"We haven´t any single rooms vacant."
Until I have read this sentence in some text material, I didn´t know there also is this option besides the "We don´t have any..." which I considered to be standard.
So, is it generally the case that both option are possible, or is this some exception, maybe the special phrase with "any"?
Thank you for making this clear to me...
Search from various English teachers...
Answers · 5
3
Hey Bohdan,
I have no problem with that, and would guess a British resident would use that construction more readily. It comes down to applying an older Germanic grammatical construction - negative follows primary verb - instead of adding the auxilliary "do".
"We haven´t any single rooms vacant." actually sounds more archaic and formal.
Throwing "got" into possessive sentences is relatively recent in English (same as throwing in "do", which was rarely done a few centuries ago), and sometimes I think it's a bit unnecessary and carelessly used. Sometimes it changes the meaning: "I have brown hair" means simply that; however, "I've got brown hair" sounds like you didn't have it in the past and recently acquired it.
I suppose most people today would use the "we don't have any..." phrasing in both common writing and speech - the important thing is having only the one negative "haven't / don't".
2
...snip...
I was a bit quick to jump to conclusions here, and I don´t want to misinform anyone, so I´ve edited this post. I believe Peachey here makes more sense than I did.
0
We haven´t any single rooms vacant.
Although it can be understood, in general, it is not considered proper English. (At least not in the USA. -- I don't know about England)
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