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First time poster here. Please forgive me for violating any rules if I have. I might also be asking a stupid question.

So... I have heard 'being' used in different situations and naturely pick up from what other people say (wrongly perhaps). I am not entirely sure if sentence structures below are correct:

(Noun) being (noun) (verb) ... e.g. English not being my first language does negatively affect my achievement in work.

With (noun) being (noun), ... e.g. With my first language not being English, my achievement in work is negatively affected.

Please kindly point out any mistakes made. Thank you for the help :)

Edit: I wanted clarifications on constructing a sentence after +ing following the noun part. A similar question has been asked before with slightly different sentence structures. Is it correct to use 'being' after a noun?

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  • We cannot possibly guess what you think you've done "wrong", or why you've thought this. Please explain. Did someone tell you that you've been doing this wrong? Are you a native speaker of English? If so, then ignore those people. If not, then please visit our sister site for English Language Learners.
    – tchrist
    Sep 3, 2018 at 18:53
  • @tchrist He said it was not his first language. Mr. Wong, please post an example of what you mean.
    – Lambie
    Sep 3, 2018 at 19:03
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    @Lambie He said no such thing You're confusing random examples with informative statements.
    – tchrist
    Sep 3, 2018 at 19:10
  • @tchrist and lambie. Thank you for your replies. They really help myself as an English learner. You are both right. Those are just examples but I am actually not a native English speaker. There are many mistakes I make without noticing and I suspect this could be examples of them. I just needed clarifications:)
    – Mr. Wrong
    Sep 4, 2018 at 14:42

2 Answers 2

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a) English not being my first language does negatively affect my productivity.

b) With my first language not being English, my productivity is negatively affected.

(I've taken the liberty of changing achievement in work to productivity in the above sentences)

These are both grammatical, and both describe the same situation, but they have different grammar.

In (a) the gerund clause English not being my first language is a noun clause functioning as the subject complement for the verb construction does affect.

In (b), the same gerund phrase is the object complement of the preposition/conjunction with, forming an adverbial clause that occurs at the beginning of the sentence. Like most adverb phrases, it could just as easily occur at the end, as it does in the grammatical

  • My productivity is negatively affected, with my first language not being English.

This is not the case with (a), however, producing the ungrammatical (marked with asterisk *)

  • *Does negatively affect my productivity, English not being my first language.

The ungrammaticality isn't due to whether or not does occurs

  • *Affects negatively my productivity, English not being my first language.
  • *Negatively affects my productivity, English not being my first language.

(though this last one could be a version of Right-Dislocation).

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  • Hi John! Thank you for your reply! Your explanation has cleared all the uncertainty I had.
    – Mr. Wrong
    Sep 4, 2018 at 14:54
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Both of your examples seem to be grammatically correct. However, the use of "does" in the first example makes it very emphatic. In normal circumstances, I'd probably just say: "English not being my first language negatively affects my achievement/performance at work."

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