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	issendai 2008-11-25 05:26 pm UTC (link)
	What in hell is wrong with "y'all" anyway? It fills a need that broadcaster English doesn't fill. Precision > accent snobbery. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	kefanii 2008-11-25 05:32 pm UTC (link)
	This! I had a German teacher who said she was glad she taught in the south, because it made ihr so much easier to teach since she could just say ihr is like saying y'all. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	llama_treats 2008-11-25 05:34 pm UTC (link)
	That's what "youse guys" is for. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	plazmah 2008-11-25 06:22 pm UTC (link)
	I use both! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	pariforma 2008-11-25 05:55 pm UTC (link)
	I say we go back to using "thou" and "thee" for the singular and save "you" for the plural. Also, "man" will henceforth mean "human person irrespective of gender" and "were" (as in "werewolf", yes) will mean "human being of the male sort". Solves everything! (Yes, I am a nutjob on this point.) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	spacelogic 2008-11-26 02:32 am UTC (link)
	I'm with thee all the way. (Can we also restore "ain't" to its correct place as a contraction of "am not" and look at the gender-neutral pronoun thing?) (Reply to this)(Parent)

	ecchaniz0r 2008-11-26 02:39 am UTC (link)
	APPROVES OF THIS LIEK WHOA (Reply to this)(Parent)

	magnolia_mama 2008-11-26 02:44 am UTC (link)
	Oh, let's take things one step further and bring back dual pronouns too! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	mary_mac 2008-11-26 06:51 pm UTC (link)
	Dude, the midlands of Ireland never gave up 'ye'. Which confused the hell out of our nice Czech exchange students, back in the day, who were suddenly confronted with people from Athlone who used 'ye' after they'd spent a week getting to grips with the Northern use of 'youse'. Could get behind the man and were thing, personally. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	pariforma 2008-11-26 10:06 pm UTC (link)
	Okay, I say we all get together and publish a newsletter on this: Teh Journal of Wanka Linguistic Reform. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	keri 2008-11-25 08:23 pm UTC (link)
	I've argued the same thing with the double modals that are common to Southern American English. "Used to could" doesn't mean the same thing as "used to" or just "could" god-dang-it, so stop telling me I'm an idiot when I use the phrase! (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

issendai
2008-11-25 09:02 pm UTC (link)

What does "used to could" mean?

This reminds me of some of the commentary over Ebonics, when scholars pointed out that black American English has several more tenses than mainstream English, so often people have trouble learning mainstream English because black English is more, not less, precise. My favorite was the difference between "He been married" and "He BEEN married," where one means "He married a while ago and has been married ever since" and one means "He was married a while ago but isn't married now." (Don't ask me which means which.) When you have that sort of precision, why give it up for workarounds?

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keri
2008-11-25 09:11 pm UTC (link)

If I say "I used to could watch that on tv," I'd be saying that in the past, but not any more, there was the possibility of watching that on tv, and I was able to act on it, but I didn't necessarily do so. I guess it's like "I used to be able to" but with three fewer words? and the inflection is a bit different, but I'm not sure how to explain it. I think with "used to be able to," it's implied that the speaker *did* do whatever it was.

Whereas "I could watch that on tv" is ambiguous about when that possibility occurred and "I used to watch that on tv" states that it definitely happened.

"might could" is the future form. There really isn't a present tense version, since it's all about possibilities and not what's actually going on.