Recently, I’m often finding these words substituted for each other. It seems to work both ways:
“That was were we found him.”
“We where planning to go to the mall.”
Is it my imagination, or is this becoming common? Any known reason for it?
My first hypothesis would be massive failure of the U.S. educational system.
It seems that the visual, SMSing generation just doesn’t care about spelling. You’ll see the same confusion between their/there, horde/hoard, border/boarder, lose/loose, etc etc.
It’s like that UL going around about the “fact” taht lettre odrer doestn mttaer ni wrods, s yr barin wll maek sens f thm neway.
I think you may be right. Yet in contrast to the examples you cite (except the final one), “where” and “were” don’t sound alike.
Don’t forget phase/faze. That one grates on me every time I see it.
</rant>
Xema: were the examples you gave ones you encountered in print, or were these things you heard said?
If the latter, I expect that these might simply be instances of slurred, imprecise speech. Similarly, I know a fair number of people who invariably say “could of” when they actually mean “could have”.
It may even be that the people you heard were not actually saying “where” *or * “were”, but were instead making some intermediary sound which resembles both. In much the same way, in The American Language H. L. Mencken said that, contrary to common belief, many New Yorkers do not substitute the substitute the sounds “ir” and “oi”, as when people trying to imitate a Brooklyn accent say “he choiped like a boid” or “toimurl” instead of “turmoil”. Rather, he said, if one listens closely, it can be discerned that they are, in fact, making a third sound which is similar to both. So too people trying to imitate a St. Louis accent will say “farty” for “forty” and “harse” for “horse”, whereas natives who speak with a pronounced accent are usually (so near as I can make out) making a sound which is neither “ar” nor “or”, but similar to both.
threw/through are the worst I can think of.
I’ve seen it a few times on this board.
They where … excuse me, were all in print, not in speech.