More and more, I’m hearing people pronounce “accessory” as “assessory”. Just to make sure I didn’t miss something, I went to dictionary.com and clicked on the pronunciation link
and nothing’s changed. It’s still pronounced the same way it’s always been according to that site.
My respect for the human race, at least as it pertains to those who say “assessory” just diminished a little more.
Don’t axe me why some people talk funny.
I grit my teeth when I hear black college students talk this way on the bus. I KNOW they don’t talk that way in the classroom.
Y’all have my apologies, Sir. 
Me neither, though I’ve been here for 31 years. In my world, nothing is “wicked.”
Nope :).
Consider:
I don’t feel [half as much [like I did [when I came in here]]] as I do now
The brackets are modifiers: “half as much” modifies how I feel, and “like I did” modifies “as much” and “when I came in here” modifies “did.” So you can take those modifiers out for the basic comparison:
“I don’t feel half as much…as I do now.”
So the comparison is from how I feel (present tense) to how I am now, and it’s saying I feel less now than I do now.
It’s a self-contradiction, but it’s buried under so many modifiers that the contradiction is hard to see.
The guy I hear it from most was born and raised in SE Ohio, and now lives in Georgia. I’m pretty sure he used the phrase before he moved south, though.
I hear it in the South all the time. It’s horrid.
Just out of curiosity, because I mistakenly said that I never use “anymore” in the positive, but realized from the dictionary examples that I do use it at least in one type of construction. For those of you for whom “Gasoline is so expensive anymore” sounds awkward, does “Pizza is all I eat anymore” sound weird, too? I find the first construction weird, but not the second, so I’m wondering if this is usual, or some dialectical quirk of mine.
ok…how does one go about this. How do you cut lights on and off? And fixinta. As in, “I am fixinta make us some supper.” I have also heard everwhat, instead of whatever.
This one from The Soup just blew me away. I can’t believe this guy is paid to be on TV.
You cut off the voltage to the light?
ok i can buy the cutting them off, but cutting the lights on???
Wouldn’t some of these examples be colloquialisms? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colloquialism
You’ll find that mentioned in any book or article about Southern dialect. It’s called the “double modal” construction, and is a long-standing feature of Southern/Texas speech. “Might could” is speculative - you’re mentioning a possiblity without committing to it. “Should ought to” is another: “We should oughta go to Delmore and Tanya’s weddin’; they are your cousins.”
Of course not, that’s a different social context that calls for a different linguistic register. Black English is more informal, as befits conversations among friends. Going back and forth between different registers is called “code switching”, and most people do it. Would you talk to your friends while hanging out in a bar the same way you’d speak to a professor or give a lecture? Probably not.
Sheeyit, son, that’s easy. Yuh cut the laights own and off with th’ switch, o’ course! Boy mus’ be dumber’n a box uh rocks, not to know that…
In the interests of cultural compromise, I’m willing to go with ‘Where does the manager be at?’
I really like ‘might could’ and ‘might should’. I’ve never actually heard them, just read them, but I think they express something that doesn’t quite get caught any other way.
My feelings mirror yours. Pizza is all I eat anymore could be restated, “I eat nothing but pizza anymore,” which is an unremarkable sentence. So I’m gonna hypothesize, since I can’t find a languagelog post that details positive anymores, that for at least the two of us, we need the verb to be restricted by all?
We run into a misconception of the public’s understanding of things electrical. A break in an electrical connection is incorrectly referred to as a “short” when it is the opposite; a break or “long” in the circuit. “Cutting” on or off should be “switching”.
:mad: Y’all. Is. Not. SINGULAR.
There is a West Texas dialect that uses it as a plural.
Consider this brief reenactment:
A cop in East Texas stops a car full of College students.
He examines the driver and say, “Y’all been drinkin’.”
He looks at the passengers. “All y’all been drinkin’.”