The phrase or verb formation ‘You are’ is always plural and to make this point, just pretend to hear ‘You all are’. This came to mind when I overhead a Southerner saying, ‘C’mon y’all’. The phrase ‘y’all’ came about naturally because we are taught to use ‘you are’ in a singular and plural sense, depending […]
Tag: dialect
It’s the strawman. It’s the trust named FIRST LAST.
They ask, “What is your address?” not “What is your home location?”
The word, address, is yet another word with an odd legal meaning. Bouvier’s law dictionary says that it means the ‘court where the plaintiff seeks his remedy‘. That’s a whole lot different from the word meaning ‘where one lives.’ I know people don’t ask me, “What is your location?” or “Where is your home?” They say, […]
Policy officers – Poli-cee
Should the word ‘police’ be pronounced as ‘policy’ or ‘po-lease’? If I was learning English for the first time, I would think ‘policy’ or ‘poli-cee’. The policy officers are enforcing statutes or policies of the local corporation that calls itself a city government (partly because no one is running the real non-corporate government). As I […]
Flip words: citizenship-shipcitizen, workplace-placework, understand-standunder
Someone asked me recently, “How is your workplace?” And I thought about the word ‘workplace’ and how if the word parts were swapped to be ‘placework’ it would have the same general meaning. That is not the case for many other words. Understand – stand under Citizenship – ship citizen The alternate meaning of the […]