Regional grammatical peculiarities.

[Odin2005]

I noticed today that most people around here (Fargo area), myself included, say "I've boughten", "I've caughten", etc. in analogy to "gotten" and other irregular verbs with -en endings in the past participle.

On the other hand, I have a tendency to regularize the verbs "fly" and "throw".

[nytemare]

1. I used to say "warsh" instead of "wash".

I've noticed a lot of people from the mid-atlantic regions do the same. Maryland, DC, Delaware, NoVA. I still hear my mother say it occasionally.

[soleiri]

8. my mom says warsh

She grew up in the southwest and her father was from Texas.

I'm from California, so every um other um word is um... um.

[Bertha Venation]

26. I work in Warshington DC

It is disconcerting to hear that from a highly intelligent woman whom I admire, and it makes me wonder where she's from.

[Odin2005]

28. I could have swore I remember hearing Dan Rather or somebody saying "Warshington" when I was a kid.

[SoxFan]

36. That's the local Maryland accent

Bawlumur and Warshington.

[Bertha Venation]

48. But I live in So. Maryland and I've never heard anyone else use it.

Been to Bawlmer many times, never heard it . . .

Then again, I don't get out much. :)

[madmom]

52. My mom does do, raised in western Maryland.

[Shell Beau]

64. That one bugs me for some reason. People do it down here in the south too.

People also say Chicargo, winder (window), and people totally butcher the word "ruin". Many people say ruint, or rurned. Drives me bananas.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. Although the usage is now found in Minnesota as well (grrr)

when I first went to the Pacific Northwest, I was astonished at how many people said "I have went," "I have ate," "I have drank," "I have came," "I have ran." "I have The topper was a man who was arrested for murder and was quoted in the newspaper as saying, "I ain't did nothing."

The most embarrassing was when one of the English professors at the college where I was teaching was scheduled to give a poetry reading on campus. Unfortunately, they assigned the publicity poster to one of their less grammatical students. The caption to a photograph of the professor said, "______ has taught English at ______ College since 1985. Many of the poems she has wrote have been published in national magazines."

On the other hand, when I was growing up in Minnesota, people tended to use the past participle instead of the past tense (the opposite of the Pacific Northwest pattern): "I done it already." "He come here several times already." "He seen it with his own eyes." "Who drunk all the lemonade?" One of my cousins married a man from northern Minnesota who still says, "Them is" instead of "They are."

I've also heard "boughten," but never "caughten."

My father came from the northwestern corner of Minnesota, and he and his sister used two phrases I have never heard anywhere else: "breakfast food" for "cereal" and "glamour puss" for a celebrity-type woman.

[Odin2005]

3. LOL, I ALWAYS say "I have ate"

And was shocked that people elsewhere don't say "spendy" and "hotdish"! :rofl:

[Arugula Latte]

21. "Spendy" made it to the Pacific Northwest with the folks who emigrated from the upper Midwest

So thanks for that.

;)

[Odin2005]

27. Y'uys are welcome!

:)

[trof]

37. My Alabama grandmother called cereal 'breakfast food'.

After a huge, traditional 'Sunday dinner', she say "Let's just have breakfast food for supper."

[madmom]

53. My in laws say sandwich meat instead of luncheon meat or lunch meat.

[Orrex]

4. Yinzers drop the infinitive "to be" in certain contexts

"The dishes need washed."

or

"The dog needs let out."

or, in the case of Hamlet:

"Or not."



Well, I'm kidding about that last one...

[Odin2005]

5. That's interesting! Serial Verb constructions for teh WIN!!!

[I Have A Dream]

43. This is done in Central Pennsylvania as well.

Goodness, it's an awfully tough habit to break. :(

[Sisaruus]

49. An ex-husband used to talk like that.

I divorced him.

[ScreamingMeemie]

6. The curious need for people from Michigan to pluralize stores, Kmart is Kmart's

Kroger is Kroger's, Target's, and on and on...

[jobycom]

7. I thought Krogers was Krogers.

:shrug:

Could it be a French influence? I've heard that in Louisiana. In French you'd say "chez Target," which would roughly mean "Target's place," so people with a French heritage instinctively convert Target to "Target's place," shortened to "Target's."

Another trait in New Orleans and south Louisiana is to add "me" at the end of a sentence. "I'm going to Target's, me." That's also a French construct.

A lot of regional dialects are the result of the original language of the original immigrants. That was the whole point of studying Ebonics, but of course the pop-news media portrayed it as something else and made a serious study into a racist punchline.

[Odin2005]

11. There is a strong amount of Scandanvian and German substratum here.

One way of saying "go to X" and "stop at" around gere is "go by X" and "stop by X", this usage is derived from the usage of the German preposition "bei"

[Lydia Leftcoast]

24. Yes, and the use of "by" for at somebody's house

"So, do you have cable by you?"

