"suggest sb to do sth"

Robin Michael   Sat Apr 04, 2009 5:25 am GMT
"suggest sb to do sth"

Is not good English!



"suggest sb to do sth" 354,000 results in Google

The very first result is a Chinese Web Site.

有没有I suggest sb. to do sth.的说法？_百度知道
- [ Translate this page ]
suggest sb doing sth还是suggest sb to do sth还是s... •, suggest doing sth.是什么意思？ ... 只有suggest sb doing 和suggest sb should do sth ...
zhidao.baidu.com/question/10643818.html?fr=qrl - 26k - Cached - Similar pages




In this expression "suggest sb to do sth" both sb and sth are non standard abbreviations. People have to guess what they mean.

The sb is going sth.

What does it mean?

It is short hand for: The 'son of a bitch' is going 'south'.
User   Sat Apr 04, 2009 5:38 am GMT
I think it's "suggest somebody to do something", which is bad grammar!
Lazar   Sat Apr 04, 2009 6:09 am GMT
Well I don't really care about the abbreviations (they're reminiscent of abbreviations found in dictionaries and language learning books), but I find the expression itself totally unnatural: I would say "to suggest that somebody do something".

Also, I would note that there's already a rather widely used abbreviation for "son of a bitch", SOB, which is sometimes even used in speech.
H   Sun Apr 05, 2009 6:22 am GMT
"suggest sb to do sth" 354,000 results in Google
No wonder, it's a syntactical calque from other languages, a very common mistake Russian/ Ukranian speakers make; perhaps Spanish, too. Don't know about Asians.