BE "Your ass!" = WE "Up yours!" < "[Fxck you] Up your ass!"?

Victor Steinbok aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM
Mon Feb 14 01:57:53 UTC 2011


I never correct you, Wilson. I explore the possibilities sometimes,
perhaps with insufficient deference and diffidence.

Either way, it was not a correction. It was a question. I should have
added a question mark at the end, but my inner prescriptivist forced me
to do otherwise. Or, perhaps, I simply forgot. In any case, I freely
admit now--and did so in the previous post--that my own experience with
BE is limited and mostly indirect, so I defer to your judgment on such
issues. Just don't confuse it with supplication.

     VS-)

On 2/13/2011 7:32 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 3:41 PM, Victor Steinbok<aardvark66 at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> Perhaps a parallel that does connect them would be "Your mama!", or,
>> more accurately, "Jo mama!"
> Whoa! So, in eye-dialect, the correct form is "Jo mama!" I did not know that!
>
> There's no connection between "[It's] Your mama [who is or does
> whatever has already been referenced]!
>
> "Get the hell out of this neighborhood, black man!"
>
> "Your mama's a black man!" (My friend, surprised, couldn't come up
> with a better reply.)
>
> and "[Fuck you up] Your ass!"
>
> Of course, I could very well be in error, WRT this assertion. I'm open
> to correction by you on this point, Victor. What do I know?
>
> --
> -Wilson

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



More information about the Ads-l mailing list