"at" at end of sentence

[Billionbridges.com]

Actually, I _can_ believe that people in Windsor were
"uncontaminated" by the final "at", though naturally I'm
speaking off the top of my head here merely as a
Canadian with admittedly passing anecdotal evidence.

I've known people who grew up in Windsor, and I've been
there a few times, and never heard it from them. I would
suggest that during one's accent-forming childhood years
very few kids have much extended contact with kids from
across the border.

That is not to say that there is no influence whatsoever.
People from Windsor and the Niagara region (across the
river from Western New York) have noticeably more
"American-sounding" accents than Torontonians, if only
slightly -- it shows up in the longer "a" in "hand" and the
more NCS-sounding "o" in "lot", though the Canadian "ou" in
"about" is retained. Again, I must emphasize that the
difference between Toronto and the Niagara region/Windsor
is slight; certainly not enough to raise eyebrows.

But the nature of the influence puzzles me. At the age of,
say, ten, would five or six trips over the course of a year to
Buffalo in the parents' car to see a hockey game and go
shopping at the Galleria be enough to convince a Canadian
kid both to adopt NCS and to say "where's it at?". I don't
think so, unless all things Buffalo were suddenly to become
the paragon of cool for youngsters growing up on the Canuck
side of the border (not something I see happening in the
foreseeable future!).

It is my understanding that people in US-Canadian border
cities, especially kids, don't socialize much together. So then
where does this geographical variance in the Southern Ontario
accent come from if we all grow up here watching the same
American media? Is it something in the air?

Best,
Don

> This final "at" was perfectly ordinary in Detroit during my childhood. I
> can hardly believe that our cousins across the river in Windsor ON were
> completely uncontaminated. It is my impression that the final "at" adds
> useful redundancy in some cases. If I'm not paying attention, "Where IS
> it?" sounds about like "What IS it?" etc., but "Where's it AT?" is clear
> enough. "Where is it?" however has been OK everywhere I've been (I think);
> is anybody suggesting that in some region the "at" is nearly obligatory?
>
> -- Doug Wilson