Ya wanna learn (yourself) about ya wanna?

[Paulfromitaly]

This form has become so commonly used, that it really should be taught to anybody learning English. My students use this form more than the first form I gave.

Children would live on chips with ketchup if they could, does it mean that they should be allowed to do it?

 

[maxiogee]

I wanna blame the Jungle Book's vultures!

 

[choylarn]

Yes I know it's commonly used these days, it's the style of speech you see used in music videos featuring black american rap singers and the like... and in mainly American sitcoms, I cringe whenever I hear it.... you wanna... you gonna... please don't teach your students to talk like this, it downgrades them

 

[Snowman75]

(3) Do you expect all of the books you want to be available in the library?
I also read that "want to" in (3) can't be shortened to "wanna." Is it true?

(4) Who do you want to succeed?
(x) If the sentence is about whom "you" wants to take over, "want to" can be shortened to "wanna."
(y) If the sentence is about who it is that "you" wants to be successful, it can't be shortened to "wanna."
Is it really true?

Yes, that's correct in both cases. My earlier post explains why.

In your examples:

(3) = "... the books to be available that you want ... "
(4x) = "you want that you succeed who" *
(4y) = "you want that who succeeds" *

You can see that in (4x) the two verbs have the same subject ("you"), but in (3) and (4y) the two verbs have different subjects.

* Of course these are ungrammatical constructions just being used for illustration.

 

[mjs]

Many English students who study Spanish and other languages, forget that we have a second person familiar, just like Spanish does with tú.

To want
You want a good career, and I undestand that, but acting is not the answer.
Ya wanna a good career, and I undestand that, but acting is not the answer.

This form has become so commonly used, that it really should be taught to anybody learning English. My students use this form more than the first form I gave.

There's a minor mistake in there that might confuse people. It should be:

You want a good career
Ya wanna good career (without the extra "a")

And I think there's a MUCH simpler way to make the point everyone's trying at: This is simply a way that english speakers casually "slur" their speech.

So, you cannot use "wanna" in:

I want Mary to win.

simply because "wanna" is a lazy way to say "want to", and those two words aren't next to each other in that sentence.

Also note that I'm only using "lazy" to help make my point, I don't mean that people who do it are lazy people. Most of us do it when speaking informally.

 

[padredeocho]

Can we just be clear that for those who wish to learn normally acceptable English, and who wish to pass exams in English, this usage is wrong.
In the UK, ya wanna will also mark the speaker as a careless, and probably uneducated, speaker.

It is also considered wrong in these forums.

Considered wrong in these forums by whom? By those who want to speak like English teachers, or by those who want to casually converse with natives? I agree that such usage would get you an F on an English exam. However, if you were a guest in my home, and said, "Ya wanna see a movie with me?" I wouldn't think twice about saying, "you betcha" so long as you were treating!

 

[timpeac]

Considered wrong in these forums by whom? By those who want to speak like English teachers, or by those who want to casually converse with natives? I agree that such usage would get you an F on an English exam. However, if you were a guest in my home, and said, "Ya wanna see a movie with me?" I wouldn't think twice about saying, "you betcha" so long as you were treating!

By the management of these forums. We can discuss any English usage, including swear words or grammar not considered standard, but we do it in standard language. In other words we can discuss the nuances of "bastard" but we can't call someone one directly and we can discuss the nuances of "wanna" but we can't use it in a sentence in its own right as I "I wanna know".

 

[heidita]

We have the form tu in Italian, that is the usual way to address friends or relatives and it's perfectly acceptable in writing as well as the French tu. It's not a slang or a sign of bad English like "ya wanna", but just a speaking informal register .

Exactly the same in Spanish. I am still thinking after reading throught he whole thread what padreocho wanted to say.

 

[LV4-26]

Excuse me, I thought I could have my say here.

The way you speak, the way you pronounce words is something and I won't go into that.
But the way you write is something else.
And unless you want to describe someone's specific accent, I don't see why you should write wanna or gonna.
To me wanna, gonna, gunna, gimme, dunno, etc.. is not what I would call written language. I'd rather call it...phonetics.

 

[gaer]

By the management of these forums. We can discuss any English usage, including swear words or grammar not considered standard, but we do it in standard language. In other words we can discuss the nuances of "bastard" but we can't call someone one directly and we can discuss the nuances of "wanna" but we can't use it in a sentence in its own right as I "I wanna know".

Tim, I agree with you, which is not unusual since I usually do.

This is why I have tried to show the use of "wanna", "gonna" and "ya" in this way.

"Whatcha (what ya) gonna do next?" he asked.

This makes it clear that such spellings are used in dialogue to show how people speak.

Because I have now been made hyper-aware of my own way of speaking, I caught myself saying "gonna" all day, hundreds of times, and I heard all my students using it too.

"Okay, what are ya gonna play next?"
"Next week we're gonna get the hands together."
"Now, what ya wanna do here is to bring out the RH, because it has the melody."

But I also found myself switching to this, whenever I talked to someone who was new, or someone who is not fluent:

"Okay, what are you going to play next?"
"Next week we're going to get the hands together."
"Now, what you want to do here is to bring out the RH, because it has the melody."

Notice that I have put all these sentences in quotes, to make it plain that I am talking about speech patterns, not spelling. I NEVER use these spellings when I am writing, not even informally. I see no reason to.

