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Making sentence "serve time" and "do time"
Here is a quote from a certain film.
A) Now, our only requirement is that none of you have ever served any time in jail.
And I tried and made a paraphrase of A, into the following B.
B) Now, our only requirement is that none of you have ever done any time in prison.
I just learned by dictionary that the phrase "serve time" and "do time" are synonym, right?
And I also changed "jail" into "prison" because they are synonym too. No problem, right?
So all I want you to is confirm whether or not B is definitely fine. Does it sounds natural to you?
23 avr. 2014 17:00
Réponses · 4
2
Yes, I agree that your substitutions still sound natural. The only issue is that "do time" is a colloquial expression, so a person in authority would only use the phrase "serve time".
I'm not sure if that fits the context of the phrase (you never told us which film), but I hope that's slightly enlightening.
23 avril 2014
1
Others have answered the question fine. I highly recommend using this dictionary in the future http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/ as it provides English learners information about questions like yours.
23 avril 2014
1
In American English, both of these are correct... even with you replacing "jail" with "prison". Like Peachy says though, anyone in authority like an officer would say "serve time" though. Where as just regular people might say "do time" as well. :)
23 avril 2014
1
It's fine. Both substitutions are perfectly natural.
23 avril 2014
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Bunch
Compétences linguistiques
Anglais, Coréen
Langue étudiée
Anglais
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