It's not real common anymore, but it is due to influence from German immigrants.

[raccoon]

15. Southernerners do that a lot too. nt

[no name no slogan]

34. People in N. Illinois do that too

Jewel is Jewel's, Osco is Osco's

[nemo137]

38. Where in NoIL?

I've heard the Jewel and the Osco more than pluralizing them.

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure Highlanders and Vallis are both technically singular, so maybe you're on to something.

[david13]

54. You got that one right, but you know where that started? Ford. Or

as they say Fords. He works at Fords. He retired from Fords. Etc. ???
dc

[Enrique]

9. a black co-worker completely reverses word order

he'll say things like, "what kind of car that is?"

Some other black co-workers tease him about it, how "country" he sounds.

[suninvited]

44. I used to hear that a lot when I lived in Cajun country

Grand Isle, LA.

the cajuns used literal translation of french to english.

I would have my daughter out and people would ask me "How old she is"?

[NNadir]

10. "I gotta cutchya" is New York for stating, "I deeply regret that I have to murder you."

[Tuesday Afternoon]

18. 0h fuck

:rofl:

[Manifestor_of_Light]

12. East Texas doesn't know about helper verbs.

I constantly hear "I seen" and "I done".

:banghead:

They put -ed on the end of a verb instead of changing it. The TV talking heads do this too.

The other day I heard a story about the boy in CA who was in a tunnel at Grandma's house, and the TV people said "he was hidden in hiding".

:banghead:

[EndersDame]

42. I hate it when people add "t"

for example: He killt the deer when he ran over it

[I Have A Dream]

47. Of course, some verbs have forms of that type...

and some verbs have multiple correct forms such as dream which can have dreamed or dreamt, or light which can have either lighted or lit. (I have actually had people tell me that I was wrong when I used the latter of the two choices.)

However, I know what you mean -- people just randomly adding 't' to the end of any verb to make it past tense.

[david13]

55. Using t instead of ed.

[vixengrl]

13. Youse--in Philadelphia and environs, there is a plural of the "addressee"

so to speak--"youse." And it makes better sense than the pronuoun "you", to indicate a plural group, non? It would be vous vs. tu in French, a language that seriously influenced early English. Sometimes the "youse" is pronounced "yiz". As in, "I picked up an extra six-pack of Yeunglings, if yiz want any."

Also, we manage to elide syllables in a way that, for example, shortens contractions. "Shouldn't" becomes "shoont." "Wouldn't" becomes "woont." "Isn't" actually becomes "idn't" or "ain't". And "Did you eat yet?" becomes "Dju eatchet?"

("Naw, eye dineat."

"I got haffuhoagie in the fridge--youin?"

"American?"

"Italian with mayo."

"Aight, I'll eat the hoagie. Any soda?"

"Diet Coke and Franks Cherry Wishniak."

"No shit--a cherry soda--wait, naw, I'll have a Bud Light."

"Fuck, that's my sister's beer, you're having a Yeungling."

"Aight.")

[Odin2005]

16. That elision is actually very common in English generally

Not a peculiarity of Philly! :)

Around here "you guys" has evolved into the pronoun "y'uys" and has had the effect on making the word "guys" more gender-neutral.

[woo me with science]

14. Many Midwesterners say, "if she would have done it,"

instead of "if she had done it." Even the newscasters do this. It drives me crazy.

e.g. "If she would have called him, he would have answered,"

instead of, "If she had called him, he would have answered."

[MorningGlow]

17. The worst? "So don't I"

instead of "Me too". I have NO idea where it came from. Also "truck" is an entity lacking an article if you drive one: "I drive truck" (as a career) but "I drive a car" or "I ride a motorbike" (for recreation/standard mode of transportation). Go figure.

Worst pronunciation: "sangwidch". :scared:

[KamaAina]

19. New Orleans-American dictionary

make groceries = go food shopping
neutral ground = median strip
for = by ("Okay, I'll be there for four o'clock")
by = at, near ("Okay, I'll meet you by Tropical Isle for four o'clock")

many, many more.

[Forkboy]

20. When I went to a store in Ohio the checkout lady asked, "Didjins all need a bag for that?"

I had no idea what the fuck she had just said to me. :rofl:

[Arugula Latte]

22. I have Ohio roots and some of my relatives say "youse" as a plural of "you."

Like, "Can youse come over to our house for a family dinner?"

[LynneSin]

23. Pennsylvania Dutch has both weird pronounciations but oddities in grammer too

So instead of washing my clothes in the creek on Washington's birthday -

I would be worshing my clothes in the crick on Worshington's birfday.

