Suppose you work in a office and there is a guy there who you know for a year and you he asks you to call him so that he could find his missing phone through hearing the phone vibrating or something. The point however is, you don't have him as a contact on your phone and you want to say that in a kind of funny way, you don't have his number like below:
- why I don't have your phone number?
- why I am not having your phone number?
- why am I not having your phone number?
- why don't I have your phone number"?
Would please tell me if those are idiomatic questions considering the context? And is there any difference between the different interrogative constructions above in general?
Best Answer
We don't use to have in a progressive sense when it means to possess: we say I have your phone number, not I am having your phone number. So any version with the progressive is wrong:
Why I am not having your phone number?Why am I not having your phone number?Also, when we make wh- questions in English, we change the word order: the wh- word, like Why, is immediately followed by the auxiliary verb do, then the subject, then the main verb. So the proper order is Why don't I have... and that leaves us with only one choice:
Why I don't have your phone number?That's the only idiomatic, grammatically correct way to say the question.