You’re gonna need a bigger boat

Undoubtedly one of the greatest quotes in the history of cinema. Police Chief Brody’s terrible realisation of exactly what they’re up against* in the super cool and timeless classic ‘Jaws’.

A word of warning: nothing so dramatic as a 25-foot, 3-ton shark coming at you, but worth remembering anyway. You wouldn’t wanna use ‘gonna’ in any kind of written English exam you do because ‘wanna’ (want to), ‘gonna (going to) and ‘gotta’ (have got to) are sub-standard forms, not just informal ones, so a definite no-no in writing, even if you’re writing in an informal style. Of course, you’ve seen these forms in thousands of song lyrics, film and TV series subtitles and so on, but not if a teacher or examiner is on the receiving end, OK?

There are two ways of making predictions in English: with ‘will’ or with ‘going to’. If your prediction is based on what you can see, like a 25-foot, 3-ton shark coming at you then it’s ‘going to’ (gonna). With ‘will’ it’s nothing visible, it’s a prediction based on what you believe, what science or whatever tells you is most likely and so on.

I see many ‘wtf**?’ expressions on the faces of people in class. Understandably, given the vagaries of the English language. But none like that of Police Chief Brody on seeing that shark.

*’be up againnst something’ means that you’re facing or having to deal with something very difficult or problematic.

**wtf stands for ‘what the fuck’. You knew that. An interesting evolution is that now people sometimes say ‘what the actual fuck..?’ in a way that denotes even greater surprise, shock or outrage. So here’s ‘wtaf’; it’s gained a vowel and might even morph into a noun. Who knows? It’s definitely what I see on the face of Police Chief Brody.