• dragon-donkey3374@sh.itjust.works
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    5 hours ago

    Every time I read shitty, dreadful news.

    If your not familiar with English, the present and past tense of read is spelled the same.

    I read shitty news (pronounced red - past tense)

    I read shitty news (pronouced reed - current tense)

    • palordrolap@fedia.io
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      4 hours ago

      The speech bubble has “Every time I read a shitty dreadful news”.

      There may be some confusion because I took out the adjectives, which don’t change the surrounding grammar at all. They change the semantics somewhat, but this is about grammar, not the meaning. This then reduces to “Every time I read a news”, and then further to the particle “a news”, which, again, does not change the original syntax of that fragment.

      My point was that such usage is invalid in the standard varieties of English I’m aware of.

      I are of understanding what the author intended, just like you understood the start of this sentence, but it doesn’t mean that it’s standard form. Which, ultimately, is why I asked if there’s a form of English where it is correct.

      (Tangentially, I do need to work on softening the way I word my comments. That’s an ongoing struggle.)