[Ads-l] Voice-over heard: "Help will come too late...

[Geoffrey Nathan]

The use of 'No I never' to mean indignant denial was common among vernacular Canadian English speakers in the fifties and sixties (nineteen fifties, that is). I can recall confrontations between teachers and classmates in Toronto involving that verbiage.


Guess I was doing participant observation before I could even spell it.


Geoff


Geoffrey S. Nathan
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From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
Sent: Friday, May 26, 2017 5:44 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Voice-over heard: "Help will come too late...

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Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
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Subject:      Re: Voice-over heard: "Help will come too late...
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On Fri, May 26, 2017 at 2:04 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> Of course, some of these (from Jespersen 1917: 17-18) are now rather
> archaic.


Nevertheless, it's more than I knew, before.

BTW, I've begun to notice this use of _never_ among black speakers on
reality TV, where it's not possible that the black speaker is following a
script written by a white speaker, here of late. Back in the day in StL,
"no, I never" vs. "no, I didn't" was as much of a distinguishing feature as
"youse/youse" vs. "you/y'all."

--
-Wilson
-----
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.
-Mark Twain

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