But I want to make one point. I don't like seeing words such as "ignorant" or "uneducated" aimed at those of us in the US because of the way we speak when we are relaxed and in informal situations, and I have seen such words here and there. This is what I think is intollerant and argumentative, and I also think it shows that people who live in countries other than the US don't understand the way most of us talk.

Gaer

 

[gaer]

Excuse me, I thought I could have my say here.

The way you speak, the way you pronounce words is something and I won't go into that.
But the way you write is something else.
And unless you want to describe someone's specific accent, I don't see why you should write wanna or gonna.
To me wanna, gonna, gunna, gimme, dunno, etc.. is not what I would call written language. I'd rather call it...phonetics.

But again, it IS written language because it is written. Period. I don't mean to be argumentative, but novels could not be written without these written forms, showing how people speak. I agree that these written forms are properly meant to represent speech. Perhaps we could agree to call them "descrptive written forms used in dialogues". Or choose any term you like.

By the way, I don't object at all to call these forms, as they appear in dialogue, "phonetic spellings representing speech". I don't really disagree with you, but I do think we have to be more careful about defining what we are talking about.

Gaer

 

[padredeocho]

I agree with Gaer. It was a nice sense of reality.

I teach school, too, and I don't think of any of the teachers who talk like that are lazy, or uneducated. It is just casual speech. We all get dressed up for church, and none of us would wear our church clothing to a swimming pool. The same is true with language. What is right depends entirely on your audience.

 

[LV4-26]

But again, it IS written language because it is written. Period. I don't mean to be argumentative, but novels could not be written without these written forms, showing how people speak. Absolutely. I agree that these written forms are properly meant to represent speech. Perhaps we could agree to call them "descrptive written forms used in dialogues". Or choose any term you like.

By the way, I don't object at all to call these forms, as they appear in dialogue, "phonetic spellings representing speech". I don't really disagree with you, but I do think we have to be more careful about defining what we are talking about.

I have absolutely nothing to object to that.
It seems you only differ with me about my use of "written language". I acknowledge it was not the proper word to use. It was just meant to be opposed to "phonetics".

An example to illustrate what I mean. I don't expect, say, a Scouser to seriously (many natives here use "phonetical" forms for a joke) write
I was riding on a boos, yesterday, or this is roobish - on these forums. They never do.
(Absolutely no offense meant to Scousers. As a Beatles fan, you can't expect me to dislike this accent )

But then, people write how they like. It does absolutely no harm to me and I would hate to sound patronizing, especially in a foreign language. I just mean to explain why I, especially as a non native, would never dream of using those forms here, except when quoting a dialog...or just for fun with lots of and to go with.

This is the longest "I-agree" post I've ever seen.

 

[LV4-26]

And yes, I think you can say there are "rules", so to say, governing the use of these forms

The word "rule" is probably inappropriate when dealing with a descriptive grammar. The difference is that the opposition correct/incorrect would be replaced by likely/unlikely to be heard.

The fact is that, in the sentence :

Do you expect all of the books you want to be available in the library?

one would hardly ever use the form wanna and that there's a logical reason to it, as was explained before. We're not very far from the actual definition of a "rule", are we?

 

[gaer]

I have absolutely nothing to object to that.
It seems you only differ with me about my use of "written language".

Actually, I don't really differ with you. I think we are talking about something that is very difficult to "label".

I think we have been talking about two different things.

1) Using text to represent speech. (This is why I have repeatedly talked about "dialogue".) At best, any way of representing the way people speak using writing/text is an extremely poor approximation of the real thing, but it is all we have. If the style of speech being represented is one with which you are familiar, it probably works by suggesting something we already know.

2) Using "words" such as "gonna", "wanna", "ya", etc. in place of the words they represent in standard communication.

The first I think is not only correct but also absolutely necessary. It's not new. Just read Huckleberry Finn or Oliver Twist. If you changed all the words of characters in these books to standard English, it would ruin the books.

The second is what I think most of us object to, and I don't like it either, at least in a forum like this. I think it has no place and is highly misleading to those who are learning English.

An example to illustrate what I mean. I don't expect, say, a Scouser to seriously (many natives here use "phonetical" forms for a joke) write
I was riding on a boos, yesterday, or this is roobish - on these forums. They never do.

But you might use forms like those if you copied a quote by one of the Beatles. Then you would be writing dialogue, representing the way someone speaks or spoke, and then I think it would be 100% appropriate.

I just mean to explain why I, especially as a non native, would never dream of using those forms here, except when quoting a dialog...or just for fun with lots of and to go with.

I don't think anyone here would disagree with you. I don't think this discussion has ever been about using these "dialogue forms" here in this
forum unless we are trying to discover how people in different parts of the world speak.

Gaer

 

[LV4-26]

But you might use forms like those if you copied a quote by one of the Beatles. Then you would be writing dialogue, representing the way someone speaks or spoke, and then I think it would be 100% appropriate.

Granted. I should have made it clear I didn't mean those sentence to be written as part of a dialogue or as sample sentences (in which case, as you say, they would be perfectly appropriate). I was imagining forer@s speaking in their own name and spelling words that way. (as an anecdote meant to illustrate a topic in a cultural thread about buses / collective transportation, for instance).
It may always sound a bit tedious to give people to understand that you understood what they understood you understood, etc...but it doesn't harm, and the clearer the better.