It doesn't grate on my American ear. Though I'll concede that I have doubts sounds better, I had to think about it.
I checked my usual sources: Ngrams and Google books, and concluded:
- The (perhaps more technically correct) I have doubts is more common, though both can be found.
- The Ngram for British English has a perceptibly flatter line, so it may be a bit more common in the US than in the UK.
- I did find this except in parliamentary debates (although the excerpt does not indicate who is speaking):
I wish to see legislation that works. At the moment I have a doubt about its workability. I have asked this question before to the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland .. and I did not receive an answer.
(maybe she snubbed him because he said "I have a doubt" – who knows?)
Source: The Parliamentary Debates (Hansard): Official Report, Volume 674
Great Britain. Parliament. House of Lords, 2005
EDIT:
(to FumbleFingers and the downvoter, who may not be one in the same)
Okay, I didn't want to have to do this, as I included some links for the curious to explore. However, if more samples are needed to thwart the downvoting, so be it:
I have a doubt about this story. Whereas Holt has displaced the nationalist preoccupation with whether freedom was given or taken he nevertheless reproduces a story about the ultimate failure of the liberal emancipation project to confer substantive freedoms.
– quote taken from Refashioning Futures: Criticism after Postcoloniality, by David Scott, 1999. Yes, Scott did write a book covering Mother Teresa – maybe that's where he picked up this horrible English phrase? – but he was born in Ohio, attended seminary in Pennsylvania, and he recently served a two-year stint as editor in chief of the Catholic News Agency.
You owe it not to modern science, but to ancient superstition. Had they not obligingly provided the commandment, it were vain for you to provide the camera. Besides, I have a doubt about this scientific superiority of fire-arms...
– quote taken from The Scientific Mind, a 1927 short story by G.K. Chesterton. Yes, in the excerpt, the cook is talking to the professor, not the other way around, but I don't think Chesterton is trying to make the cook sound ignorant or uneducated.
It isn't always possible to know why a given sentence in your overview isn't effective, but if you suspect a given sentence isn't strong or if you have a doubt about whether a given idea is a plus, rethink and revise the material in question.
– quote taken from The Art of the Book Proposal, described by the publisher as "an expert's guide through the elements of a nonfiction book proposal." It was written by Eric Maisel, an American author who has written more than 40 books.
There is nothing that intercessory prayer cannot do. Oh, believer, you have a might engine in your hand, so use it. Use it constantly, use it now in faith, and you shall surely prevail. But perhaps you have a doubt about interceding for someone who has fallen far into sin.
– quote taken from Intercessory Prayer, a sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon, British theologian and preacher. Excepted from the book Spurgeon on Prayer. I will grant that the language is flowery, designed to be spoken from the pulpit in the 1800s; nonetheless, I have no more problem with Spurgeon saying "have a doubt about" than I do with him starting the sentence with a preposition.
Analogously, Cicero does not have a doubt about the immortality of the soul, since nature itself has placed in us this conviction. In fact, everyone is concerned with life after death. This is, for Cicero, the surest argument in favor of immortality, even if he does not hesitate to support it with traditional Platonic proofs.
– quote taken from A History of Ancient Philosophy III: Systems of the Hellenistic Age, by Giovanni Reale. Reale was an Italian philosopher who published his five-volume tome in 1975. Blame for this use of the English phrase "have a doubt about" may need to be placed on the shoulders of the translator, John R. Catan; however, given Catan's rather impressive resume, I'm not inclined to categorize this as a rookie mistake.
Now, back to the original question:
To my (British) ear, it never sounds correct to say you have a doubt about something. [emphasis added]
Never is a strong word. I've offered five quotes ranging from the 19th century to the 21st century, ranging from theologians to atheists, ranging in context from philosophy to fiction, from respected authors with roots on either side of the Atlantic. None of them caused me to bristle as though I just heard fingernails scraping on a chalkboard, and none of them made me immediately question if the author was a speaker of Indian English.
Never is a word that spurs pedantic analysis. I usually try to avoid it. In this case, I think there are times when have a doubt about something sounds acceptable, and supporting examples can be found if you're willing to do the research.
I have my doubts over whether "doubt" is a count noun, or an almost-always plural mass noun. – Peter Shor – 2013-09-19T17:41:16.200
@Peter: I certainly haven't got a misgiving about that! :)
– FumbleFingers Reinstate Monica – 2013-09-19T17:45:58.843@WendiKidd - and for that reason and others, doubtless, please migrate the Q to ELU! – Martin F – 2014-03-02T09:59:58.987
Since it's my question, Wendikidd, I hope I get a say in that. And I don't want it migrated. @martin: - a similar question was asked on ELU years ago, as referenced in my question text. The honest truth is I'm quite clear on what *I* think are acceptable usages of singular "doubt" today, so to some extend I posed a "rhetorical question" here. No disrespect to speakers of Indian English, but I wanted ELL to include a question clarifying the situation for other learners.
