"at" at the end of a where phrase

[Bob Haas]

Ron,

I grew up with the "... at." construction that Dale's describing in
NWNC, and I think I hear it even more in the piedmont.  Is this fairly
common in the South, as well?

bh

On Dec 3, 2003, at 10:46 AM, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:

> "This is where its at" = 'This is an exciting place' is slang from the
> 1960s
> that postdates the use of "at" in the student examples above. The
> student
> examples sound perfectly normal to me as Midwestern vernacular speech.
> So does the
> question, "Where's he at?"--they are equally plausible in the Iowa
> speech of
> my youth (Cedar Rapids [west side]). When I was a child, if I asked an
> adult
> "Where's he at?" or "Where's it at?" or "Where am I supposed to check
> in at?" I
> would sometimes be told, "On the other side of the 'at'," which was
> supposed
> to be a clever way of telling me that I had committed a solecism. I
> believe
> that it has been suggested that this construction has something to do
> with the
> German ancestors of many midwesterners.

"We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams."

Bob Haas
Department of English
High Point University