[PRCo] Re: Geography

[Donald Galt]

On 9 Jan 2004 at 8:37, John F Bromley wrote:

> she had gone to (listed several schools, including the University of
> Pittsburgh, Derrick) 

That other university. You can hear Derrick's sigh of relief way out here on 
the Left Coast.

> then told us, quite
> unasked, that "we don't got no more cherry pie".  

Amen, but I don't know that I'd use that example. My grandmother talked just 
so. For that matter, so do I sometimes. Of course, that's only in one of my 
many personae, so is not really authentic. But the waitress too may have been 
in Indian River or Cherry Pie mode at the time.  

The two-hundred-word sentence is more problematical - more Valley Girl than 
Indian River.   

The double (triple!) negative is a time-honoured locution secretly loved by 
descriptive grammarians. There are a number of modern usages, however, that 
betray an absolute unfamiliarity with grammar, syntax and vocabulary - these 
are what really bother me.

I'm not sure just where one of my pet peeves belongs in this litany: the 
Amazing Double "is" which started out in the USA but is showing signs of 
infecting Canada and even spreading overseas ("the problem is is that ...."). 
Insofar as it doesn't appear in writing, maybe it's more like the DN. But the 
ADI does demonstrate the decline in attention given to language skills (besides 
violating tight code guidelines) and I hate it.  

Don