– FumbleFingers Reinstate Monica – 2014-03-02T12:54:38.443@martin I'm afraid I don't see a reason to migrate this question. If you doubt this question's topicality here, you're more than welcome to raise the issue on meta. If you can explain your reasoning and garner significant community support, I'd be happy to reconsider. – WendiKidd – 2014-03-02T17:09:25.543
Just seemed a bit advanced for here, especially with similar, or more basic Qs remaining on ELU. No problem; the more overlap there is, the reason to merge the two sites. – Martin F – 2014-03-03T01:24:04.337
@martin: Well, Wendikidd's a mod here, and I've always been a solid supporter of separating the "learner" stuff from the "interesting to competent speakers" stuff. So neither of us are likely to buy your "overlap = reason to merge" line. It's here because I think learners who happen to have had more exposure to "Indian" than "standard" English should be aware of this usage difference. Obviously native speakers of IE will simply speak as they do, but others may well prefer not to find themselves unwittingly committed to a "marked" form. – FumbleFingers Reinstate Monica – 2014-03-03T04:52:17.130
your title is at odds with your question in that the title is a self-referential sentence about a state of mental uncertainty, which you specifically exclude from the question. – horatio – 2013-03-29T17:27:07.767
Doesn't doubt just mean "a feeling of being uncertain about something or not believing something"? – kiamlaluno – 2013-03-29T17:57:27.027
I've now read the word doubt so often and in quick succession that it doesn't look like a real word to me anymore. Dauw-bt? ;) At any rate: my instinct as a native speaker is to agree with you, but I can't venture to explain why. – WendiKidd – 2013-03-29T21:41:43.383
@kiamlaluno: Maybe that's the "crossover point" in meaning (I think you sometimes write "I have a doubt"). But from my point of view, that's like saying *happiness* means "a feeling of being happy". Which doesn't work for me as a native speaker (you'd have to at least say happiness is *the feeling you have when you are happy*, or something). It's not so much the definition - it's the grammar of how we can use the word. Or maybe there's some subtle semantic distinction I can't put my finger on, I don't know. – FumbleFingers Reinstate Monica – 2013-03-30T01:43:57.820
Just to throw a little extra confusion in there, "without a doubt" is a correct construction. Of course, this does simply mean "without confusion", but it is a noun usage. (It's also a colloquial phrase, so rules don't exactly apply with certainty.) – Jonathan Garber – 2013-03-30T02:13:51.513
@Jonathan Garber: I'm going to stick my neck out and say "Without [a] doubt" and "No doubt" are "set phrases" as per user3169's answer. They don't conform to a coherent set of grammatical principles linked to the near-synonym "question". Note that you can say "Without question", but so far as I know, native speakers today never say *"Without a question"*. – FumbleFingers Reinstate Monica – 2013-03-30T02:19:04.150
1Are you sure? I haz a dou--ohwait. But you're right, it's the different usage contexts that obscured it in my mind. ("Without a doubt" is rarely used sarcastically, while "no doubt" frequently is.) – Jonathan Garber – 2013-03-30T02:29:50.713
The use never bothered me until now. OED 1 calls it obsolete, so I guess I should stop. – StoneyB on hiatus – 2013-03-31T15:05:04.877
@StoneyB: Ah - I see OED online has *2. A matter or point involved in uncertainty; a doubtful question; a difficulty. Obs.* Perhaps that's the usage that survived in India, and maybe other non-native speakers pick up on it because their own language happens to have a single word functioning the way question and doubt work in English. Interestingly, *allay my doubts* has a claimed 1840 hits in Google Books, but *allay my doubt* has only 30.
– FumbleFingers Reinstate Monica – 2013-03-31T16:04:37.820Well, OED 1 gives no citation more recent than 1693, so I'm feeling really obsolete myself for using it. I must pretend that it comes of my intimate familiarity with 17th century drama. – StoneyB on hiatus – 2013-03-31T16:34:26.383
@StoneyB: Could be. I must say that in general your "feel" for "standard current usage" often seems closer to my own than most Americans, so your "never bothered me until now" did surprise me a bit. It's also possible the usage survived longer in the US after it became obsolete in the UK, and that it's been kept alive/resurrected by the fact that AmE is in many respects more "cosmopolitan" than BrE today (more immigrant non-native speakers over [relatively] recent generations, skewing the ongoing syntactic changes in peculiar ways). – FumbleFingers Reinstate Monica – 2013-03-31T16:49:53.793
Well, my literary taste has always been British rather than US - I grew up on Kipling, Buchan, Wodehouse, Dickens, did my academic and theatre work almost entirely in British drama: I've done more productions of Pinter than of all American playwrights combined. And my native GS dialect is conservative and, I fear, dying. – StoneyB on hiatus – 2013-03-31T16:59:30.523