And we also say strange things like "Throw me down the stairs my coat"

[libodem]

25. A couple of my friends

can't conjugate verbs. Just last night one said, "I've went". *Shiver* We all have a tendency to drop the 'g' in the ing endings, around here. I hear my self use ya instead of you. Sometimes I type my replies the way I talk. For example: 'Whatcha doin'?

[Odin2005]

30. "G-dropping" is actually perfectly normal, nothing wrong with it.

The "-ing" ending is derived from 2 endings in Old English, the verbal noun ending "-unge" and the Present Participle ending "-ende"

In Old English there was 2 ways to form the Progressive:


I am hunting" could be:

Ic eom huntende

or

Ic eom on huntunge

By middle English the two constructions fused because of Welsh influence (Welsh uses the same ending for both verbal noun and present participle). then endings -en and -ing sounded similar and went into what linguists call "free variation", ether could be used for both verbal noun and present participle.

I am a-hunten

or

I am a-hunting

And thus modern English:

I'm huntin'

[rbnyc]

29. No one here can write or speak.

As for speaking, the saddest part is how it rubs off. Regardless of how much one reads or writes or what one knows, it is difficult to resist speaking like those around you. I have heard the phrase "most neediest" so many times that I begin to doubt whether it's incorrect.

Writing is easier to control.

[Glorfindel]

31. Actually pronouncing "wh" as in which, what, where, when

I have noticed that non-southerners almost invariably say "wich, wot, were, wen," and so forth. Of course, the "wh" in these cases is actually pronounced "hw," but that's another story.

[Odin2005]

32. I still have a voiceless "Wh" sound and I'm from rural MN.

[Silver Swan]

50. I remember arguing with a teacher fifty years ago

About "wh" being pronounced as "hw."

I even showed her that the dictionary indicated that sound as "hw."

She thought I was sassing her. (She pronounced it correctly. She just didn't agree with me.)

[Blue State Blues]

33. "Might could"

As in "I might could do that." instead of "I could do that," or "I might do that."

Also, the more rare, but always entertaining past tense of "might could", "should oughta," as in "I should oughta done that."

Both heard in Southern Appalachia region, though I don't know the full range.

[TrogL]

35. "eh" is a Canadian regionalism. What's wierd is here it's "hey"

[nemo137]

39. In the Midwest it's "huh?"

Used much the same way as your "eh."

[Odin2005]

40. Many of us Minnesotans say "eh", too.

I also have the so-called "Canadian Raising", the rising of /ai/ and /au/ to /əi/ and /əu/ before voiceless consonants.

[david13]

56. Eh is supposed to be the official way of identifying a canadian.

Sort of like the secret handshake. But it found it's way across the border I guess.
dc

[mysuzuki2]

45. You must be from Wisconsin

[madamesilverspurs]

41. Whither "bidness"?

First encountered that one in Texas, along with "v" becoming "b" (as in shopping at the seb'n-leb'n). There also seemed to be an inconsistent dropping of the "r" - as in "thow a rope on it".

In Virginia I noticed "co-cola" and "a dollar fifty cent".

Across the country there seem to be some words that are routinely mispronounced:

realtor (mispronounced re-lah-tor);

jewelry (mispronounced ju-ler-ee);

nuclear (let's not go there).

[eleny]

46. heighth instead of plain old height

[stray cat]

51. you betcha

[elehhhhna]

57. "I usedta didn't." East Texas.

[Cant trust em]

58. I love these little local differences.

These are the things that really make this country fun.

[Odin2005]

62. Ours our small compared to the dialects of England and Scotland.

The traditional English of SE Scotland is often considered a separate language, called Scots. Some northern English dialects still have "thou" for the singular 2nd Person pronoun and conjugate verbs differently. A few dialects in rural south-central England maintained grammatical gender until as recently as 150 years ago.

[Cant trust em]

65. That's definitely one of the reasons I love the UK

I was in London a few years ago talking politics with this Scottish guy. With his accent, it sounded more like George Beesh.

[BlooInBloo]

59. Pfft. That's nuthin. You should hear Pittsburgh-ese. Pittsburghers are called "yinzers" for a reason

[WinkyDink]

60. "Grammar" isn't "pronunciation", is it?

[Inchworm]

61. I kept thinking the same each time I read thread

Naturally, I was looking for a unique way to say that using a local twist.

I cannot seem to get "vernacular" to fit in a local vernacular expression correctly.

:silly:

[Ivan Sputnik]

63. There's this little greenish guy I know

who mixes up subject, object and verb order. He'll say things like "Size matters not, ... Look at me. Judge me by size, do you?" I feel like asking him, "What planet are you from, anyway?"