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"Instead, he smiled ingratiatingly and confided: 'My master, he say: invite the young lady to go riding.'"

This is a quotation from Angela Carter's The Tiger's Bride. Reading this book, I could not understand why "say" does not have a third person singular s. And also it does not use the past tense.

Could someone explain to me?

mary1992
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1 Answers1

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In standard English, we would say "My master said, 'Invite the young lady to go riding'." From what I have found about this story, the speaker of this sentence is probably young, and probably a speaker of non-standard English, or even just learning English. (Look at the other things this character says.)

There are three examples of non-standard English in the first four words. Some varieties of English use present tense more than past tense: "My master says, 'Invite the young lady ...'." (This sentence is possible even in standard English.) Some varieties don't use third-person '-s: "My master say, 'Invite the young lady ...'." Some varieties use a pronoun after the noun: "My master, he say, 'Invite the young lady ...'."

So the writer is using non-standard English to tell us something about the character.

Sydney
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  • Thank you for your answering. – mary1992 Sep 30 '19 at 11:19
  • I think the speaker's English is proper elsewhere in this novel, even if he is an Italian. It may be possible that here the speaker is intentionally using non-standard English as a kind of joke. – mary1992 Sep 30 '19 at 11:26