Despite previous comments made by the Prince of Wales about the decline in the proper use of the English language, I'm forced to report a howler he made in a speech on Sunday. At the unveiling of the Battle of Britain monument on the Victoria Embankment, Charles announced: "It gives my wife and I the greatest possible pride."
Clearly, what Charles meant to say was: "It gives my wife and me."
"It's bad grammar, a schoolboy error and one that any good script doctor should have noticed," says my pedantic mole.
Language boffins at Oxford University Press confirm the gaffe. "This is a very common mistake," says the English language expert Angus Stevenson.
"The technical term for this error is hyper-correction. People tend to commit it when they try to sound posh, which is ironic in the case of Prince Charles, who's heir to the throne."
(From a recent "Daily Telegraph" article)
27/09/05 @ 05:18