The greens were cooked perfect/perfectly

J

JungKim

Senior Member
Korean
I mean, it was incredible. The greens were cooked perfect and it was a perfect blend of everything. I just wanted more.
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This is what an American judge said in Top Chef (an American TV show).
Is it okay to use "perfect" here instead of "perfectly"?
 
    • This is unusual but understandable, because you can use this construction to refer to the resulting state ('it was cooked medium rare', 'it was cooked melt-in-the-mouth')
     
    JungKim said:
    This is what an American judge said in Top Chef (an American TV show).
    Is it okay to use "perfect" here instead of "perfectly"?
    Click to expand...
    As a Brit 'perfect' sounds wrong to me and an indication of either uneducated BE speech or spoken AE, where this kind of usage is more common, although not necessarily acceptable to all AE speakers. I'd use the adverb, no question.
     
    If the very short clip I saw is the one you are quoting, the speaker is African-American and that sometimes changes things. I'm sure you are aware of AAVE and other forms of American English outside of standard school "book learning". In the case of AAVE, there is no sharp dividing line -- there's a spectrum. Some African-American speakers speak fully textbook standard American English, some use limited aspects of AAVE, and some use much more. It depends on the speaker and the situation. Of course, that's true for other regional/social varieties of American English as well.
     
    kentix said:
    If the very short clip I saw is the one you are quoting, the speaker is African-American and that sometimes changes things. I'm sure you are aware of AAVE and other forms of American English outside of standard school "book learning". In the case of AAVE, there is no sharp dividing line -- there's a spectrum. Some African-American speakers speak fully textbook standard American English, some use limited aspects of AAVE, and some use much more. It depends on the speaker and the situation. Of course, that's true for other regional/social varieties of American English as well.
    Click to expand...
    That's correct. The speaker is an Afro-American female. I thought that substituting adjectives for adverbs was a recent phenomenon of AE, not just AAVE. But as you have said, AAVE might allow such a substitution even more readily than other varieties of AE.
     
    JungKim said:
    That's correct. The speaker is an Afro-American female. I thought that substituting adjectives for adverbs was a recent phenomenon of AE, not just AAVE. But as you have said, AAVE might allow such a substitution even more readily than other varieties of AE.
    Click to expand...
    It's definitely not limited to AAVE, but the frequency of substitution may well be higher in AAVE for certain adjective/adverb pairs.
     
    I don't know if this is AAVE influence, or if it is simply the result of countless people trying to decide "should I say this was done perfectly, or that the result was perfect?" I agree that it should not be copied.

    kentix said:
    Some African-American speakers speak fully textbook standard American English, some use limited aspects of AAVE, and some use much more. It depends on the speaker and the situation.
    Click to expand...
    A linguist (who is Afro-American) said that many Afro-Americans "code switch". That means they speak both correctly, and switch between them. For example, in a largely-white office, they may speak correct Standard American, while among Black friends they speak AAVE.

    I have a neighbor who does this. It is no different than someone who grew up in a Spanish-speaking household, but attended school that was taught in English. After 12-13 years of school, their English has no trace of a Spanish accent.
     
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