told me it’s ungrammatical and you also told me it is highly unusual.
Probably it is something like what I heard an Irish woman said “I put on me make-up”. But this was obvious to me.
In this case, just like Haihao, it was not clear to my ears that it sounds very wrong, or very unusual.
So thanks, you all!
Hi Cantik
I cannot confirm that a construction such as “he do loves you” might be used in so-called Jewish English, but there are definitely some very distinctive constructions and pronunciations in this variety of English. “JE” is especially common around NYC since New York has such a huge Jewish population. (I’ve read that there are more Jews in metropolitan NYC than there are in Tel Aviv!) I have lived and worked in the NYC area, but don’t remember hearing anything like “he do loves you” as a commonly used construction.
This might be interesting for you, though:
encyclopedia.com/doc/1O29-JEWISHENGLISH.html
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This point is completely a sidebar to the main point, but I noticed you write “a Jew family.” A “Jew” is a noun. Using it as an adjective is considered a pejorative. Say “a Jewish family.”
And I completely agree with Amy. I grew up in the great NY area and never, ever have I heard “He do loves you” or any construction like that. I also have a father from the deep South. He would never, ever use that construction either.
Even if the speaker changed her mind about what was intended, she wouldn’t start out with “he do.”
I wouldn’t expect to hear it, either (unlike “me” for “my”, which is quite common). I haven’t seen the film; but could it have been a representation of a non-native speaker who makes odd errors?
MrP
I’m afraid not MrP. I guess I have to find the real dialogue. I have no idea or the energy to do that yet.
Thanks all.