Mexican government puts grammatical ‘errors’ into textbooks

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s president has defended the insertion of what teachers have long considered grammatical errors into grade-school textbooks. The new textbooks use words like “dijistes,” long considered an incorrect or uneducated way of saying “dijiste,” meaning “you said.” The same goes for “hicistes,” in which the final “s” is also not correct. Despite decades of censure by teachers and grammarians, the verb forms persist in Mexico, generally in poorer and less-educated neighborhoods. There is no tie to any particular ethnic group. One textbook also features terms long considered pleonasms, like “súbate para arriba,” that repeat themselves, somewhat like “come up, up here.”