Someone using such non-standard syntax likely does not recognize it as non-standard.
Aw, you poor thing, having to deal with a different dialect that is only slightly different from your own. It must have been so hard.
I’m surprised that’s not a Milwaukee-ism, because it’s certainly a Chicago-ism.
Or if you’re up in the so-called Tri-State area, “Shirley Highway”.
I think your friend was intentionally pulling your chain, teasing you a bit. That or they’re an idiot. Either way, appealing to the lowest common denominator is boring.
Where I’m from, you’re gonna go make groceries. The first time or two might be as confusing as goin’ down by the pig, but after that, everybody gets it, and pretty soon, it becomes commonplace.
B-b-but then, the English language changes!
Someone fetch me mah fainting chaise, ah believe ah have the vapors!
Quite true. I heard that on occasion when we first moved here. 30+ years ago. It’s not commonly used any more, and I suspect a newer resident would be puzzled to hear that term.
In the past 5 years, the area is occasionally referred to as the DMV (DC, Maryland and Virginia). It hasn’t really caught on widely but I no longer think “what does the Department of Motor Vehicles have to do with (whatever)”.
“The 95”: two examples that stick in my mind are in an episode of The X files, and the Brendan Fraser version of Journey to the Center of the Earth.
“Bougie”. Seems to be a synonym for posh/snazzy, but every time I see it I think someone misspelled “boogie”.
I hear this all the time: “Where are you at?” Am also thinking it’s a regional thing.
Why not ask, “Where are you?”
It’s pretty widespread throughout the US.
Why would someone say Where are you at? Because that’s what they’re used to saying.
Okay, but why would people have started saying that in the first place? Coupla reasons, I think. One is that it goes with other similar questions like Where are you from? Second is that it changes the cadence of the sentence, moving the emphasis from the verb (Where are you?) to the preposition (Where are you at?).
And “where you at?” Goes better in a lot of song lyrics.
“I need you to do xxxx”. No, you want me to do xxx. Your needs, and your wants, are two different things.
This is exactly it. Spoken English is very sloppy. People are more likely to use “where’re you at” which is aurally indistinguishable from “where you at”. “Where are you?” tends to emphasize the “are” in a way that sounds more like “where the fuck are you?”
Good points.
“Where are you at?” is redundant, sure, but redundancy isn’t wrong and it sometimes makes for greater clarity.
One of my favorite words is one I learned in a linguistics class: reduplication.
reduplication is not redundancy.
I know. But look at the word itself with re and duplication.
D’oh! …
I keep hearing (and seeing in print) people say, “I am bias,” when they mean biased. Grates on my ears!
I feel like I hear this pattern a lot, in which the “-ed” ending gets elided when there’s a difficult consonant cluster.