"at" at the end of a where phrase

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

In a message dated 12/2/03 10:24:56 PM, Dalecoye at AOL.COM writes:


> One of my NJ students (Asian-American) wrote these two sentences in a paper 
> I
> just read:
> 
> "As I entered the school, I went to the office where I was supposed to check
> in at.  I checked in and the secretary took me to a room where I was needed
> at."
> 
> I was surprised to find this in a more or less formal paper.  We had "this
> place is where it's at" in the 60s.. DARE has examples from the South and
> Midlands with some NY examples, but most of the examples are of the "where 
> are you
> at?" variety--maybe this construction is taking off.
> 
> Dale Coye
> The College of NJ
> 

"This is where its at" = 'This is an exciting place' is slang from the 1960s 
that postdates the use of "at" in the student examples above. The student 
examples sound perfectly normal to me as Midwestern vernacular speech. So does the 
question, "Where's he at?"--they are equally plausible in the Iowa speech of 
my youth (Cedar Rapids [west side]). When I was a child, if I asked an adult 
"Where's he at?" or "Where's it at?" or "Where am I supposed to check in at?" I 
would sometimes be told, "On the other side of the 'at'," which was supposed 
to be a clever way of telling me that I had committed a solecism. I believe 
that it has been suggested that this construction has something to do with the 
German ancestors of many midwesterners.