An American English Usage Question From a Native Speaker of That Tongue

[kitewithfish]

Allow me, for the moment, to forgo to the traditional groveling about my failure to post- there is little excuse.

Rather, I have a question about standard American English usages of contractions with the verb "to have".

I'm going to provide a number of sentences that would sound weird to me, and then rewrite them to what sounds "normal" for American English usage as I understand it. Please tell me if I am full of shit and the original phrasing sounds perfectly normal American English to you.

CONFUSING: I haven't any money.

REWRITE: I didn't have any money.

***
CONFUSING: I haven't any money.

REWRITE: I don't have any money.


But things like, "I haven't had breakfast," where "haven't" serves as a "helping verb" sounds perfectly fine to me.

Am I out of my mind on this? Is this just a part of normal US English that I have totally not stumbled upon before? Or does this sound weird?

Comments

[oona]

And this is really cute. Go to this page and choose the Cockney translation in the drop down menu and type in one of your DW entries URL or even your whole page. Then look at what it would sound like. :)

http://www.rinkworks.com/dialect/