Well, ‘grammarian’ is a real word (perhaps you remember “… and although she may have studied with an expert dialectician and grammarian, I can tell that she was born Hungarian” from My Fair Lady?).
As for the problem itself, I cannot say much because I don’t know anything about the occurrence of this mistake in English-speaking countries. I mean, if this expression is infrequent (as well as incorrect), then it would be safe to assume that only poorly educated people are likely to use it. But if it’s more common, the matter gets a bit more complicated, because languages always change, and the widespread mistakes of today may very well become standard expressions tomorrow. By the way, is this error similar to the famous ‘ain’t’?
I find this very interesting because I use it all the time to close out my email. “I look forward to hearing from.”
I work mostly with native English speakers and I have never come acrossed any grammatical errors like this. I’m not saying they don’t make mistakes. It’s just that it’s unusual to see an erro like this in written communication. I would have to agree with some of the folks on this forum that a lot has to do with the person being a non-native speaker.
Hey Alan,
Everytime you write a comment I have to look up some of the big words you use. Your comments are always helpful. They stir up new ideas.
Simply put, those people I know (some are native speakers) who use that expression basically are educated people who DON’T measure other people’s education by the grammatical glitches they have.
By the way, what is your definition of an “educated” person? Having a flawless command of the English language?
It’s quite often that I hear people use that phrase… and I never made it my deciding factor to tell whether they are educated or not.
And yes, GRAMMARIAN is a WORD… REAL word. Frankly, I am quite surprised that amidst the high falluted words you use here, you don’t know the word GRAMMARIAN… Merriam Webster may help you on that.
Regarding your question, I judge people (who use the phrase “I look forward to HEAR from you”) depending on WHO they ARE and NOT their grammar glitches.
Simply put, just because a person said “I look forward to hear from you” does not mean he’s a non-native speaker or an uneducated native speaker.
There’s a lot to look at in every person, far more than his command of a language.
From my experience, it’s a common mistake, unlike your “acrossed” (which is UNUSUAL), that every person has the tendency to make… that’s the very reason why there’s a thread here for that topic… because IT IS CONFUSING.
I suggest that you keep your rude comments to yourself if you don’t have anything constructive to say. The majority of the people on this site are here to improve their English writing and reading abilities. Obviously we’re going to make mistakes along the way and we sure don’t need someone like you pointing those out. We have administrators and instructors who created this site to provide feedback.
We would appreciate it if you provide suggestions instead of what I call “open, rude comments.”
So what if I put ACROSSED instead of ACROSS? That’s a slight oversight.
I am looking forward to your reply is fine. The discussion has been about what verb form comes after ‘to’ in that construction and the accepted idiom is: I look forward to replying (verb) but the noun ‘reply’ in your sentence is fine.
I’m not really sure what it is you want. The idiom ‘look forward to hearing’ has already been explained. I really can’t see how ‘hear’ can, according to you, be a ‘bare infinitive’ and a ‘noun’. I leave to anyone else the choice to continue with this thread. Personally I have nothing more to say on the matter.
Wow, I thought this forum is for learning? Why is everybody being rude now?
I am asking not because I want to “TWIST” it, but rather, to clear the other things that might make this phrase confusing. It is like a person asking for direction in case the other given routes are untraversable.
If asking questions is not allowed here, then you should remove the “post” function of members… or better yet, just make this a “read and go” site.
Thanks!