The grammar of doge

Joel S. Berson Berson at ATT.NET
Mon Jul 21 21:40:10 UTC 2014


"Doge" can be traced back to 1942.  From the film "Casablanca" --

Mr Leuchtag [starts in standard German]: Liebchen - sweetness, ...
Mr. Leuchtag:  what watch?
Mrs. Leuchtag: Ten watch.
Mr. Leuchtag: Such much?
Carl: Hm [that is, "Wow"].
Carl [reverting to (nearly) standard English]  You will get along 
beautiful in America, mm-hmm.

This conversation is indisputably doge.  From Gretchen McCulloch's "A 
Linguist Explains the Grammar of Doge. Wow":

"A minimal doge utterance contains at least two but often three 
2-word doge phrases, followed by a single-word doge phrase (most 
commonly wow)."

"The two-word doge phrases, though, are really interesting. The first 
word comes from a limited set (essentially so, such, many, much, and very) ..."

"[S]uch is one of the most versatile doge modifiers: it can combine 
with both nouns, like such wine, and adjectives, like such delicious."

[Submitted to theToast, awaiting approval.]
Joel

At 7/21/2014 04:00 PM, Benjamin Barrett wrote:
>At 
>http://the-toast.net/2014/02/06/linguist-explains-grammar-doge-wow/, 
>Gretchen McCulloch answers the question, "Why do shiba inus speak 
>ungrammatically?"

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



More information about the Ads-l mailing list