Teeth, braces, and the English Language or variations thereof.

[Geoff]

No: HPFGUIDX 190323

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, lynde at ... wrote:
 
Geoff:
> As a native speaker of UK English, I would ONLY interpret this comment by 
> Hermione as a reference to an event in the past continuing on. In no way 
> would it indicate to me that it was a future possibility suggested by Mr. and 
> Mrs. Granger.

Lynde: 
> As a person who works with kids with different levels of speech fluency and reads almost all the time that she's not working, talking to someone, writing or crocheting something or other and who listens to something or other all the time because a noiseless enviroment is creepy, I think that Hermione, like many kids her age was using a common phrase for something that had not yet happened. I see it all the time with more speech confident Special Ed and Regular Ed kids. We're always having to ask them if something has occurred yet only to have them say "No. After school" or "this weekend" or "Next year" or something. 

Geoff:
Your example here is just what I might say when asked something. For example,
my daughter might say to me "Have you looked for that information on the Web 
yet?" And I might reply "No. Probably tonight". The context is that we are looking 
at something which we expect to happen and get a reply that it hasn't yet but...

I worked for 32 years in a school in South-West London, dealing initially with 
boys in the 11-15 range and latterly in a mixed environment with students of 
13-18 and that is how I would interpret your suggestion from my experience 
of being bi-lingual, speaking both UK English and School Playground English.

Going back to the original quote in GoF which June supplied, it was:

>> '(Hermione speaking) "Mum and Dad won't be too pleased. I've been trying
>> to persuade them to let me shrink them for ages, but they wanted me to 
>> carry on with my brace."'
(GOF "The Yule Ball" p.353 UK edition)

Hermione had been trying to persuade her parents in the past, but it is obvious
that they did not approve, in the past, and wanted her to continue with the 
brace and their wish had not been countermanded up to the point in the story 
which we had reached, which, as I said previously, a different scenario to the 
one which you envisage.

By the by, brace is used in both the singular and plural in UK English. My younger
son had *a brace* in his early to middle teens.