Just heard an Irish woman saying;
"She doesn't be here until Friday."
Where I would say;
"She won't be here until Friday."

The root of this is obviously the different form of Irish language sentence structure, but is it wrong when applied to English? It is unusual (to me) but it makes sense too and I can't think of a logical argument against it.

I might say, "She won't be here until Friday", or "She isn't here until Friday", or even "She isn't going to be here until Friday". I can't think of an example of usage of the phrase "doesn't be" (although you might say, in the imperative form, "don't be [here before Friday]").

The question of whether it makes sense is possibly debatable. I know people who get really confused if they hear a grammatical construct that is non-standard. Like you, I can understand it, but that may be because I've studied so many foreign languages that I'm used to deconstructing what people say. I also seem to have a knack for guessing what someone means even when they haven't clearly and unambiguously explained themselves. For that reason, the fact that I understand an unusual English phrase doesn't necessarily make it generally comprehensible.

I would say, on balance, that the woman's phrase is bad grammar, on the basis that it isn't guaranteed to be understood.

One might say: 'she doesn't arrive (or come, or do) here until friday'. Presumbly they've just shortened it or combined it with 'She won't be here until friday'.

I've heard my mum say something similar - perhaps it's a generational thing? I would say 'she won't be here until Friday.'

You could use it in dialogue as part of her characterisation, but you'd need to repeat it, and even have another character correct her, otherwise the reader is liable ot think it's a typo.

There's something similar in The Well and the Mine, set in a pre-war Alabama coal town, where the locals say 'gone' rather than 'going to', eg, "Not gone eat with me?" and "You're gone have to beat the boys off with a stick soon".



<Added>

Reminds me of (a long time ago) when I had a cleaner who wouldn't dust the top shelves, saying she 'didn't do up'. I recommended her to a friend, adding 'she doesn't do up'

"Not gone eat with me?"

Hmm. I think that's different.

The Irish woman _meant_ to say "doesn't" as in "does not". Whereas, "gone" is a phonetic false cognate of a contraction of an abbreviation...

The locals didn't _mean_ "gone", they meant "going to" >> "gonna" >> "gonn'". So the writer of the Alabama town should probably have written "Not gonn' eat with me?" instead.

The key difference being that, for reading, it is harder to understand "She gone have to beat em away" than "She gonn' have to beat em away" because the former puts in a recognisable term that is incorrect and has to checked and then corrected in the head whereas the latter puts in an unrecognised term that only needs to be checked once and can then be recognised every subsequent occasion.

G

Um, didn't mean for you to over think it, Gaius. I was just giving an example of a colloquialism used by an author as characterisation.

Oops. I'll try not to think in future.