who's ever

[Wilson Gray]

I have to fight with myself to keep from speaking it or writing it.
Oddly, I've never noticed whether other people use it.

My guess is that, in my case, my tang tends to get tungled up in my
eyeteeth so that I can't see what I'm saying, because I'm usually
consciously trying to avoid speaking BE, unless it's on purpose.

No, black people don't say "who's ever." It's that constant monitoring
can easily lead to non-existent "corrections" or even to stuttering,
on *my* part.

OTOH, I don't have a problem with "whose ever": "Whose ever /
"Whoever's / Whichever bike you come to next, take that one." I don't
consider it to be "right," merely "all right."

-Wilson

On Tue, Aug 5, 2008 at 6:27 PM, Joan H. Hall <jdhall at wisc.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joan H. Hall" <jdhall at WISC.EDU>
> Subject:      who's ever
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Here in Madison I regularly hear, "I can help who's ever next" [rather
> than "whoever's next"].
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
 -Sam'l Clemens

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org