I thought Kinky Friedman was when you spank the wife with a copy of “Free To Choose”.
So Much For Subtlety
dearieme – “OK. Tell us the dative and ablative, then.”
I gave y’all a good whippin’ last week. Don’t make me do it again.
English does not have an ablative. Anyone who tells you otherwise pulled that out of y’all’s ar$e.
Liberal Yank
Y’all, like other regional variations such as yinz, covers all possible forms. Only the ivory tower elites use things like dative and ablative anyway.
So Much For Subtlety
Liberal Yank – “Only the ivory tower elites use things like dative and ablative anyway.”
That, Sir, is a slander up with which I will no longer put.
Liberal Yank
Yinz guys got ta deal enat.
Bloke in Costa Rica
Standard English has lost the distinction between “this”, “that” and “that one over there”. It’s still around (just) in the form of “yonder” and archaic “yon”. The difference exists in Spanish, as well: este tipo (this guy); ese tipo (that guy); aquel tipo (that guy over there).
mike
Did I just lose a comment?
mike
Don’t know what the hell happened there.
mike
Off-topic: advice on protecting your dog from people who deliberately try to poison him at the local park?
I’ve just had to rush Wanwan to the vet’s as they were closing up for the night, and get him on the IV drip. It’s probably rat poison which means phosphorous which is soluble which means buckets of water… but anything else?
I’ve already started getting the word out to warn other people with dogs and toddlers who use the park.
And the group of old people who sit in the approximate location where he was when I spotted him eating something… not sure whether to try to talk to them and find out which one it was, or just smash all their wrinkly old grapes in with a baseball bat.
mike
Apologies: raging right now, but trying to calm down.
mike
Oh, and muzzle doesn’t work. He figured out how to pull it off.
Philip Scott Thomas
Lord knows I’ve been trying to tell my work colleagues this for long enough, when they mock my accent.
Anyway, FWIW, American Southern to Geordie translation:
Y’all = You
All Y’All = Youse
Bloke in Tejas
Thanks, all y’all…
dearieme
“English does not have an ablative”: it wasn’t English we were discussing.
Fred Z
I speak 3 languages reasonably well and 2 more poorly but I take great joy in the obsessive flexibility of English.
abacab
@Fred Z
And English manages to do it all without all the various “-ives” and inflections that many other languages need.
Although that doesn’t stop conventional linguists trying to impose terminology more suited to f*cking Latin on it.
German inflected beaulocks: “Der Mann, dem ich den Tisch gegeben habe”. Strict English: “The man, to whom I gave the table”, or more normally “the man who I gave the table to”. Note how easily we can say the same thing without any inflection that requires 3 different forms of the masculine definite article in three different cases in German.
OK. Tell us the dative and ablative, then.
Y’all, I suppose.
Reminds me of Reginald D Hunter, died v. dead, on HIGNFY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni5J_yXuWLk&sns=em
I thought Kinky Friedman was when you spank the wife with a copy of “Free To Choose”.
dearieme – “OK. Tell us the dative and ablative, then.”
I gave y’all a good whippin’ last week. Don’t make me do it again.
English does not have an ablative. Anyone who tells you otherwise pulled that out of y’all’s ar$e.
Y’all, like other regional variations such as yinz, covers all possible forms. Only the ivory tower elites use things like dative and ablative anyway.
Liberal Yank – “Only the ivory tower elites use things like dative and ablative anyway.”
That, Sir, is a slander up with which I will no longer put.
Yinz guys got ta deal enat.
Standard English has lost the distinction between “this”, “that” and “that one over there”. It’s still around (just) in the form of “yonder” and archaic “yon”. The difference exists in Spanish, as well: este tipo (this guy); ese tipo (that guy); aquel tipo (that guy over there).
Did I just lose a comment?
Don’t know what the hell happened there.
Off-topic: advice on protecting your dog from people who deliberately try to poison him at the local park?
I’ve just had to rush Wanwan to the vet’s as they were closing up for the night, and get him on the IV drip. It’s probably rat poison which means phosphorous which is soluble which means buckets of water… but anything else?
I’ve already started getting the word out to warn other people with dogs and toddlers who use the park.
And the group of old people who sit in the approximate location where he was when I spotted him eating something… not sure whether to try to talk to them and find out which one it was, or just smash all their wrinkly old grapes in with a baseball bat.
Apologies: raging right now, but trying to calm down.
Oh, and muzzle doesn’t work. He figured out how to pull it off.
Lord knows I’ve been trying to tell my work colleagues this for long enough, when they mock my accent.
Anyway, FWIW, American Southern to Geordie translation:
Y’all = You
All Y’All = Youse
Thanks, all y’all…
“English does not have an ablative”: it wasn’t English we were discussing.
I speak 3 languages reasonably well and 2 more poorly but I take great joy in the obsessive flexibility of English.
@Fred Z
And English manages to do it all without all the various “-ives” and inflections that many other languages need.
Although that doesn’t stop conventional linguists trying to impose terminology more suited to f*cking Latin on it.
German inflected beaulocks: “Der Mann, dem ich den Tisch gegeben habe”. Strict English: “The man, to whom I gave the table”, or more normally “the man who I gave the table to”. Note how easily we can say the same thing without any inflection that requires 3 different forms of the masculine definite article in three different cases in German.