I'm not sure how it all started or if it is indeed just a recent development, but I keep on hearing people say thanks God when they should be saying thank God (without the s). Here are some examples:
Thanks God the plane landed safely
Thanks God it stopped raining
In English TV programs, I always hear this as 'thank God', without the 's' in thanks. I'm not sure, but I think people are confusing 'thanks, God' and 'thank God'. The former is a declarative statement wherein you are thanking God for something. This is similar to when you say thanks to your friend or your coworker. The latter is an imperative sentence wherein you are asking someone (sometimes yourself) to thank God for something. Most often, it is a treated as a phrase. I'm not completely sure about the grammatical rule behind it, but this is the way I understand it.
Thanks, Abigail!
CORRECT
Thanks for the food.
CORRECT
Thank God you came.
CORRECT
Thank heavens the rain has stopped.
CORRECT
Thanks, God. You really came through for me.
CORRECT
Thanks, God. You really helped me.
CORRECT
The last two sentences may sound weird to you; that is because we rarely say 'thanks' directly to God, or when we do, we tend to omit 'God'. Normally, we say 'thank you' when we are talking directly to God.
Remember the expression '
thank God it's Friday'? That's right, we don't say '
thanks God it's Friday',
I even heard Imelda Marcos during an interview on the History Channel say thanks God (that something didn't happen). No wonder people think this is grammatically correct!
And don't get me started on the word i-safety. The root word is an English noun, but it has been converted into a Taglish verb! I'm not even sure if that made sense. I first heard this word being used during an election wherein Mel Tiangco was interviewing a teacher, and the teacher said "ni-safety ko ang ballot boxes" (I 'safetied' the ballot boxes). Of course, there is no such word because safety is a noun and not a verb! Just recently, though, I heard someone during an interview use this word and this person spoke reasonably well English! It looks like these words are starting to creep into Philippine English and it probably won't be long before these would become mainstream and be considered correct. I certainly hope I'm wrong.
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