Steve (as 41oo) wrote:Merry Andrew wrote:I was taught in school that such usage as "keep youir hands off of that" was a no-no. They don't teach that any more. If you think about it, there's nothing logically wrong with the construction; it just sounds awkward to many of us.
It sounds very strange to us. Of course we know what you mean, but "off of" is never used here. I would say its usage is almost the definitive marker as identifying the speaker as American and not British.
As for it being grammatically correct, I just dont know. Certainly the "of" seems to be superfluous.
This collocation is used in all dialects of English, Steve and it is fully grammatical. Neither superfluous nor redundant, in and of themselves, make a structure ungrammatical, you, you, you turd! [example only; I certainly don't think Steve's a turd]
Total web hits - Google exact phrase search
Results 1 - 10 of about 10,300,000 for "off of the".
Results 1 - 10 of about 238,000,000 for "off the".
Google - UK pages only
Results 1 - 10 of about 16,700,000 for "off the".
Results 1 - 10 of about 438,000 for "off of the".
The reason that you see far fewer hits is that this structure is not the normal neutral. Normal neutral collocations show up much more often in language because most encounters are not emotionally charged.
People use "off of" to be more strident, more emotive.
Get your hands off of my stuff!
Of course, it is most often reduced in such situations to <offa>.
