Hey Mike... I was thinking more of when people are trying to sound clever and mimic an accent for effect. Moving somewhere and trying to fit in is different from what I meant. I'm sure, more than a lot of places, NO requires at least some effort to pronounce it "correctly."
Like I have any room to talk, being from Baltimore. We say our long O's silly (like "eau"). I notice it a lot more since I've moved away, and I'm able to turn it on and off pretty well now. One of those things that, to a lot of people in a different location, just doesn't sound "smart."
Mike Finn wrote:"You'se guys" is probably still my favorite
Do they really say that? I mean, I thought "youse" (or "yez") was already plural, so an alternative to the more standard but unfortunate "you guys". It would be even worse than "all y'all".
In my youth, my male peers usually addressed each other by last name. It has been a long time, but I'm sure at least a few of the teachers did too - I mean, not "Mr. Chinaski", just "Chinaski".
Last edited by Donn on Tue Aug 03, 2010 4:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Being a New Jersey native, the most disturbing part of watching The Sopranos on HBO was not the violence...it was how painfully accurate the accents and speech patterns were.
Bort, some of my college friends were from South Jersey, which has a very similar accent to Baltimore (Eau-cean, wudder, crick, etc.). They used to get lightly teased for it, until they met my very North Jersey parents, who love their morning cup of "Cawfee." I had never noticed how heavy their accents were until I was away for college a bit....how I avoided it, I don't know.
I think that's the same word as "youse", "yez". Not that I would know. I can think of only one person I've heard say either. The "yez" guy had something like a mild NJ accent the way I remember, the "y'uns" guy was from western Pennsylvania and had a strong hillbilly accent.
I hope bloke is joking about "y'all." Talk about degeneracy.
Donn wrote:
I hope bloke is joking about "y'all." Talk about degeneracy.
He's not joking. Works the same with "you'se" and "you'se guys". When I moved down South (although Va Beach is not The South) I started jokingly saying "you'se all" but it started to stick, and I had to make a concerted effort to quit.
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I know there are places in the south where "y'all" is plural, as I have been there. That was Texas - Houston, Austin - but it's the south or they wouldn't be saying "y'all" in the first place.
The funny thing is, historically "you" is already the plural of "thou", and English isn't the only European language where the natural second person singular is little used, and plural is used instead. Some use it with friends and family, others like us have recognized that friends and family don't deserve any special words and essentially dropped it (I think few Portuguese speakers can correctly conjugate verbs with it, same as English.) I bet not one modern European language still makes use of its equivalent of "thou" to routinely distinguish between plural and singular, even though not one of them has any trouble making the same distinction with 1st* and 3rd persons.
Why? You can infer number by context, so the ambiguity isn't a big problem, but it's obviously a gap, or we wouldn't have "y'all" etc. Apparently we just don't like to single out one person? Find the people who have taken to addressing one person as "y'all", and make them explain themselves.
* Though I suppose none support the distinction between "we, including you" and "we, not including you", that I believe exists in Chinese.
Where I grew up, in North Little Rock (specifically the Rose City/Argenta area) that is the most used version of "forehead"...as much as I try not to, I catch myself saying it.
bloke wrote:Most today will pronounce the silent "f" in "off-ten", just as they will pronounce the silent "h" in "four-haid"
Ok....I am confused here, and want to clarify....did you mean a silent "T" in often (pronounced off-en), which is what you indicating by bolding the letter "T", or did you mean a silent "F" (pronounced au-ten??), which is what you actually wrote. I assume you meant the former (which is how I say it), because the latter just seems....weird. If that makes me under-educated and illiterate, so be it.
bort wrote:I used to work with a woman who called it an "ink pen" and a "lead pencil." In perfect Baltimorese, it was more like "ink pey-un" and "led punsil."
Did she use a "hot water heater" and eat "tuna fish"?
