Nee, Bubbele - stimme Dir voll zu.

Nein, tust du nicht, Bub. Richtig wäre:

Had I known you were coming, I would have ...

Was du da hast, ist eher umgangssprachlich.

Ich hab anscheinend, aber wenn, dann rein zufällig, was mit Zeiten richtig gemacht. Rot im Kalender anstreichen ;-)

I don't know anything about Sesamstraße, but I knew this phrase as a child many moons before Sesame Street was invented, and at that time it was always correctly quoted as: If I'd known you were coming, I'd have baked a cake. So the version you know is presumably a US colloquialism.

The song is apparently about 15 years older than Sesame Street.
According to one source:
""If I Knew You Were Comin' I'd've Baked a Cake" is a popular song written by Al Hoffman, Bob Merrill, and Clem Watts and published in 1950."

I don't know about "If I knew" in place of "If I had known" being a US colloquialism, but it certainly is more singable! :-D

If that's the case, then obviously my parents "corrected" the English when they quoted it! No doubt that's where they got it from.

That's parents for ya! ;-)

Which reminds me of Stan Freburg's "Elderly Man River" - hilarious!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLlTlYfqQV4

I think it's a US colloquialism. I say it all the time, at least... :o\

'Colloquialism' is a little generous; I'd call it a common mistake.

It isn't really even more singable, is it? 'If I'd known' is the same number of syllables. (-:

Just listened to the song, and yep - I DO know it, but from one of my parents age-old 45s :-) Did it perhaps become a US colloquialism because of Sesame Street, which hadn't yet been created when I was a child. We watched Captain Kangaroo :-)

What's the difference between a common mistake and a colloquialism? Aren't they frequently the same thing?

A mistake is something that most teachers, editors, style guides, and careful speakers would consider wrong. To me, this is one of them. It's like confusing 'lie' and 'lay' or saying 'between you and I' -- vast numbers of people do it, but that doesn't make it right.

However, "most teachers, editors, style guides, and careful speakers" would consider a lot of things "wrong" that are, in fact colloquialisms, such as "ain't" or "y'all(s)," or even "for you and I" (among many others).

Die Fehler von heute sind die Regel von morgen ;-)

meine Rede! :-)

It is not a "mistake" to quote a well-known lyric to make a sarcastic point.

If it were true that I would have actually baked someone a cake if I had actually known that they were going to come (for example if I were expecting someone to visit on their birthday), I would probably say the phrase properly to convey the fact that I would have baked the cake if I had known.

But if I am making a playful comment to an unexpected visitor, I might just quote the lyric, as the well-known lyric carries a certain rhetorical weight that the grammatically correct construction loses.

For that to work, the lyric would have to be well-known to the person you're speaking to. In this case, I'd say they'd have to be about 65+ and/or familiar with Sesame Street, apparently.

Even people who are not familiar with the song are familiar with the quote from the lyric, which, I suppose, has developed into a colloquialism - originating from the song.

Years ago -- late 1950s or so -- one of the cigarette companies advertising on TV in the US (which was at that time permitted) had the jingle "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should."

There was much discussion at the time whether they should have said "as" instead of "like," and many commentaries decrying the pernicious influence of Madison Avenue on the public's speech.

I remember especially an article that claimed that although the typical Madison Avenue account manager (the chief contact with the advertising client company) had a university education, the typical copy writer (who wrote the jingles) was a high school graduate from Brooklyn. (All the big ad agencies were on Madison Avenue in New York at the time.)

The verson we sang in school was: If I'd known you were coming, I'd have baked a cake...

I had no idea that was not the original. Maybe there are two versions floating around the public consciousness?

Selkie's version (#20) is the only one that seems gramatically 100% correct to me.

@ Stravinsky
.. and the one we've been talking about on and off since #4