"Who-all" and "what-all" (and a Southern Illinois side note)

[Wilson Gray]

On Jul 31, 2004, at 1:30 AM, Douglas Bigham wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Douglas Bigham <TlhovwI at AOL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "Who-all" and "what-all" (and a Southern Illinois
> side note)
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>
> I concur.  Olly olly oxen free.
>
> And on a side note... SoILers (Egyptians?), what-all, or where-all, are
> you-all *including* as Southern Illinois?  I only include the bottom
> 16 counties.
>
>
> -doug

Though I don't have a gazetteer sufficiently detailed that it shows
counties, I can tell you that, judging from the familiar names of
population centers that I recognize as being considered, by St.
Louisans, at least, to be part of the "Greater Saint Louis Metropolitan
Area," for me, "Southern Illinois" includes everything from Mattoon
south, in general, and "Little Egypt," in particular. Judging by the
scale of the map, "SI in general" probably covers more than 16
counties.

-Wilson Gray

>
> In a message dated 7/30/2004 4:00:51 PM Central Standard Time,
> preston at MSU.EDU writes:
> 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
>
> -dsb
> Douglas S. Bigham
> Department of Linguistics
> University of Texas - Austin
> http://hometown.aol.com/capn002/myhomepage/index.html
>