"Who-all" and "what-all"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Wendy,

Good to see your post!

Jon

Wendalyn Nichols <wendalyn at NYC.RR.COM> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wendalyn Nichols
Subject: Re: "Who-all" and "what-all"
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>From my Seattle youth in 1970s (transplanted at age 8 from a peripatetic
military-base existence until then; parents from Montana and Ohio):
Where all'd you go on vacation?
Who all'd you see?
What all'd you see?
But not
*When all'd you get back?
*How all'd you get there?

And we said "ollie ollie in come free."

Wendalyn Nichols

At 11:19 PM 7/30/04, you wrote:
>Allie allie oxen free in Minnesota in the '40s and '50s. (Allie as in
>alley, not Ollie.)
>
>At 06:00 PM 7/30/2004 -0400, you wrote:
>>Yeah, well, I considered using those spellings, but realized I used to
>>think of it as the (mysterious) "ocksin." And yes, I meant the vowel of
>>"all," but running various vowel sounds through my hearing memory, couldn't
>>be absolutely certain of any one.
>>AM
>>~~~~~~
>>
>> >Hmmmm! In my southern Illinois ute, we said
>> >
>> >olly, olly oxen free
>> >
>> >I suspect the oxen is just a spelling variant, but we really did say
>> >"olly," homophonous with "Ollie," definitely not "ally," at least if
>> >that first vowel is meant to be that of "all" (for those who
>> >distinguish the two, that is, as all from southern Illinois do.
>> >
>> >dInIs
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >>Page Stephens writes:
>> >>"When the game was over did you call ally ally outs in free like we did in
>> >>southern Illinois?"
>> >>~~~~~~~~~~
>> >>We did, but the version in SE NE was "ally ally ocksin free!" (1930s)
>> >>A. Murie
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>~@:> ~@:> ~@:> ~@:>
>> >
>> >
>> >--
>> >Dennis R. Preston
>> >University Distinguished Professor
>> >Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic,
>> > Asian and African Languages
>> >Wells Hall A-740
>> >Michigan State University
>> >East Lansing, MI 48824-1027 USA
>> >Office: (517) 353-0740
>> >Fax: (517) 432-2736
>>
>>
>>A&M Murie
>>N. Bangor NY
>>sagehen at westelcom.com


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